Pictured: Brittany Butler. Photography: Caroline Knopf
On a cloudless, unseasonably warm morning in February, Brittany Butler, former CIA spy and newly published author of The Syndicate Spy, welcomes me into her Isle of Palms home. The house is richly accented with flowers, plants, and coastal decor. It’s as lively and cheerful as the blonde-haired, green-eyed girl greeting me in the doorway.
Brittany is not what many might expect when they think "CIA agent.” Female spies are something we see in movies but don’t hear much of in real life. So I was interested to find out if Brittany’s real-life experience was anything like those painted in Hollywood movies.
We pass through her living room and out onto a wooden deck that overlooks a serene pond. An impressive labyrinth of greenery surrounds us as plants and oak trees hug the house. In this picturesque setting, Brittany’s green paisley dress puddles around her tiny frame, and she takes a deep breath before answering the question, “So, who exactly is Brittany Butler?”
A Georgia native, Brittany grew up in the South with her parents, younger sister, Bridget, and younger brother, Joe. Her roots stretched farther South when she moved to Tallahassee in 2001 to attend Florida State University. There she studied international affairs with an emphasis on French and Middle Eastern studies. “I was always fascinated by the Arab world, the Muslim religion in particular,” Brittany says. “I wanted to learn and understand more about their world because it was so different from how I grew up.”
While in college, Brittany accepted an internship with the U.S. State Department at the American Embassy in Paris. “I had an unbelievable experience because I was able to work in the passport office where we were America’s first line of defense to ensure terrorists were not permitted into the country. Part of my role was conducting research on people applying for visas and passports to get into the United States,” she says.
It was her knowledge of Arabic naming conventions that helped her succeed. She understood kunyas, a respectful title or name given to an Arab mother or father after one of their children. Brittany’s experience at the U.S. Embassy provided her with an opportunity to serve her country in an even more important role. “A foreign service officer working at the embassy encouraged me to apply to the CIA,” she says. It had never occurred to the now 39-year-old mother of three, but it intrigued her enough to apply that same evening. Brittany shrugs and says, “I sort of figured – what do I have to lose?”
I sort of figured - what do I have to lose?
Sources and Assets
With international experience and impressive foreign language knowledge, Brittany’s arsenal of skills proved attractive to the CIA. She had her initial phone interview with the agency, followed by her first in-person meeting: “He walked in and began speaking to me in French about the Gaza Strip and the Arab-Israeli conflict,” she recalls. “Initially, I was recruited to be a CIA case officer, charged with spotting, assessing, and handling the CIA’s assets that spy on terrorist organizations and foreign governments.”
All the while, she was still a senior in college, regularly attending classes and enjoying her involvement in her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. “When I got further along in the recruitment process, I started completing my psychological evaluations, polygraph tests, and medical testing,” she says. At the same time, the CIA was interviewing her sorority sisters, closest friends, and family as part of the agency’s extensive background investigation.
Brittany passed the test and, following graduation in 2005, found herself in Washington, D.C. She was interested in operational work but quickly realized that the appropriate role for her at the CIA would be as a targeting officer. “I wanted a family and to eventually meet someone and fall in love,” she says. “I was a good ol’ Southern girl. I wanted babies!” She became a targeting officer, supporting CIA stations abroad by identifying a source with access to information they needed to accomplish their foreign intelligence or counter-terrorism objectives.
In her new role, Brittany flew to the Middle East frequently, often to help case officers better understand the source’s access to terrorist organizations and motivations for working with the United States. Her next task involved operationalizing that information. “I did a lot of targeting in the war zones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. That often meant that I was sending out operational leads to our special forces’ counterparts or to our drone programs to act on high-value targets like al-Qaeda and ISIS,” Brittany says. She whips out and inspects a gold coin the size of a quarter. It has a blood-red “X” over Osama bin Laden’s headshot with words that read: “For God and Country Geronimo,” and the date of his death below, “1 May 2011.” “All CIA officers who were in the CIA Counterterrorism Center’s Pakistan-Afghanistan division during the Osama bin Laden raid received this coin to commemorate his death,” she says.
A Dangerous Life
There have been plenty of moments throughout her career where her life was in danger. On one Middle East deployment, she participated in a “high-threat meeting” with a terrorist. This meant the team didn’t know with certainty whether the terrorist they were meeting would enter the room with a bomb strapped to his chest. “I was scared,” she says. “I helped to identify him as a potential CIA source and understood his access and the motivation for the meeting, and we worked with a foreign liaison to pat him down prior, but, still, you just never really know.”
