# Amaryllis Fox Kennedy

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy (born Amaryllis Damerell Thornber; September 22, 1980) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and writer, currently serving as the Associate Director for Intelligence and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and as a member of Donald Trump's Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), both since 2025. She served in the CIA from 2002 to 2010.
Kennedy wrote a memoir about her time in the CIA, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, published by Knopf Doubleday in 2019. She has since hosted the six-episode Netflix documentary series The Business of Drugs, released in 2020. She was a campaign manager for her father-in-law Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 independent presidential campaign.

## Early life

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy was born in New York City as Amaryllis Damerell Thornber. Her mother, Lalage Damerell, is a retired English actress. Her father, Hodson Thornber, was an economist. Her mother has since married businessman and film producer Steven Rales. When Fox Kennedy was eight years old, her friend Laura died in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. She said of the event in an interview, "I remember being very, very overwhelmed by the loss and my dad intervened and said, 'you have to understand the forces that took her or they will drown you'." She has said the moment catalyzed her increased awareness of current events and geopolitical conditions.
Growing up in Washington, D.C. and London, Fox Kennedy attended the National Cathedral School beginning in eighth grade and graduated in 1998; she attended The American School in London during tenth grade. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of Oxford in 2002. She has said that while at Oxford, she rebuffed approaches from the Secret Intelligence Service. Before Fox Kennedy's last year at Oxford, the September 11 attacks took place while she was visiting family in Washington, D.C.; subsequently, she decided to pursue a master's degree in conflict and terrorism at the Walsh School of Foreign Service. For her master's thesis, Fox Kennedy developed an algorithm intended to identify local terrorist safe havens, which attracted the CIA's attention.

## Career
### Interview with Aung Sang Suu Kyi

In 1999, at age 18, Fox Kennedy clandestinely recorded an interview for the BBC with the Burmese leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, then under house arrest. To arrange the meeting, Fox Kennedy worked with a local dissident journalist with whom she communicated via taped messages inside the water tank of a toilet at a café in Rangoon. Her intent in the trip had been to make a secret recording of planned pro-democracy protests on September 9. A book, In the Quiet Land, was set to be published in 2002, with film rights optioned to Golden Square Pictures and screenplay by Nick Thomas.

### Central Intelligence Agency

Fox Kennedy became one of the CIA's youngest female officers at age 22, assigned to "non-official cover", entailing living abroad with a fake identity and no diplomatic protection. She has said she assumed the cover of an art dealer and focused on preventing terror organizations from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. After eight years at the agency, Fox left the CIA in 2010.

### Memoir

Fox's memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, describes her experiences as an officer. Before its release, some former CIA officers took issue with her manuscript being submitted to publisher Knopf Doubleday without first being approved by the CIA's Publication Review Board, a potential violation of nondisclosure agreements that CIA staff sign. Attorney Mark Zaid represented Fox in that process. Some former CIA case officers have expressed skepticism about elements of Fox's accounts of events or raised questions about the circumvention of the CIA's approval process. Fox has responded that she took care not to reveal potentially sensitive details, and that some characters are composites.

### Television and public speaking

Fox hosts the Netflix documentary series The Business of Drugs, for which she traveled to several countries while in the third trimester of pregnancy. The show investigates the supply chains, social effects, and legal issues specific to six types of drugs: cocaine, synthetics, heroin, methamphetamine, opioids, and cannabis. She speaks at events around the world on dialogue and peacekeeping. Apple is reportedly developing a TV series based on Fox's memoir that will star Brie Larson, with Fox serving as an executive producer.

### Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign manager

In April 2023, Kennedy joined the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (her father-in-law) as the co-campaign manager, along with Dennis Kucinich. On October 13, 2023, upon Kucinich's resignation, Kennedy became the sole manager of the campaign.

### Political and Public Service Appointments

On the 11th of February 2025, Kennedy was appointed to Donald Trump's Intelligence Advisory Board during his second administration. In the same month, on the 21st of February, she would be appointed to a senior role at the Office of Management and Budget serving as the Associate Director of Intelligence and International Affairs.

## Personal life

While living undercover in Shanghai, she married a fellow CIA officer, Dean Fox. The couple had a daughter. The marriage ended in divorce.
Later, after leaving the agency, she was introduced at Burning Man to Robert F. Kennedy III, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s eldest son and a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, via a mutual friend. The two married on Cape Cod in 2018, and have two children together.
Her step father is Steven Rales, a Hollywood mogul and billionaire, who owns the media distribution companies Janus Films and The Criterion Collection and also holds a 20% stake in the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association (NBA).