SPECIAL OPS: LIONESS

The Show, Its Real-World Roots, and the Secret World of Female Military & Intelligence Operatives

Lioness (originally titled Special Ops: Lioness) is an American spy thriller created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on July 23, 2023, on Paramount+. It follows a CIA senior case officer who leads a team of female operatives — known as 'Lionesses' — to go undercover in the War on Terror. The show markets itself as being inspired by real events, but that framing requires significant unpacking.

The series is described by Wikipedia as 'very loosely based on the premise of Team Lioness, where in Iraq in 2003, the decision was made to send female soldiers out with patrols, aiming to stop insurgents from using women to smuggle material because male U.S. soldiers found it difficult to search Muslim women. These teams found themselves in direct combat situations, in violation of the Combat Exclusion Policy.'

The key word is loosely. The show dramatically expands the scope of the real program — taking what was a battlefield search-and-interaction unit and transforming it into a CIA-run covert infiltration program on par with classic espionage fiction. While the real-world Lioness missions involved searching women, running medical clinics, and distributing humanitarian aid, the women of Special Ops: Lioness became covert spies, infiltrators, and potentially assassins attached to the CIA.

"It is not a depiction of reality. It does not reflect what these women did." — Daria Sommers, director of the 2008 Lioness documentary

Real members of the original team have been vocal about their frustration. Daria Sommers, creator of the 2008 Lioness documentary, stated she was on one hand happy to see Hollywood casting women as action heroes, but drew a firm line: the show is not a reflection of what these women actually did. Real Team Lioness member Ranie Ruthig was even blunter: 'Honestly, it ticks me off a little bit. They could have come up with another name for it. Why did they use Lioness as their launch? Why did they try to tie it to the Marines? They could have named it anything else and still had the same great story.'

II. THE REAL PROGRAM: TEAM LIONESS AND THE MARINE CORPS

Origins

Team Lioness were female United States Marines and soldiers attached to combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan, deployed to conduct searches of local women during house raids and checkpoint operations — tasks that male soldiers could not perform due to cultural restrictions in conservative Islamic societies.

The program didn't emerge from the Pentagon. It was born out of raw necessity on the ground in Ramadi, Iraq. In July 2003, U.S. Army Colonel David Brinkley, Commander of the 1st Engineer Battalion, made the decision to send some of his female soldiers out with infantry units alongside Lt. Colonel Richard Cabrey's combat troops. Because of cultural strictures in the Middle East, male soldiers had difficulty interacting with women and conducting searches — a loophole that terrorists were actively exploiting, using women to transport and smuggle dangerous materials related to the insurgency.

After realizing the operational need, Brinkley had his female soldiers volunteer in teams of two under the moniker of Team Lioness. Their first mission was in September 2003 — making 2023 the 20th anniversary of the program's operational debut.

The Problem It Was Designed to Solve

Since Muslim tradition prevents a man from touching any woman not related to him, insurgents selected women to carry contraband and explosives. An increasing number of Muslim women were volunteering to become suicide bombers. Iraqi males were even disguising themselves as women to pass through checkpoints. This created a genuine operational gap that male soldiers simply could not fill.

The Marine Corps was the first branch to formally address this gap by creating Task Force Lioness — teams of female Marines that implemented culturally sensitive search methods to deter the enemy from using women to conduct terrorist attacks. The Army's 1st Engineer Battalion was its Army equivalent, with the two programs running in parallel before eventually being formalized into broader policy.

Purpose of the Program

The Lioness mission was threefold. First, physical searches: female Marines were attached to combat units to search Iraqi women and children who may be trying to smuggle money or weapons through security checkpoints in Iraq. This alone proved enormously valuable — Lioness teams were searching nearly 100 women per day at their peak, uncovering weapons, photographs of U.S. military positions, men disguised as women, large sums of currency, and propaganda materials.

Second, intelligence collection: Lioness members engaged with Iraqi and Afghan women to gather critical intelligence, build rapport, and disseminate information — roles that enhanced the military's counterinsurgency efforts by leveraging gendered access to civilian populations that male soldiers simply couldn't reach.

