Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence Studies

This is the first work to engage with intelligence studies through the lens of queer theory. Adding to the literature in critical intelligence studies and critical international relations theory, this work considers the ways in which both the spy, and the activities of espionage can be viewed as queer. Part One argues that the spy plays a role which represents a third path between the hard power of the military and the soft power of diplomacy. Part Two shows how the intelligence community plays a key role in enabling leaders of democracies to conduct covert activities running counter to that mission and ideology, in this way allowing a leader to have two foreign policies-an overt, public policy and a second, closeted, queer foreign policy.

Mary Manjikian is Professor and Associate Dean at the Robertson School of Government, Regent University, USA. Her work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Intelligence and National Security and International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. She is a former US foreign service officer with service in the Netherlands, Russia and Bulgaria.