"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.
