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. Then came September 11, 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 while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force. From Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner comes The Mission, which tells the gripping, high-stakes story of the CIA through the first quarter of the 21st 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.
Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on American national security and the National Book Award for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.