Third, training local forces: the Lionesses trained Iraqi women to conduct searches at U.S.-run checkpoints, worked with female Iraqi police officers to take over checkpoint operations, and helped establish programs like the Sisters of Fallujah — building an indigenous female security capacity that further reduced the visible U.S. footprint and associated hostility.

Training the Lionesses Received

This is where the show diverges most sharply from reality. The show depicts SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape) training, psychological conditioning, and intensive covert operations preparation. The real training was far more practical and compressed — and notably, some women received as little as five days notice before beginning it.

The actual Lioness training curriculum included: basic Marine Corps martial arts; weapons qualification and familiarization with multiple weapon systems; IED identification and recognition; search techniques; language skills (basic Arabic and local phrases); Muslim cultural awareness and customs; rules of engagement; and situational awareness training specific to the Iraqi and Afghan environments.

Training typically lasted five to ten days and took place at bases like Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. After training, Lioness teams of four to five women were attached to a ground combat unit for 30-day rotations. They generally worked in pairs — one woman conducting the search, the other acting as a 'guardian angel' providing close security. One Marine who went through the program described its ethos simply: 'The training put you in the combat mindset that every Marine is a rifleman, regardless of gender. It was realistic training to help familiarize you with your gear and your weapon.'

Combat Exposure and the Policy Contradiction

One of the most important and underreported aspects of Team Lioness is that these women ended up in direct, sustained combat — without being formally trained for it and without official DoD authorization. The Combat Exclusion Policy of 1994 prohibited women from being assigned to ground combat units below the brigade level. Commanders got around this by 'attaching' women rather than 'assigning' them — a legal fiction that put them in firefights without the benefits or recognition that came with official combat designation.

The consequences were visceral. On April 6, 2004, a Marine combat unit moving through Ramadi's streets was ambushed, sparking a series of firefights that spread across the city and ignited a week of bloody urban combat. Specialist Shannon Morgan and Sergeant Ranie Ruthig, both squad automatic weapon gunners, survived the battle. What subsequent press reports failed to mention was that both Morgan and Ruthig were women. There was no front page story about the first women to fight in sustained urban combat in Iraq. They were simply invisible in the historical record.

This policy contradiction had direct, material consequences for these veterans. Because they were 'attached' rather than 'assigned,' many returning Lionesses were denied combat-related veterans' benefits they had clearly earned. It took years of advocacy and specific legislation — including the Women Veterans Healthcare Improvement Act and the COMBAT PTSD Act — to begin addressing these inequities.

"Twenty years ago, seeing a female Marine at a checkpoint with a bunch of 03s [infantrymen] would have been really uncommon. Now, it's almost become a norm." — Staff Sgt. James Baker, Marine Corps

Evolution: From Lioness to Female Engagement Teams

The Lioness Program's operational lessons directly shaped the development of Female Engagement Teams (FETs) and Cultural Support Teams (CSTs), which became the more sophisticated, better-trained successors to the ad hoc Lioness concept. After debriefing women who had served in the Lioness program, Lt. Col. Julie Nethercot (Commanding Officer of 9th Communications Battalion) recognized that these teams needed significantly more advanced preparation. She instituted a four-month training schedule culminating in a 30-day combined arms exercise designed to simulate exactly what they would encounter in the field.

The legacy extends internationally. The U.S. military's Lioness, CST, and FET programs inspired similar units within the UK, Australia, Canada, and Sweden — a testament to the universal operational insight that female operatives provide irreplaceable value in counterinsurgency and intelligence operations where cultural barriers restrict male access.

III. DID THE CIA OR JSOC RUN A COMPARABLE PROGRAM?

This is where things get genuinely murky — and where the show takes its biggest creative leap. The short answer is: there is no publicly confirmed, named CIA or JSOC program called 'Lioness' or an equivalent. But the architecture for what the show depicts does have real-world analogs, some more documented than others.

