Raelynn J. Hillhouse is an American

national security National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...

and Intelligence community analyst, former

smuggler Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations. There are various ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

spy novel Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligenc ...

ist and health care executive.

Personal history

Hillhouse taught at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and was an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and general ...

of political science at the

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

. She is a founding member of the

International Thriller Writers International Thriller Writers (ITW), was founded October 9, 2004, at Bouchercon XXXV, the "World Mystery and Suspense Conference", in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Six months later, some 150 authors with more than one billion books sold worldwide h ...

. Hillhouse is also a health care executive who has developed behavioral health programs for children with autism. She was CEO and President of Hawaii Behavioral Health. She also founded Thrive Autism Solutions, one of the largest providers of autism behavioral health services in the Midwest. Hillhouse studied in Central and

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...

for over six years at various institutions including

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, Moscow Finance Institute,

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Eberhard is an old Germanic name meaning the strength or courage of a wild boar. People First name *Eberhard of Friuli (815–866), Duke and key figure in the Carolingian Empire *Eberhard of Béthune (died 1212), Flemish grammarian *Eberhard I, Du ...

(both in Germany), and Babes-Bolyai University (

Cluj ; hu, kincses város) , official_name=Cluj-Napoca , native_name= , image_skyline= , subdivision_type1 = Counties of Romania, County , subdivision_name1 = Cluj County , subdivision_type2 = Subdivisions of Romania, Status , subdivision_name2 ...

, Romania). She earned her undergraduate degree from

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

John McGuire (September 8, 2004).
The Spy who Loved it
" ''

St. Louis Post-Dispatch The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a major regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the ''Belleville News-Dem ...

', p. E1'' and her MA in Russian and East European Studies as well as her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in political science from the

. When living as a student in Europe, she claims to have engaged in the

black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the se ...

between East and West, running Cuban rum, smuggling jewels from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and laundering

East Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

currencies. She claims to have been recruited by the East German secret police, the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...

, and by the

Libyan Intelligence Service Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya ( ar, مخابرات الجماهيرية) (Intelligence of the Jamahiriya) was the national intelligence agency, intelligence service of History of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi. During the 2 ...

. Some sources assert that she was an American

intelligence officer An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile or analyze information (known as intelligence) which is of use to that organization. The word of ''officer'' is a working title, not a rank, used in the same way a ...

, but Hillhouse denies this. Hillhouse was born in the

Ozarks The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant port ...

and currently lives in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

Blog

Hillhouse writes a national security blog which has broken multiple national security stories. Her work has been extensively cited in global media, books and academic journals and law reviews. In 2007, the '' New York Times Week in Review'' republished excerpts from an exclusive interview from Hillhouse's blog with the head of the private military corporation

Blackwater USA Blackwater was an American private military company founded on December 26, 1996 by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince. It was renamed Xe Services in 2009 and known as Academi since 2011 after it was acquired by a group of private investors ...

. In June 2007, Hillhouse discovered the US national Intelligence Community budget

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

in a declassified

PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

presentation released by the Office of the

Director of National Intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior, cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Commu ...

. She broke international news stories on national security risks caused by the explosion in outsourcing governmental intelligence functions. Her controversial articles have twice elicited a response from the Office of the

—the only times the office of the nation's chief spy has ever publicly responded to the writings of a private citizen.

Death of Bin Laden Report

On August 7, 2011, Hillhouse published an account of

Osama bin Laden's death On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamism, Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was shot several times and killed at Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, his compound in the Cities of Pakistan, Pakistani ...

on her blog that suggested Pakistan's

Inter-Services Intelligence The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...

(ISI) had been sheltering bin Laden in return for Saudi cash and that he was betrayed by a Pakistani intelligence officer. Hillhouse's sources claimed that the narrative given by the White House of the courier revealing the location of bin Laden was a cover story, created to hide involvement of US allies in sheltering bin Laden. According to ''The Telegraph'', Hillhouse's account might explain why U.S. forces encountered no resistance on their way to and in

Abbottabad Abbottabad (; Urdu, Punjabi language(HINDKO dialect) آباد, translit=aibṭabād, ) is the capital city of Abbottabad District in the Hazara region of eastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is the 40th largest city in Pakistan and fourth ...

