New York Times Bestseller * A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 * A New York Times Editors' Choice *
A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year "No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has
and The Mission deserves to win Weiner a second Pulitzer." — The Guardian A masterpiece of
reporting based on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors and scores of spies
station chiefs and top operations officers: The Mission is a gripping and revelatory history
of the modern CIA reaching from 9 11 through its covert operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to
today’s secret battles with Russia and China concluding with the Agency's own fight for
survival under the current president of the United States Tim Weiner's epic successor to Legacy
of Ashes his National Book Award–winning classic about the CIA's first sixty years 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 the top spymaster thirteen station chiefs and
scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a
journalist before.