The CIA's Female Workforce Post-9/11

The CIA did not have a formal all-female covert infiltration unit in the way the show depicts, but it did experience a dramatic shift in female participation in counterterrorism operations after 9/11. The attacks marked a major shift for a spy agency long dominated by older white men who had specialized in Cold War Russia. As the focus shifted to radical Islam, the CIA scrambled to ramp up counterterrorism operations, resulting in an infusion of new recruits — many of them women.

The CIA increasingly recognized that female operatives brought distinct tactical advantages. Former CIA operative Amaryllis Fox articulated what became an institutional realization: 'There was a gradual awakening to the idea that some of the traits we tend to associate with feminine characteristics — intuition, emotional intelligence, and multitasking — these are things that make really excellent operations officers.'

This wasn't abstract theory. Women played a documented, critical role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In studying the Abbottabad compound, female analysts on the targeting team accurately deduced the number of adults and children living in the compound by interpreting the laundry hanging to dry on surveillance footage. One senior CIA official went so far as to suggest that if 9/11 and the hunt for bin Laden had occurred earlier, before women's expertise had become central to CIA counterterrorism targeting, the operation might not have succeeded.

By the time CIA Director Gina Haspel took office, she was able to note that the heads of operations, analysis, and science and technology were all women — a remarkable shift from the male-dominated agency of the Cold War era.

The JSOC-CIA Omega Program

One of the most important real-world analogs to the show's premise is the Omega Program — a joint CIA-JSOC capability that blurs the lines the show dramatizes. Omega is described as a joint CIA-JSOC unit of 'Hunter/Killer Teams' that combines CIA targeting intelligence with JSOC special operations muscle. The program uses a legal mechanism known as 'sheep dipping' — the nominal employment of active-duty JSOC special operations fighters by the CIA as paramilitary contractors, allowing them to operate under CIA Title 50 covert authority rather than standard military Title 10 authority.

This legal gray zone is precisely the operational architecture that the show depicts: a CIA-run program that draws on military special operations personnel, operating with covert authority in foreign countries and beyond the normal rules governing military deployments. The Omega Program created hunter-killer teams in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond that were answerable to CIA leadership, not the Pentagon chain of command — exactly the institutional structure portrayed in Lioness.

IV. BLACK SQUADRON

What Black Squadron Is

Within DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6), Black Squadron is the unit's dedicated reconnaissance and advance force operations element. Originally the unit's sniper team, it was fundamentally restructured after 9/11 to conduct clandestine intelligence gathering and operational preparation ahead of DEVGRU strike missions. Black Squadron operators are sniper and reconnaissance specialists who carry out advance force operations (AFO) — clandestine intelligence gathering that sets the conditions for larger DEVGRU raids. Small Black Squadron teams operate out of U.S. embassies in trouble spots around the world, their weapons and gear smuggled in through diplomatic pouches.

The New York Times described its post-9/11 mission as conducting 'advance force operations' — a broad term covering intelligence gathering, surveillance, and setting the stage for raids before the assault squadrons go in. The Seattle Times described the unit's role vividly: they have run spying stations disguised as commercial boats, posed as employees of front companies, infiltrated villages in Afghanistan disguised as tribespersons while planting surveillance devices in the homes of targets, and operated undercover at embassies as male-female pairs, tracking individuals the United States wants to kill or capture. As of 2015, Black Squadron had grown to more than 100 members.

The Female Operators Within Black Squadron

Black Squadron within DEVGRU does include female operators — but it is not an all-female unit, and its women are not SEALs in the traditional sense.

As the Seattle Times first reported in depth in 2015: 'Black Squadron has something the rest of SEAL Team 6 does not: female operatives. Women in the Navy are admitted to Black Squadron and sent overseas to gather intelligence, usually working in embassies with male counterparts. One former SEAL Team 6 officer said male and female members of Black Squadron would often work together in pairs. It is called profile softening — making the couple appear less suspicious to hostile intelligence services or militant groups.'

The tactical rationale is straightforward: a lone male operative in a conservative, male-dominated society attracts attention. A couple does not. A man and a woman appearing as a married couple, businesspeople, or tourists can access environments and conduct surveillance operations that a team of male operators simply cannot — without raising flags that would compromise the mission or endanger the operators.

