All-powerful, brilliant, decisive, ruthlessly effective … this is the image of the CIA as portrayed in countless films and novels. It is wrong.This shocking book, based on thousands of declassified documents and interviews with agents at all levels, shows the reality behind the glamorous myth: a blundering, chaotic and dangerously incompetent organization, so ineffective it was nicknamed ‘Can’t Identify Anything’ by Nato forces. In a story of botched coups, missed targets, lost ope...

'No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win him a second Pulitzer' JOHN SIMPSON, GUARDIANThe 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 epic, disturbing story of how the FBI is America's real secret service'Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. The hand of our power should close over them at once' President Woodrow Wilson, 1919The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most...

The epic, disturbing story of how the FBI is America's real secret service'Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. The hand of our power should close over them at once' President Woodrow Wilson, 1919The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most...

'No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win him a second Pulitzer' JOHN SIMPSON, GUARDIANThe 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 ...

New York Times Bestseller * A New Yorker Best Book of the Year * A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year * A New York Times Editors' Choice"No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win Weiner a second Pulitzer." —The GuardianA masterpiece of reporting based on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors and scores of spies, statio...