A former CIA agent has revealed how she carried her newborn baby with her during undercover missions to stop al Qaeda from getting hold of a nuclear weapon.

Amaryllis Fox gave birth to her daughter Zoe while based in Shanghai, China where she was posing as an art dealer on assignment for the intelligence service.

The 38-year-old was so committed to her job that she put the child in a sling while meeting with arms dealers turned informants.

Fox took evasive routes to shake off a person who was trailing her, while her baby was strapped to her chest, she writes in her upcoming memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA.

The former spy took notes during secret meetings in cars while her newborn slept, then stuffed the notes into secret compartments in her jacket, which were already filled with diapers.

She even persuaded an al Qaeda leader to call off a bombing in Pakistan, which would have killed scores of civilians, by bonding over medication for his baby's asthma.

During her eight years with the CIA, Fox, who now lives in California and is an analyst for CNN and the BBC, tracked down Soviet-era nuclear bombs hidden in suitcases that were powerful enough to wipe out Manhattan.

Amaryllis Fox was an agent for the CIA for eight years, tracking down Soviet-era nuclear bombs hidden in suitcases and stopped al Qaeda from getting them

While stationed in Shanghai, Fox, who posed as an art dealer, gave birth to her daughter Zoe and brought her along to undercover missions. The 38-year-old was so committed to her job that she put the child in a sling while meeting with arms dealers turned informants to the CIA

But putting her country first had a high personal cost and Fox, has been married three times; once to her university sweetheart, once to another CIA agent and now to Bobby Kennedy III.

Fox's time in the CIA will reportedly be made into a series for Apple's streaming service with Brie Larson lined up for the leading role.

The book is out on October 15 but it has already sparked a storm because Fox submitted it to her publishers without CIA approval.

This has led some to question the truth of her claims and attracted criticism because she reveals secret spying techniques that CIA agents are taught during their training.

Fox details her time with the CIA in her new memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, which is being turned into a series by Apple

Among the most ingenious tricks is giving a Starbucks gift card to a source because the value can be checked online just by using the barcode number.

To request a meeting, the source buys something and the CIA agent can see the value has gone down.

Fox was born to an American father, an economist, and a British mother, an actress, and grew up shuttling back and forth between the US and the UK.

She had her first taste of espionage in her teens when she met Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar while she was still imprisoned by the military junta.

Fox describes sneaking a film of her out of the country in a makeshift tampon she inserted into herself and giving it to rebels in Thailand, who broadcast the audio over the border on the radio.

She writes that 'for the first time in my life I feel the high of not just observing the world but actually changing it'.

Fox adds: 'I want to stay in the moment forever'.

Fox studied at Oxford University and then did a Masters in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown University in Washington where she was recruited to the CIA by Dallas Jones, the agency's analyst in residence.

He was impressed by her dissertation in which she came up with an algorithm to analyze every terrorist attack going back 200 years.

Before Fox had graduated she was working at the CIA where her first job was to sift through cables from agents in the field.

Soon she was moved up to Clandestine Service, the arm of the CIA which carries out operations on the ground.

Fox had her first taste of espionage in her teens when she met Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar while she was still imprisoned by the military junta. Fox describes sneaking a film of her out of the country in a makeshift tampon she inserted into herself and giving it to rebels in Thailand who broadcast the audio over the border on the radio. Pictured: Fox 'banged up' during her time as a CIA agent

How ex-CIA spy may have broken the law after writing book about 'going undercover as an art dealer to infiltrate illicit nuclear arms trade' A former CIA case officer who married into the Kennedy family could be in hot water with the government because she may have published a book about her time with the spy agency before getting official permission. Amaryllis Fox, 38, is the author of Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, a book published by Random House. It is on sale beginning October 15. The book is described as a ‘riveting memoir [that] tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter.’ While the book is not available for sale to the public just yet, copies have been sent to media outlets. Since the CIA has not officially approved the book, it could mean that Fox is breaking federal law, according to journalist Yashar Ali. Last month, an excerpt from the book appeared in Vogue, but it is unclear if any information that appears in the story is classified. CIA employees are required to sign a lifetime nondisclosure agreement requiring them to seek approval from the agency’s Publication Review Board for any book or other project which may reveal classified information. While Fox is reported to have submitted the manuscript to the CIA board for approval, it is not believed to have been formally approved for publication, according to NBC News. Fox told NBC News that she has yet to obtain formal approval for the book, but added that the agency has so far recommended minor changes, which she has agreed to. If the CIA asks for more redactions, she will gladly oblige, she said. ‘They know where to find me,’ she said. ‘They have had a copy for over a year, and they have never identified a single sentence or section they wanted to redact.’ Advertisement

Fox was assigned to the Iraqi desk and one of her first jobs was to watch a beheading video 100 times to see if there are any clues to its location.