It is important to be precise about their status: none of the women in Black Squadron are SEALs in the traditional combat operator sense. Naval special warfare training was not opened to women until 2016, and the first female sailor graduated from the naval special warfare pipeline in 2021 — as a special warfare combatant-craft crewman (boat operator), not as an assault operator. The women in Black Squadron are intelligence professionals — drawn from Naval Intelligence, the NSA, the CIA pipeline, and related communities — who are integrated into the JSOC structure and trained to conduct advance force and intelligence operations alongside SEAL operators.

Connection to the Show

The show's fictional Lioness Program is structurally much more similar to Black Squadron than it is to the original Marine Corps Team Lioness. The core concept — female operatives working under JSOC/CIA oversight in advance force, intelligence-gathering, and covert infiltration roles, deliberately leveraging their gender as a tactical asset — directly mirrors the documented role of Black Squadron's female elements. Taylor Sheridan appears to have borrowed the name from the Marine Corps program but built his dramatic premise around the actual capabilities of Black Squadron's integrated female operators, overlaid with CIA operational authority and dramatized with a deep-cover infiltration mission that goes well beyond what is publicly known about either program.

V. THE INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT ACTIVITY (ISA): THE DEEPEST LAYER

What the ISA Is

Of all the real-world programs that connect to the show's premise, the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) — known within JSOC as Task Force Orange, and among the special operations community as 'The Activity' — is arguably the most relevant and the least publicly understood. It is also, notably, the program that most closely mirrors what the show actually depicts in its operational structure.

The ISA is a U.S. Army Special Operations unit that serves as the dedicated field intelligence gathering component of JSOC. Its mission is to collect actionable HUMINT (human intelligence) and SIGINT (signals intelligence) in preparation for missions by other JSOC units — primarily Delta Force and DEVGRU. The ISA does the intelligence groundwork that makes Tier-1 direct action possible. If Delta Force or SEAL Team 6 is the weapon, the ISA is the targeting system.

Its secrecy is extraordinary even by special operations standards. The unit changes its name approximately every two years specifically to avoid exposure — it has operated as the Field Operations Group (FOG), Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), Centra Spike, Torn Victor, Cemetery Wind, Gray Fox, and other classified designations. All of its records are classified under Special Access Programs. Its members never wear uniforms on operations. They carry false identities, operate under commercial covers, and their very existence on the Army's rolls is hidden behind a 'Special Roster' that lists members of top-secret units.

The ISA has been involved in some of the most significant operations in U.S. military history: intelligence support for the hunt for Pablo Escobar in Colombia (as Centra Spike), locating kidnapped General James Dozier from the Italian Red Brigades in 1982, preparation for the capture of Saddam Hussein (as Gray Fox), and intelligence collection preceding the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Female Operators Within the ISA

The ISA's operational model makes female operators not just useful but in some contexts essential. Unlike other JSOC units where women serve in support or enabling roles, the ISA has built female operators into the core of its HUMINT collection doctrine.

According to open-source research on the unit's structure: the ISA has a direct action arm comprised of men and women recruited from U.S. Army Delta Force, Army Special Forces, the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Military Intelligence, and Army Civil Affairs. The unit's female operators mainly come from Military Intelligence and Civil Affairs backgrounds. As the unit's operators, these women conduct covert special operations all around the world, deploying alongside Tier-1 units.

The ISA's HUMINT function has built the use of female operators directly into its tactical doctrine. HUMINT operatives working deep undercover will sometimes work in male-female teams, establishing cover as a married couple to live in and conduct intelligence collection missions within a target country. This is especially critical in countries where men and women socializing outside the family is culturally forbidden — which encompasses a significant portion of the environments where the ISA operates.

One ISA operator who witnessed a mixed-gender team conduct a covert entry into an al-Qaeda safehouse described the experience: 'Talk about close target recce. That's pretty frickin' ballsy. Two people with a lockpick kit and a camera. If they would have been caught, they were done.'

