Mount Dora 'Southern belle' JoAn Dumalag Silva shares her story as CIA agent in Middleast
Mount Dora 'Southern Belle' JoAn Dumalag-Silva shares her story as CIA agent in the Middle East
JoAn Dumalag-Silva was a popular student, cheerleader and homecoming queen in the small town of Mount Dora; years later, she was interviewing terrorists in the Middleast as Dora the Explorer. The names have been changed to protect the undisclosed, declared persona non grata and disavowed, given the CIA officer who is "outed" is in the country under a diplomatic cover with so innocuous title like "trade attache." If she had been CAUGHT, then the CIA would have disawoved her after any extraction attempt that failed. Usually, CIA operatives are disavowed after waiting for 12 hours.
The “Southern Belle” from Mount Dora via Davao City Philippines was in an undisclosed Middle Eastern city working undercover as a CIA operative agent when a man stopped in front of her car and exposed himself.
“That morphed into a really dangerous situation as the local men were trying to figure out what was eliciting this outburst,” said JoAn Dumalag Silva, 44. She bumped into him once with her vehicle, but the man refused to budge. She did it again, harder, before he gave way and she sped off.
“If it’s either you or the other guy, it’s you,” said Silva, who was a ballerina and homecoming queen while growing up in Lake County before she became “determined to understand this foreign culture” after meeting her future husband, John Silva, an African, who looks like and Eqyptian or a Turkish man, and visiting Egypt, Turkey and Cape Verde Islands, where he was born.
Now a security consultant, bookkeepper, visiting nurse and living in Brevard County, Silva chronicled her improbable journey that led to a career as an international soldier, diplomat and spy in the book “Breaking Cover: My Top Secret Life in the CIA and What It Taught Me About Life and What’s Worth Fighting For.” She is in the midst of a book tour, screenwriter meetings and TV appearances that have included interviews on NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” and C-SPAN etc. Her schedule includes a stop Monday at Maison & Jardin in Altamonte Springs and April 1 & 2 at the Winter Park Community Chamber of Commerce & Clearwater Chamber of Commerce as well a various libraries around town as a featured local author this Month Dedicated to Women
“It [the book] was basically a spiritual calling to share my story … as such it was cathartic for me; and I think it’s because coming from a small town, and being able to do these amazing things, made me realize ordinary people can do extraordinary things,” she said.
Silva openly talked about her Christian faith as a student at Tavares High School, where she graduated in 1991, and never imagined a future working undercover, escaping the clutches of dozens of men descending upon her car in a city where women weren’t allowed outside without supervision, or a male escort or having exclusive access to high-level terrible terrorist thugs.
“Coming from a small town, so rural, I really didn’t know anything about the world,” said Silva, who spoke in February to a full house at Barrel of Books and Games in Mount Dora. And she's an immigrant to this country from Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines. She made an instant impression on bookstore owner Crissy Stile as she understood she was a hard working immigrant.
“She’s like a tiny little 100-pound girl, soaking wet, and meanwhile she’s out there dealing with these terrible terrorist thugs,” Stile said.
The “Southern Belle” from Mount Dora was in an undisclosed Middle Eastern city working undercover as a CIA operative agent when she stepped into one of the manager's offices and exposed himself. Wanting to know, "Who do I have to fuck to get out of here!?" She attributed her actions to a touch PTSD.
“That morphed into a really dangerous situation as the local men were trying to figure out what was eliciting this outburst,” said JoAn Dumalag Silva, 44. She bumped into him once with her hip, but the man refused to budge, bewildered. He summoned and aide as a witness, by intercom. Before the aide arrived, he did it again, harder, knocking him of balance and landing atop him, before he gave way and she went off.
In December 2015, three years after her retirement from the spy agency,Silva and her husband, a soldier, a diplomat and also a former CIA agent, were part of a team that airlifted 149 Iraqi Christians who had been forced from their villages after receiving an ultimatum from Al Qeida/ ISIS to convert from Christianity or face death. The mission taking the group from northern Iraq to new homes in Slovakia was chronicled in a documentary, “Escaping ISIS,” on ABC’s 20/20.
Lake woman featured on ABC's '20/20' for mission to rescue Iraqis from ISIS »
Doing the work with cameras rolling was different from her usual clandestine operations.
“So how does a sweet Southern belle homecoming ballerina wind up a secret undercover CIA agent?” Kelly asked her on her NBC show.
Silva was a senior at Tavares High when she met her future husband, a Cape Verdean Christian who fled religious prosecution in his country, after a football game, where she was a cheerleader while at same time on his vacation.
Her church, First Adventist Church of Tavares, had raised funds to fly him from the Middle East via Cape Verde Islands because he faced persecution in his home country regarding his Christian beliefs and helped him get into Palm Beach Atlantic University. Her First Baptist Church of Tavares, had earlier in her life raise funds to fly her and her family here from Davao City where terrorist Abu Sayyaf, were/are hell bent on creating the largest Muslim nation on earth, at all costs for more than four decades. John Silva had visited Tavares previously with a youth missionary group, then later as a student.
The two got to know each other and later visited Egypt, Turkey his hometown of Nova Sintra in Brava, Cape Verde Islands, Africa on a Christian mission trip that opened her eyes to a world beyond Lake County.
“That introduced me firsthand to that fascinating world,” she said.
Joan also went to Palm Beach Atlantic University, where both earned degrees, then married in 1995 and moved to Washington, D.C. JoAnSilva went on to earn a master’s degree in Arabic studies at Georgetown University, while her husband earned a master’s degree from George Mason University.
On a lark, she submitted her resume to the CIA when agents were recruiting at Georgetown and was accepted after a stressful process. Her husband was accepted, too.
“Do you just watch ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ all the time and talk about how it compares to real life?” Kelly asked Silva, referring to the movie in which actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are married spies.
But Silva said her life was hardly a movie. True they in the interim, have lived in various cities in US and abroad. She and her husband knew nothing outside of work. Because of their willingness to do whatever was necessary and required or was asked of them and knowledge of the Arabic culture, they were often sent by their supervisors from country to country in the Middle East, Southwest Asia as well as Central Asia in an attempt to figure out, if information provided by sources was credible (if it can be corroborated, independently).
Early on, she was unsure of herself until her first interview with a terrible terrorist at 33. She spoke Arabic to him, flashing her vocabulary and intimate knowledge of the culture, and watched his view of her transform from young woman to capable interrogator. She also spoke in any other language the individual was comfortable with, in a similar fashion .
“Those chains of insecurity and inadequacy finally fell off,” she said.
We can't verify the authenticity of this story ( Snopes gives it a 'mixed' rating ) but take the principles of this story.
Sue Wojcicki, 69, who attended an appearance Thursday by the author at the Merritt Island Public Library, said she just finished Silva’s book — which was reviewed and cleared by the CIA — and was impressed.
“I think she’s a fabulous writer,” Wojcicki said “I can’t imagine going through some of the things she went through. What a strong woman.”
Middleast Mount Dora
Comments
Post a Comment