The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century (Paperback)

The epic successor to Tim Weiners National BookAward-winning classic,Legacy of Ashes: a gripping and revelatoryhistory of the CIA in the 21stcentury, reaching from 9/11 through the wars inAfghanistan and Iraq to todays battles with Russia and China and with thePresident of the United States.

At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agencywas in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission.More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scoresthat remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance wasonce deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasnt beingcollected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIAs officers and analystsworked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals ofsignificant facts from the cacophony of background noise.

Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIAtransformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons andbrutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoningits core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences weregrave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of itspersonnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks byRussian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan andIraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets Moscow,Beijing, Tehran while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as asubversive force.

From Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner,The Missiontellsthe gripping, high-stakes story of the CIA through the first quarter of thetwenty-first century, revealing how the agency fought to rebuild the espionagepowers it lost during the war on terror and finally succeeded in penetratingthe Kremlin. The struggle has life-and-death consequences for America and itsallies. The CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. The fateof the free world hangs in the balance.

A masterpiece of reporting,The Missionincludesexclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, thirteenstation chiefs, and scores of top spies who served undercover for decades andhave never spoken to a journalist before.

About the Author

Tim Weinerhas won the Pulitzer Prize for hisreporting on American national security and the National Book Award forLegacyof Ashes: The History of the CIA.At theNew York Times,hecovered the CIA in Washington and conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and manyother nations.Legacy of Asheswas acclaimed as one of the years bestbooks byThe New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Time,andmany other publications.His five other books include the national bestsellerEnemies:A History of the FBI.He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Kate Doyle,an expert in human rights and freedom of information.