Some ISA operatives — including female operators without prior special operations backgrounds — go through CIA training at The Farm in Virginia. This creates an unusual category of military operator trained more like a CIA Non-Official Cover (NOC) officer than a traditional special operations soldier. They are, in operational practice, indistinguishable from CIA case officers when deployed. This is the ISA's most tightly held capability, and it is the real-world foundation for the fictional Lioness program's structure.

Training Pipeline

The ISA's selection and training is geared toward intelligence specialization, with direct action as a secondary but real capability. According to journalist Sean Naylor's reporting in Not a Good Day to Die, most ISA operatives come from Army Special Forces due to their self-reliance and specialized skill sets, though candidates are drawn from other branches as well. All candidates must complete a rigorous assessment and selection course, extensive background investigation, and psychological testing.

The operations training course teaches infiltration techniques, advanced air operations, offensive and off-road driving, personal defensive measures, and communications. ISA operators also train alongside CIA specialists in espionage tradecraft — source development, surveillance detection, disguise, clandestine communications, and agent handling. Technical training covers SIGINT, including transmission interception and signals interpretation. Some candidates also attend civilian aircraft schools to earn FAA certifications, enabling them to operate and maintain cover aviation assets.

Foreign language proficiency is not formally required for selection, but in practice, for any operator deploying in a non-permissive environment alongside other special mission units, knowing multiple languages at the 2/2 Defense Language Proficiency Test level or higher is functionally indispensable. For female operators working in Arabic, Pashto, Dari, or other critical languages, linguistic fluency becomes a decisive force multiplier.

Shannon Kent: The ISA's Most Publicly Known Female Operator

The clearest, most documented window into what a real female ISA operator looks like — her training, her missions, and the ultimate price she paid — is the life of Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent. Her story is extraordinary, and it deserves detailed treatment.

Shannon Mary Kent (born Shannon Smith, May 11, 1983) was a United States Navy cryptologic technician and formal member of JSOC's Intelligence Support Activity. She enlisted in the Navy in December 2003, motivated by the 9/11 attacks — her father was a senior New York State Police officer and her uncle was a Staten Island firefighter, both first responders that day.

Kent's path into the world of special operations intelligence was built entirely on merit. She was fluent in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Arabic — graduating from the Defense Language Institute with an Associate's degree in Arabic — and rose quickly through the cryptology ranks at Fort Meade, where she was considered a 'rock star' among the linguists. In 2007, she volunteered for an Individual Augmentee assignment and deployed to Iraq on an intelligence team supporting Navy SEALs.

After that deployment, she was asked to try out for a permanent position on a SEAL support team. In 2008 — years before the Pentagon officially opened combat roles to women — she was on a Virginia beach pounding through selection in full body armor, earning her place alongside operators who initially were skeptical of a female presence on their teams. One teammate recalled: 'Everybody there were these gruff-looking, thousand-yard-stare dudes — Navy SOF guys. Then you got this little petite, red hair, blue eyes, just in the middle of all this, not hesitating to get in there and get dirty.'

She met her future husband, Joe Kent, at the ISA selection course — both a Navy cryptologist and a decorated Green Beret simultaneously trying out for the same Tier-1 JSOC intelligence unit. This detail alone speaks volumes about the ISA's integration across branches and gender.

Shannon's operational record was remarkable. She conducted nine deployments total, five of them to combat zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Her work as a cryptologic technician and human intelligence collector directly contributed to the capture of hundreds of enemy insurgents. Her citation for the Joint Service Commendation Medal states she 'contributed directly to the capture of hundreds of enemy insurgents and severely degraded enemy combat capability.' She worked with tribal leaders, merchants, and local government officials to help identify and target ISIS leadership — exactly the kind of relationship-based HUMINT collection that the ISA exists to provide.

