Background
John F. Sullivan was born on August 16, 1939, in New London, Connecticut, United States. He is the son of William and Helen (Rowan) Sullivan.
1400 Washington Ave, Albany, NY 12222, United States
John received a Bachelor of Arts from Albany State Teachers College (the present-day State University of New York at Albany) in 1961.
Michigan, United States
John attended Michigan State University during 1967-1968.
John F. Sullivan was born on August 16, 1939, in New London, Connecticut, United States. He is the son of William and Helen (Rowan) Sullivan.
John received a Bachelor of Arts from Albany State Teachers College (the present-day State University of New York at Albany) in 1961. He attended Michigan State University during 1967-1968.
John Sullivan was one of the CIA's top polygraph examiners during the final four years of the war in Vietnam, where he served longer and conducted more lie detector tests than any other examiner and worked with more agents than most of his colleagues. His job was to evaluate the reliability of the agency's information sources, an assignment that gave him a more intimate view of the war than was afforded most other participants. In the first book to be written by such an operative, he tells what it was like to be an agency officer working in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during those chaotic years, putting a human face on covert operations that help us better understand why we lost the war.
Of Spies and Lies traces Sullivan's journey from dedication to disillusionment while serving in Southeast Asia. Although many CIA personnel lived better in Vietnam and made more money than ever before, their actual working conditions hindered effective intelligence gathering. A much larger and far more distressing obstacle, however, was the agency's failure to send its "best and brightest" agents to Southeast Asia. On the contrary, as Sullivan notes, Vietnam became a kind of dumping ground for poor performers, alcoholics, refugees from bad marriages, and other "problem agents."
Through anecdotes and inside stories Sullivan provides new insights into CIA culture that debunk the "James Bond" image of clandestine operations and show how in Vietnam the seamier aspects of that culture were allowed to grow even worse.
One of the frankest and intimate looks at CIA operations in Vietnam ever published, Of Spies and Lies reveals why the CIA's efforts there were such a failure and allows a more complete assessment of its poor performance in a losing cause.
Gatekeeper: Memoirs of a CIA Polygraph Examiner is more than Sullivan's memoirs. It is also a window to the often acrimonious and sometimes alarming internal politics of the CIA: the turf wars over resources, personnel, and mandate; the slow implementation of quality control; the aversion to risk-taking; and the overzealous pursuit of disqualifying information. In an age when the intelligence community's conduct is rightly being questioned, Sullivan contributes a personal account of one of the Agency's many important tasks.
His third book Raised by a Village: Growing Up in Greenport was published in 2015.
Sullivan is presently a lecturer at Major, Capps & Associates, which manages the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in Alexandria, Virginia.
Sullivan is a member of the Roman Catholic church.
John is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Association.
John married Leonor Tijerina on August 29, 1970.