The Spy Who Shagged Me

Sex, Lies, & Videotape

Of all the ways to improve America's standing in the Islamic world, finding out that the CIA's top point man in Algiers has been moonlighting as a crazed sex fiend who drugs and rapes Muslim women is probably not one of them.

But, it is, unfortunately, the reality. Turns out that while Andrew Warren spent his days fighting terror as the CIA's station chief in Algiers, he spent his nights terrorizing women with date-rape cocktails and sexual assault crimes.

Allegedly. If you believe the two Algerian women in an affidavit signed by the State Department that goes into lurid detail describing secret agent man's extracurricular activities.

Or the subsequent search of Warren's Algiers home that uncovered typical stalker spy stuff like computer drives and data-storage devices, a handbook on the investigation of sexual assaults and large quantities of Xanax and Valium. Nothing suspicious there.

In addition to being a spy and rapist, Warren also dabbles in fiction, publishing a pulp thriller whose main character happens to be a U.S. diplomat battling terrorists in none other than Algiers.

In this version, hero "Nick Phillips," has an affair with a beautiful Algerian woman named Mariam who shuns Arab men ("because they're too controlling") but falls in love with Nick because he "respects her and treats her as an equal," and "never pressures her and understands her culture."

Really?? That's the best you can do? Ha ha, no wonder "People of the Veil" wasn't exactly flying off the shelves. Someone should really inform Andrew Warren that the truth is stranger than fiction.

Might give him some ideas for his second novel.