The Red Cell: Fact and Fiction

The surprise of September 11 2001 was, in part, a failure of imagination and CIA Director George Tenet did not want that to happen again. On September 13 he created the Red Cell and staffed it with “people who were willing to take their analysis to a whole new zip code.” CIA analyst Mark Henshaw’s first novel, Red Cell, is about the adventures of two analysts assigned to that team during a military crisis with China. The story is fiction, but it draws on Henshaw’s three years in the Red Cell. Join him and SPY Historian Mark Stout as they discuss what goes on in Room 2G31 at CIA Headquarters.