"Shannon was killed in action on her 5th combat deployment with Special Operations serving at the tip of the spear hunting the enemy. This makes her one of the most elite females to make the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation." — Joe Kent, retired Green Beret

On January 16, 2019, Shannon Kent was killed in the 2019 Manbij bombing in northern Syria. She was part of a small special operations group that stopped at a local restaurant frequented by U.S. personnel — the Palace of the Princes in Manbij — when an ISIS suicide bomber detonated his vest. Kent, Army CWO Jonathan Farmer, former Navy SEAL-turned-DIA officer Scott Wirtz, and interpreter Ghadir Taher were all killed. Nineteen people died in total.

Shannon Kent was the first female combat death in Syria since U.S. operations began against ISIS, and the first female U.S. service member killed by enemy fire in more than three years. She was 35 years old and left behind two young sons, Colt and Josh. She was posthumously promoted to Senior Chief Petty Officer and awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and Combat Action Ribbon.

Her legacy directly influenced policy. Senator Chuck Schumer introduced legislation to name a Navy destroyer after her, stating on the Senate floor that her 'courageous efforts and groundbreaking achievements have inspired numerous programs for integrating women into Special Operations Forces.' Her story was documented in the book Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War by Joe Kent and Marty Skovlund Jr.

The ISA vs. the Show's Fictional Lioness Program

The ISA represents the most realistic real-world analog to what Taylor Sheridan's show actually depicts — far more so than the Marine Corps Team Lioness that lends its name. The show's CIA-run Lioness Program, which recruits female operators to conduct deep cover infiltration missions in support of targeted counterterrorism operations, structurally mirrors the ISA's HUMINT function: female operators with intelligence backgrounds, working under covert authority, conducting deep undercover operations in non-permissive environments to enable lethal direct action by Tier-1 units.

The critical difference is in the show's dramatization of the recruitment model. The show depicts a Marine being recruited from outside the intelligence community and thrown into a deep cover CIA identity almost immediately. The real ISA does the opposite — it recruits people already elite in their intelligence specialty (cryptologists, Special Forces intelligence sergeants, Army Civil Affairs officers, CIA-trained officers) and layers on JSOC-specific operational training. Shannon Kent's arc — years of SIGINT expertise, language mastery, SEAL support rotations, and then ISA selection — is the actual model.

But the core operational insight that drives both the show and the real ISA is the same: in a world where the most dangerous targets operate in environments where gender provides cover, where cultural norms restrict male access, and where a couple draws less scrutiny than a lone male operative, female intelligence operators are not a diversity accommodation. They are a strategic necessity.

VI. WOMEN IN SPECIAL OPERATIONS: THE BROADER HISTORICAL CONTEXT

It is worth stepping back to appreciate the historical depth of women in these roles — because the Lioness program, the ISA, and Black Squadron did not emerge from nothing. They represent the latest chapter in a long tradition that the U.S. military has repeatedly forgotten and rediscovered.

Women served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) — the predecessor to both the CIA and DoD Special Operations — during World War II. Of the approximately 4,500 women who served in the OSS, about 900 were posted overseas, and several were recognized for extraordinary capabilities operating behind enemy lines in conventional warfare. Virginia Hall, arguably the most effective OSS operative in occupied France, operated for years under Nazi occupation and was so effective that the Gestapo called her 'the most dangerous of all Allied spies.'

Today, women serve across the special operations enterprise in roles far beyond support: as commanders, senior enlisted advisors, pilots, analysts, civil affairs officers, psychological operations specialists, special reconnaissance operators, and forward surgical team members. The modern era of female integration into special operations — from the Lioness teams of 2003 to Shannon Kent's death in Syria in 2019 — represents not a revolution but a long-delayed formal recognition of a capability that has always existed.

VII. SUMMARY: WHAT IS REAL, WHAT IS FICTION, AND WHAT CONNECTS THEM

Drawing the clearest possible line between the show and reality requires separating four distinct layers.

What Is Definitively Real: The Marine Corps Lioness Program

The Marine Corps and Army did create Team Lioness in 2003 in response to a genuine tactical problem — the inability of male soldiers to search Muslim women in Iraq. These teams operated in Iraq and later Afghanistan, conducted thousands of searches, gathered significant intelligence, and repeatedly found themselves in direct combat despite official policy forbidding it. Their training was practical and compressed — weapons qualification, IED recognition, language basics, search techniques, cultural instruction, and rules of engagement. The program evolved into the more formalized Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams.

