'No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has and The Mission deserves to win him a
second Pulitzer' JOHN SIMPSON GUARDIAN The epic successor to Tim Weiner's National Book
Award-winning classic ¿ Legacy of Ashes : a gripping and revelatory history of the CIA in the
21st¿century reaching from 9 11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today's battles
with Russia and China - and with the President of the United States. At the turn of the
century the Central Intelligence Agency was 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
scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once
deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn't being collected. At the dawn of
the information age the CIA's officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology
struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of
background noise. Then came September 11th 2001. After the attacks the CIA transformed itself
into a lethal paramilitary force running secret prisons and brutal interrogations mounting
deadly drone attacks and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and
counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign
agents the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies the penetration of its computer
networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers and the tragedies of Afghanistan and
Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets - Moscow Beijing Tehran -
while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force. From Pulitzer
Prize winner Tim Weiner ¿The Mission ¿tells the gripping high-stakes story of the CIA through
the first quarter of the twenty-first century revealing how the agency fought to rebuild the
espionage powers it lost during the war on terror - and finally succeeded in penetrating the
Kremlin. The struggle has life-and-death consequences for America and its allies. The CIA must
reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. The fate of the free world hangs in the
balance. A masterpiece of reporting The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews
with six former CIA directors thirteen station chiefs and scores of top spies who served
undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before.