Fox's boyfriend at the time Anthony, a British national, jokingly calls her Indy after Indiana Jones and begs to join her in America.

She relents and he flies over from England but the CIA insists they have to get married if they want to live together.

Anthony is forced to do a lie detector test which leaves him terrified while Fox spends her free time planning the wedding, after a day of work where she watched videos of terrorists executing prisoners.

Fox admits that she is not faithful and feels more of a kinship with her fellow spies, whom she spends her weekends with instead of Anthony, sometimes having sex with them in random hotels.

Meanwhile Fox is assigned to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center that focuses on terrorists' pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, or CTC/WMD in agency speak.

They move from the CIA base in Langley, Virginia to a nondescript suburban office block with a Ruby Tuesday restaurant, which acts as their cover.

Fox's training is intense but she admits that she 'feeds' on the frantic pace as they run around Washington marking sites for their sources in chalk on walls.

They identify the license plates of the cars following them and carry out their first assignment, a 'bump', or targeting a subject in a public place and getting them to agree to a second meeting.

Fox's target, who is played by a veteran CIA agent, is a Kazakh civil servant who she sits next to at a restaurant.

She charms him by talking about her book on the history of the Rat Pack for which she has printed off a mock cover and wrapped it around another book.

Fox is sent to the training site known as The Farm, which is a Truman Show-like replica of an embassy in a fictional country called the Republic of Victoria.

There is a fake news channel like CNN with reports of the fictional universe and diplomats visiting from a foreign country including a North Korea style Democratic People's Republic of Victoria.

Their jobs is recruit assets played by CIA agents, deal with reports of imminent threats and are even groped by instructors to prepare them for sexual harassment in the field.

The agents in training learn orienteering on five day treks through the wilderness, how to flip a car over by tapping its rear wheel with their front tire and how to spot roadside bombs.

Fox says that Cold War-era techniques like the brush pass, where two agents walk past each other and pass off documents without breaking a stride, are still being taught.

When training agents screw up, their sources turn up with 'bullet holes' in their heads or they are sent photos of their children bound and gagged.

Fox's work is among the most dangerous in the CIA because rather than being an agent who returns to the secure compound or embassy each night, she is entirely on her own

Training lasts a year and then Fox is given her first assignment on Non-Official Cover, but before she leaves, she returns home to an empty apartment.

Anthony is gone and leaves a note saying he has left their cat in a shelter, and Fox admits she is enormously relieved.

Fox's work is among the most dangerous in the CIA because rather than being an agent who returns to the secure compound or embassy each night, she and agents like her are entirely on their own.

Fox has to set up her own fake identify and settles on being an art dealer because her family has a history in the field.

Creating the fake identity involves creating a fake website, fake business cards, years worth of fake emails, fake business registrations and fake contacts.

She is given a phone with secret software on it, or 'covcom', for secret communications, to send messages securely.

According to Fox, fake identity cards are issued by a special officer at the Department of Motor Vehicles but nobody else has a clue - although CIA agents still have to line up to collect them like everyone else.

She visits a laboratory that sounds straight from a James Bond film where they give her a woven cloth bag with secret compartments inside and a pair of glasses for disguise.

Fox writes: 'Reality gets more and more distant, obscured by the thicker veil of my new cover.

'I take the first trip under its protection and then my second...soon I slip in and out of it more easily, like a softening pair of shoes'.

At the age of 26, Fox is running two junior agents, a desk officer and an entire support team.

A senior officer tells her: 'Get out there. Recruit Assets. Stop Attacks. After a while someone's gonna call you out (blow your cover). But that's better than never doing anything at all'.