What Is Real but Classified: Black Squadron, the ISA, and CIA Female Operations

DEVGRU's Black Squadron includes female operators who conduct advance force operations, intelligence gathering, and covert presence missions worldwide, frequently using mixed-gender pairs for 'profile softening.' This is the closest structural analog to what the show depicts in terms of JSOC-affiliated female covert operators. The ISA, even more relevantly, employs female operators as HUMINT collectors who can be trained through the CIA pipeline to function as NOC-style deep cover intelligence officers. Shannon Kent's career arc — from SEAL support cryptologist to full ISA operator across nine combat deployments, killed hunting ISIS in Syria — is the most documented real example of what this looks like. The CIA simultaneously expanded its female counterterrorism workforce dramatically post-9/11, with women playing key targeting and operational roles throughout the War on Terror.

What the Show Accurately Captures

The show correctly captures several real operational realities: that female operatives provide unique and irreplaceable access in culturally restrictive environments; that the CIA and JSOC operate in an institutional gray zone where Title 10 military authority and Title 50 covert authority deliberately blur (via programs like Omega); that female intelligence operators are recruited from military special operations communities and trained to function as deep cover intelligence assets; and that these women operate in extremely high-risk environments where capture means torture or death.

What the Show Invented

There is no confirmed CIA program called the Lioness Engagement Team that recruits female Marines as deep-cover infiltrators to seduce and betray the social circles of terrorist financiers. The show's specific operational scenario — a Marine with no prior intelligence background being rapidly trained and inserted into a high-society deep cover identity — is a dramatic invention. The SERE-heavy training pipeline depicted, and the specific honeypot-style mission structure, are Hollywood constructs. The real programs work the opposite way: they take operators already elite in intelligence tradecraft and add layers of covert capability, not the reverse.

What Taylor Sheridan got right was the insight, even if he dramatized it beyond recognition: in the modern counterterrorism fight, female intelligence operators are not a footnote. They are, in many of the most critical operating environments in the world, the only option.

SOURCES

The Show

1. Wikipedia — Lioness (American TV series): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lioness_(American_TV_series)

2. Paramount+ — Lioness official page: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/lioness/

3. VeteranLife.com — 'The Uproar of Team Lioness: How Taylor Sheridan's Show Got It Wrong': https://veteranlife.com/military-history/the-uproar-of-team-lioness

4. Showmax — 'The real-life inspiration behind Special Ops: Lioness': https://stories.showmax.com/za/special-ops-lioness-is-based-on-the-real-life-female-cia-operatives

5. Military.com — 'Yellowstone Creator Taylor Sheridan's Next Project Takes on the Military's Lioness Program': https://www.military.com/off-duty/television/2023/05/05/yellowstone-creator-taylor-sheridans-next-project-takes-militarys-lioness-program.html

The Real Marine Corps / Army Lioness Program

6. Wikipedia — Team Lioness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Lioness

7. PBS Independent Lens — Lioness documentary (2008): https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/lioness/

8. DTIC — Major Ginger E. Beals, USMC thesis on Lioness and FET programs (ADA604399): https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA604399.pdf

9. DVIDS — 'Marine Lionesses Train for Iraq Border Security': https://www.dvidshub.net/news/7501/marine-lionesses-train-iraq-border-security

10. Marine Corps News — 'Lioness Program Pride of the Corps': https://marine-corps-news.com/2009/03/lioness_program_pride_of_the_c/

11. MilitaryNews.com — 'Marine Corps Lioness Program: In and Out of Harm's Way': https://www.militarynews.com

12. WTRF News — 'Team Lioness: Breaking the Barriers for Women in Combat': https://www.wtrf.com/news/team-lioness-breaking-the-barriers-for-women-in-combat/

13. Oregon.gov — 'Lioness: Oregon Veteran Jessie Miller, on the Frontlines of the Iraq War': https://www.myoregon.gov/2019/11/14/lioness-oregon-veteran-jessie-miller-on-the-frontlines-of-the-iraq-war/

