Gloria Steinem’s new book, “My Life on the Road,” recounts her life’s journeys and travels. Early reviews and profiles reveal incredible detail of Steinem’s barrier-breaking feminist role, liberalism, romances and style.

What is often missed, or mischaracterized, is the work she did as a CIA agent: Steinem was a spook.

Often missed in her body of work is Gloria Steinem’s time as an agent with the CIA in the 1950s and ’60s. Seth Wenig The Associated Press

CIA agents are tight-lipped, but Steinem spoke openly about her relationship to The Agency in the 1950s and ’60s after a magazine revealed her employment by a CIA front organization, the Independent Research Service.

While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience, The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Read more