, and why some residents in Abbottabad were warned to stay in their houses the day before the raid. Her 2011 story received widespread international attention and was picked up by ''The Daily Telegraph'', ''The Daily Mail'', ''The National Post'', ''The Vancouver Sun'', ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', ''The New Zealand Herald'', and others, but had little coverage in the US.

Controversy over report of bin Laden's death

In May 2015,

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

-winning investigative journalist

Seymour Hersh Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received t ...

published a report in the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...

'' in which he claimed to break the story of bin Laden's death. His claims mirrored the ones which Hillhouse raised four years earlier. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' and other global media acknowledged that Hillhouse wrote about the events years before Hersh, although Hersh denied ever having seen her account.

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

independently reported that a Pakistani intelligence officer was the source of the original bin Laden location report, and not the courier. NBC News and

Agence France-Presse Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency. AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C ...

both reported that their sources indicated that a walk-in was a highly valuable asset in the discovery of bin Laden. Pakistan-based journalist

Amir Mir Amir Mir is a veteran Pakistani journalist who is currently CEO of GNN, a digital media project. Earlier until 2019, he was working as chief operational officer of the news channel GNN as well as a founding member since the channel's inceptio ...

in the ''

News International News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a List of newspapers in the United Kingdom, British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media Conglomerate (c ...

'' reported the walk-in's identity to be Usman Khalid, though that allegation was denied by Khalid's family.

Publications

Articles

She has also published stories on national security in the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' and ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

''. In the controversial Washington Post article, Hillhouse wrote that "the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show." In the Nation article, Hillhouse revealed that private companies are heavily involved in the nation’s most important and most sensitive national security document — the President’s Daily Brief. Hillhouse was also a regular contributor to

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

's national security blog, "The Danger Room". *"Don't Blame Blackwater", ''The Christian Science Monitor'', November 2, 2007. *“The Government Can Find You.” ''The New York Times'', August 7, 2007. *“Outsourcing Intelligence”, ''The Nation'', July 31, 2007. *“Who Runs the CIA?” ''Washington Post'', July 8, 2007. *“A Security Contractor Defends His Team, Which, He Says, Is Not a Private Army”, ''The New York Times'', April 29, 2007. *"Communist Politics and Sexual Dissidents. Social Movements in Eastern Europe." ''Sexual Minorities and Society: The Changing Attitudes toward Sexuality in 20th Century Europe''. Tallinn: Estonian Academy of Sciences, 1991. *"Out of the Closet behind the Wall: Sexual Politics and Social Change in the GDR." ''Slavic Review'', 49:4 (Winter 1990), pp. 585-96.

Books

Hillhouse's debut novel, ''Rift Zone'' (2004), is a spy thriller about a female smuggler who becomes entangled in an East German plot to stop the fall of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

. The

American Booksellers Association The American Booksellers Association (ABA) is a non-profit trade association founded in 1900 that promotes independent bookstores in the United States. ABA's core members are key participants in their communities' local economy and culture, and t ...

Book Sense program selected it as one of the best books of 2004 and

Library Journal ''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...

named it one of the year's most promising debuts. Her second novel, ''Outsourced'' (2007) is a political thriller about the

outsourcing Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...

of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

and

Pentagon In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simpl ...

and the turf wars between the two agencies. Publishers Weekly named the audio version one of the best books of the year. *''Outsourced.'' New York: Forge Books, 2007. **(Audio). Blackstone Audiobooks, 2007. **(Italian). Mondadori, 2008. **(Dutch). Uitgeverij Luitingh, 2008. *“Diplomatic Constraints.” ''Thriller''. Ed. by James Patterson. New York: Mira Books, 2006. *“I knew Julius No. Julius No was a friend of mine. Osama, you are no Dr. No.—An open letter to bin Laden from James Bond’s Greatest Villains.” ''James Bond in the 21st Century: Why We Still Need 007.'' Dallas: BenBella Books, 2006. *“Secret Agent Chick.” ''This is Chick-Lit.'' Ed. by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2006. *''Rift Zone''. Forge Books: New York, 2004. **(Mass market paperback) Forge Books: New York, 2005. **(Russian translation, Шпионка по случаю), St. Petersburg: Alpharet, 2006. *"East Germany--Lothar DeMaizière," ''Leaders of Nations''. Lansdale enn. Current Leaders Publishing Co., 1990. *"A Reevaluation of Soviet Policy in Central Europe: The Soviet Union and the Occupation of Austria." ''Eastern European Politics and Societies'', 3:1 (1989), 83-104.