14. ACLU — 'Lioness: The Reality of Women's Combat Experiences': https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/lioness-reality-womens-combat-experiences

15. NPR — 'Lioness: Female Soldiers' First Forays Into Combat': https://www.npr.org/transcripts/91698225

16. USGLC — 'Female Engagement Teams: More than Soldiers': https://www.usglc.org/blog/female-engagement-teams-more-than-soldiers/

The CIA, JSOC, and Female Intelligence Operations

17. NPR — 'The War on Terrorism, Through the Eyes of 3 Women at the CIA': https://www.npr.org/2019/10/16/768225075/the-war-on-terror-through-the-eyes-of-3-women-at-the-cia

18. Lawfare — 'Female Intelligence' (review of The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA): https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/female-intelligence

19. Wikipedia — Special Activities Center: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Activities_Center

20. Grey Dynamics — 'Omega Teams: CIA-JSOC Hunter/Killer Teams': https://greydynamics.com/omega-teams-cia-jsoc-hunter-killer-teams/

21. CNAS — 'Dispelling the Myth of Women in Special Operations': https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/dispelling-the-myth-of-women-in-special-operations

DEVGRU / Black Squadron

22. Wikipedia — SEAL Team Six: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Team_Six

23. Seattle Times — 'Navy SEAL Team 6: Bigger, Bolder, Just as Secretive' (June 2015): https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/navy-seal-team-6-bigger-bolder-just-as-secretive/

24. American Special Ops — DEVGRU/Black Squadron profile: https://www.americanspecialops.com/devgru/

25. Grunge.com — 'Inside One of the World's Most Elite Kill Teams': https://www.grunge.com/1938121/worlds-toughest-soldiers-seal-team-six/

26. Britannica — SEAL Team Six: https://www.britannica.com/topic/SEAL-Team-6

The Intelligence Support Activity (ISA)

27. Wikipedia — Intelligence Support Activity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Support_Activity

28. Grey Dynamics — 'ISA: Soldier Spies of the Intelligence Support Activity': https://greydynamics.com/isa-soldier-spies-of-the-intelligence-support-activity/

29. Military.com — 'Spec Ops Profile: Intelligence Support Activity': https://www.military.com/special-operations/intelligence-support-activity.html

30. American Special Ops — ISA profile: https://www.americanspecialops.com/intelligence-support-activity/

31. Sandboxx — 'The Intelligence Support Activity': https://www.sandboxx.us/news/the-intelligence-support-activity-one-of-americas-most-secretive-special-operations-units/

32. National Interest — 'ISA: Inside the Army's Most Secretive Unit Ever': https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/isa-inside-armys-most-secretive-unit-ever-212812

Shannon M. Kent

33. Wikipedia — Shannon M. Kent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_M._Kent

34. Washington Post — 'Navy cryptologist Shannon Kent, who died in an ISIS suicide attack in Syria, was torn between family and duty': https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/03/22/feature/navy-cryptologist-shannon-kent-who-died-in-an-isis-suicide-attack-in-syria-was-torn-between-family-and-duty/

35. ABC News — 'Warrior, mother, cancer survivor: Navy cryptologist killed in Syria laid to rest at Arlington': https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/warrior-mother-cancer-survivor-navy-cryptologist-killed-syria/story?id=61298431

36. Foundation for Women Warriors — Shannon M. Kent profile: https://foundationforwomenwarriors.org/shannon-m-kent/

37. Military Times — 'Navy cryptologists urge service to name destroyer after Shannon Kent': https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/01/23/navy-cryptologists-urge-service-to-name-destroyer-after-shannon-kent/

38. VA News — 'Veteran of the Day: Shannon Kent': https://news.va.gov/57966/veteranoftheday-navy-veteran-shannon-kent/

39. The Grateful Nation Project — Hero 240, Shannon Kent: https://www.herocards.us/hero240

40. Skovlund, Marty Jr. & Kent, Joe — Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War (book)