The risks involved with her job have always hung over her, but one specific incident really shook her. “I realized I could die doing this,” she recalls. The Camp Chapman attack in Afghanistan in 2009 was the most lethal suicide bombing in CIA history. Seven American CIA officers were killed; Brittany knew two of them personally. “I knew the work I was doing was dangerous, and I knew what I was doing was extremely sensitive, but I sort of became desensitized to the danger,” she says. “But when that happened, it really shook me.”
I realized I could die doing this.
The realization grew stronger for Brittany after giving birth to her first child in 2011. “I knew that I wanted to raise my babies; I didn’t want anyone else to raise them,” she says. Her head hangs slightly as she recalls Jennifer Lynne Matthews, the chief of base, who died at Camp Chapman. “She had three children. She died, and her kids were quite young, and I couldn’t help but put myself in her shoes.”
She left the CIA three years later following the birth of her second son.
Less than 18% of the CIA is female. Brittany attributes this to the many women who leave to prioritize their families. “Working counterterrorism operations is a very high-intensity and demanding job. The days are grueling, and you get burnt out. It doesn’t lend to a good work-life balance,” she says. “There aren’t as many women as possible in leadership roles because they leave early on to have children.”
Brittany met her husband, Matt, a lobbyist, while working at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The pair got engaged in 2009 and married in January 2010. “Matt’s from Charleston and grew up in The Old Village, right down the street from the Pitt Street Pharmacy.” The couple lived and worked in Washington, D.C., for 15 years before deciding to relocate to Charleston. The move was an easy decision for the family. Escaping the hustle and bustle of a big city was important, but they were excited to be near the ocean and Matt’s family. “Every time I’d visit Charleston, I just felt like my heart rate slowed down. I felt at peace,” Brittany says, smiling up at the sunshine peeking through the branches of the oak tree above us.
In 2020, Brittany and Matt welcomed their third son. Today, an accomplished mother of three boys, every time she and Matt enjoy a date night on the Isle of Palms Front Beach, she knows they made the right move. “We love sitting at the bar at Coda Del Pesce and eating the amazing pasta or drinking margaritas at Papi’s,” Brittany says. The relaxed summer pace that island life naturally adopts has left her family enjoying every second on Isle of Palms. “We love living on the Isle of Palms because it’s so tranquil and safe. Our kids can ride their bikes without me worrying,” Brittany says.
Crafting a New Identity
Pictured: Brittany Butler. Photography: Caroline Knopf
The shift from the fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping atmosphere wasn’t all easy. For a while, Brittany struggled to figure out who she wanted to be after her life as a spy, but volunteering helped craft her new identity. “It’s the work I am able to do from a distance,” she says. She witnessed so many injustices against Arab women while she worked in the Middle East, and she wanted to help. Fundraising for Women for Afghan Women in D.C. and helping Afghan refugees in the United States through Lutheran Services in America helped. But she was still thirsty for greater intellectual stimulation. “I studied for such a long time and learned about so many unique ways of life. … I needed a way to apply that in some way,” she says. Writing became that outlet.
She reaches for The Syndicate Spy, published this March. A work of fiction, it combines fascinating facts with heart-stopping fiction, telling the story, as only Brittany can, of how female intelligence officers use their intellect and skills to see beyond religious and cultural barriers and work to bring peace to a war-torn region.
Brittany, a true Southern belle with long, tousled, blonde locks and a captivating smile, says her enemies often downplayed her intellect and skill due to her appearance. She used this to her advantage. “The enemy wouldn’t really see me coming. They’d just think, ‘Oh, a pretty blonde; she probably doesn’t know anything,’ when in reality, I knew a lot,” she says.
The enemy wouldn't really see me coming.
The Syndicate Spy draws from her experiences operating in a foreign environment where women are not treated as equals. The heroine, Juliet, experiences much of what Brittany encountered firsthand. “I wrote about the fear I felt entering these places that were very different from where I was from. I didn’t understand their culture, I didn’t look like them, and I think the reader will get a real sense of what that’s like,” she says. “Not to mention an insider view of what it’s like to be in the CIA.”
My book will offer an insider view of what it's like to be in the CIA.
Brittany always knew she’d write this story, and she views it as a way to advocate for the rights of women in the Middle East: “Once you read my book, you will understand what I mean.”
The Syndicate Spy is published by Greenleaf Book Group and available now at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.
Follow Brittany on Instagram at @formerspy1
