Ex-CIA officer’s novel alleges grave dysfunction in deep-cover operations

A new, previously suppressed book by a former CIA officer paints a satirical and slashing portrait of the agency's deep-cover spying program as riven by systematic dysfunction.

The book, "The Pickle Factory," written by an ex-CIA nonofficial cover officer, under the pen name Sam R. Oyken, is billed as a work of fiction. Though often fantastical, it contains thinly veiled true-life details about the inner workings of the agency's spying operations, according to former CIA officials.

Most CIA officers work under what's known as "official cover" and generally masquerade as U.S. diplomats abroad. NOCs, who often pose as businessmen or consultants, have no overt connections to the U.S. government and therefore operate without diplomatic immunity.

Because of the potential dangers of their missions and the clandestine participation of American companies who provide cover to these officers, NOCs' operations are closely guarded inside the CIA.

"The Pickle Factory," published in late July, is the culmination of what the author characterized as a multiyear battle against agency censors, who first rejected publication of the manuscript in 2014. The Washington Post is referring to him by his pen name, as the former NOC remains undercover.

Former CIA employees are required to submit all work potentially relevant to their agency careers to the CIA's Prepublication Classification Review Board for potential redaction, to expunge it of allegedly classified information.

"They insisted for years after I submitted the manuscript of my novel that I couldn't publish a single word, a straight-up First Amendment violation," said Oyken in an interview.

Then-CIA Executive Director Meroe Park reversed the blanket ban in 2017, but the agency then "tried to redact more than half of the book, which I fought, redaction by redaction, until they folded," he said.

Park did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment.

The saga surrounding the book first trickled into public view in 2015, when Oyken - then using the alias Mack Charles in court documents - lodged a $25 million complaint against the CIA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that agency officials conspired to fire the 13-year CIA veteran because they disapproved of his romantic relationship with another deep-cover officer to whom he was engaged and who was two decades younger.

Oyken was fired from the CIA in December 2010 and accused the agency of suppressing his book as part of a broader retaliation campaign, according to the 2015 lawsuit.

His suit against the agency was dismissed on procedural grounds in March 2016. The passage of time, and changes in agency leadership, appear to have attenuated concerns surrounding the book, and the CIA gave Oyken final approval to publish "The Pickle Factory" in early 2026.

Books by former NOCs have often met fierce resistance inside the CIA.

The 2019 publication of "Life Undercover ," a memoir by former deep-cover officer Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, became embroiled in controversy when reports emerged that she did not receive final CIA approval to publish her book. Fox Kennedy - who served until recently as a senior official within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Management and Budget inside the Trump administration - did not appear to face sanction by the agency.

The CIA did sue another ex-NOC, writing under the pen name Ishmael Jones, for publishing a critical 2008 nonfiction account of his own experience inside the deep-cover program. Jones's book, "The Human Factor ," had not been reviewed by agency censors. In 2012, a federal judge ordered Jones to forfeit any profit from future sales of the book.

"The Pickle Factory" dredges up what many CIA alumni consider an unhappy chapter in the history of the agency's deep-cover program .

In addition to skewering a number of former senior agency officials who oversaw the NOC cadre - whose biographies (and, at times, names) are only lightly fictionalized - the book recounts the agency's post-9/11 push to procure, and perhaps surreptitiously redirect for other purposes, billions of dollars in funding earmarked by Congress for a vastly expanded NOC program.

The post-9/11 NOC expansion was a real-life "debacle," said a former deep-cover colleague of Oyken's, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly address sensitive intelligence operations, "where results were secondary, receipts were primary, and spending was king."

Much of Oyken's work with the agency remains shrouded in secrecy. His career bridged two eras at CIA, according to the same former colleague: the bespoke, targeted deep-cover program extant at CIA before Sept. 11, 2001, and the engorged NOC program that followed it, with younger, poorly trained NOCs being rushed into the field.

One part of this initiative involved deploying groups of these new NOCs to roughly a dozen secret "platforms" abroad; by 2008, almost all these efforts had folded in failure.

Oyken joined the CIA in 1996 as a French-speaking graduate of Harvard Law School who worked for the white-shoe law firm Covington & Burling before joining the agency, according to a declassified tranche of documents reviewed by The Post.

In 1999, he was selected for a 20-year deep-cover assignment abroad, an unusually long posting for NOC officers. The documents, some of which were redacted, point to a posting somewhere in Europe.

That assignment was cut short for reasons unclear in the declassified tranche reviewed by The Post. The mission ended because of a counterintelligence issue unrelated to Oyken's performance, according to another former CIA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe clandestine operations. Oyken was subsequently assigned to be an instructor to CIA trainees, according to the documents.

He was then selected for a managerial role inside the NOC program, according to court documents as well as the declassified tranche reviewed by The Post. Oyken is identified in the declassified papers as a "QRN," which former CIA colleagues say refers to "Quick Reaction NOC," an elite group of deep-cover officers who often travel on non-U.S. passports to undertake highly sensitive intelligence-gathering or eavesdropping-related missions abroad.

The court documents suggest that, after his stint as a trainer, Oyken served as QRN chief, stating that he "exercised supervisory authority over more than 80 subordinates, including other NOC Operations Officers in his Group."

Oyken's dismissal from the CIA was a contentious and bitter affair, per both sets of documents. His overseers accused him of financial improprieties, inappropriate romantic relationships with subordinates, absenteeism in his managerial duties and bullying of underlings. Agency officials also lamented his lack of recruitments, according to the declassified tranche.

His was "a chronic case of long-term behavior that has completely eroded the confidence management has in this officer," said one declassified agency memorandum reviewed by The Post.

Oyken strenuously contested the allegations. "They came at me like a pack of wild dogs," he said in an interview.

The declassified documents reveal an aggressive investigation into Oyken, including his finances. In one partially redacted 2009 email, an incoming NOC program chief decries the "loose approach" to deep-cover deployments, vowing that Oyken "will be coming home the first day I'm in the chair." He was "the kind of china I'm looking forward to breaking" upon taking over the program, writes the soon-to-be NOC boss.

Oyken characterizes the deep-cover program as hidebound and in acute need of reform. "There's a certain kind of CIA manager who prefers that NOCs be full-time accountants rather than spies out taking risks," he said. "Meanwhile they themselves squander billions of dollars and turn a blind eye while their cronies make off with stacks of gold bars."

In May 2026, David J. Rush, a senior CIA official working on ultrasecret intelligence-gathering programs, was arrested on charges of stealing public funds, including the alleged theft of $40 million worth of gold bars from the agency.

Though formally a work of fiction, "The Pickle Factory" clearly puts the real-world CIA in its crosshairs. "It's almost impossible for outsiders to grasp how mediocre the agency has become," Oyken said. "Only a novel-length treatment could do the topic justice."