Fox's job is to map the networks of rogue states, terrorist groups and arms dealers buying and selling nuclear and chemical weapons.

Much of the book talks about her recruitment of a Hungarian arms dealer named Jakab, who sells nuclear precursors to terror groups.

At the age of 26, Fox is running two junior agents, a desk officer and an entire support team. Fox's job is to map the networks of rogue states, terrorist groups and arms dealers buying and selling nuclear and chemical weapons

She is introduced to Jakab via another CIA asset who is high up in Hezbollah, the Shia terror group, and she communicates with Jakab by writing messages in the draft folder of an email account for which they both have the password.

Doing so avoids sending an actual email and leaving a paper trail, Fox writes.

Fox is told to move to Shanghai to bolster her cover as an art dealer and she marries another CIA officer called Dan, even though she barely knows him and hopes it will work out.

They are put under constant surveillance by the Communist regime and have to stick to their cover story by attending language classes and making a name for themselves in the art world.

Their cleaner is a spy from the Chinese government and their CIA handlers tell them to have sex 'regularly not but not too regularly'.

Fox describes their life as a 'pantomime of normality' where they can only talk about work in coded language.

Jakab ultimately tells Fox about a plan to detonate a radiation bomb in Karachi, Pakistan, after a tense meeting where she turns him into an asset.

Their meeting took place at a hotel room in Bangkok, and Fox turned on the water taps so that anybody listening couldn't hear them. Flowing water is better than music to mask voices because it is different every time and can't easily be removed from an audio recording.

Fox talks about how Jakab's grandfather was killed by the oppressive Communist regime and that she knows he 'doesn't trust big government'.

After formally leaving the CIA, Fox began doing aid work and activism, now living in California with Kennedy, who she met in 2014 through mutual friends.

She tells him: 'You're my friend first, Jakab. You have a family, I have a family. We're in this together. Because otherwise it could be our kids who have the uniforms burned off their backs'.

The family Fox was referring to was her daughter, who is born while she is in Shanghai. Fox refuses to take her to war zones but does other covert missions.

She writes: 'Each time I weighed the danger of where I'm going, against the danger of leaving my infant daughter without me in a hostile country, where the housekeeper works for the security service.

'There's the ever present temptation to choose neither, to throw in the towel and head for the safety of retirement and home but with each new threat there are conjured faces of those children - just as innocent as mine - whose lives hang in the balance'.

Fox explains that because of her newborn daughter she 'feels the magnitude of what the enemy could take from us and how painful it would be to endure'.

The book's climactic scene is in Pakistan where Fox thwarts the terror attack that Jakab told her about.

Fox describes meeting in Karachi with armed extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban to stop their compatriots from setting off the bomb.

Upon entering the meeting, she is surprised to see the commander sitting on the floor with a newborn baby in his arms. On either side of him is a fighter, with an M4 assault rifle propped up in the corner.

The conversation is stiff until Fox points to the wheezing baby and says: 'Asthma?'

She pulls out some clove oil and sniffs it to prove it is not poison. She offers it to the commander who warily accepts and opens up to her.

They got married last summer at the Kennedy family compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts

The next day she is incredibly relieved to see the news from the station in Karachi, which remarked it was an 'uneventful afternoon'.

In 2009 when Fox is 29 she returns to Washington and realizes that she can't continue in the CIA and be a mother.

Her supervisor tries to persuade her to stay and says Zoe is 'young enough not to remember' that she will have a fake identity on the next assignment.

Fox says her daughter allows her to take off the mask of her fake identities, and to carry on the fight for peace but by showing the vulnerable side of herself.

After formally leaving the CIA, Fox began doing aid work and activism, now living in California with Kennedy, who she met in 2014 through mutual friends.

They got married last summer at the Kennedy family compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Fox has defended the book and said that the CIA knows everything she did, adding with dry humor that they 'know where to find me'.

She has said: 'My aim was really to capture the kind of ''Capital T'' Truth, the emotional truth of going through this transformation.

'And that is something you can do and still maintain accuracy by not only changing names and places but by having compelling characters and situations I met along the way without identifying them directly'.

Fox's new book, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA is out on October 15.