She had been a successful operative and station chief when staffers made dubious allegations that forced her from the field. She sued the C.I.A. — and won.

Janine Brookner, an undercover C.I.A. officer who fought dubious allegations against her at the agency and won a $410,000 settlement, then became a lawyer who helped other government employees fight similar injustices, died on May 11 in Washington. She was 80.

The cause was complications of kidney disease and cancer, her son, Steve Brookner, said.

Ms. Brookner was a rising star inside the C.I.A.’s clandestine operations; she had infiltrated the Communist Party in the Philippines in the 1970s and later recruited a Soviet-bloc agent in Venezuela. While she served as the agency’s station chief in Jamaica, from 1989 to 1991 — she was one of the first women in the agency to hold such a position — her supervisors called her performance “superb.”

“She had a drive, persistence and sensibility not normally found in male officers,” George Kalaris, Ms. Brookner’s station chief in the Philippines, told The New York Times in 1994. “She made me change my mind about the potential that women had as espionage officers.”