Rude boys: how bigotry and arrogance at the FBI undermine national security.

• Author: Bergo, Sandy

No Backup: My Life as a Female FBI Special Agent

By Rosemary Dew and Pat Pape

Carroll & Graf, $25.00

A few years ago, Rosemary Dew was an ex-FBI agent working for a contractor when she was asked to manage a project to upgrade one of the bureau's many antiquated computer systems. That the assignment was headed for trouble became clear in her first meeting with her counterpart, the FBI agent in charge of the project who proclaimed that he had removed the "ragheads" from their work area. Apparently "ragheads" was his way of referring to employees who practiced the Sikh religion and wore turbans. Yet these "ragheads," Dew knew, were computer scientists. The FBI agent handling the contract, by contrast, had no technical expertise. But that didn't stop him from trying to pester Dew to add on cool-sounding features he read about in popular computer magazines. Nor did it stop another higher-ranking agent from stalling progress on the computer project by wasting a two-hour meeting picking out colors for a new logo, rather than discussing content needs with the 20 FBI agents assembled for that purpose.

Such incidents of arrogance and bigotry abound in this memoir. Yes, Rosemary Dew is a disgruntled former employee. Yes, she was unable to tough it out, and quit the FBI after 13 years as an agent and supervisor. Yes, she is angry and bitter, and it shows. But it would be a mistake to discount her testimony. For she makes the case that the insular, turf conscious, macho culture of the FBI, a culture that tolerates boorish and racist behavior and is closed to new ideas, is inextricably linked to some of its most grievous security lapses.

We now know, for instance, that the FBI's outdated computer systems were at least partly responsible for the failure of internal investigators to recognize that Robert Hanssen was passing secrets to the Soviets, and for the inability of Bureau agents to share suspicious information they had about the al Qaeda hijackers before 9/11 with other investigators inside and outside the bureau. Without changes in that culture, Dew makes clear, such lapses are likely to recur.

Dew joined the FBI five years after it started hiring women agents. Harassment began almost immediately. During her rookie year at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., speakers addressing her class laced their lectures with dirty jokes and warnings to the ladies that working alongside men meant accepting their crude talk. One instructor, teaching a class how to...