Tim Weiner

'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.

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.

The epic successor to Tim Weinerâ??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 todayâ??s battles with Russia and China â?? and with the President of the United States.

"Masterful. ... A singular triumph." -- Kirkus, starred review"Triumphant. ... A crucial document of the present times." --Publishers Weekly, starred reviewThe 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. One of Foreign Policy's "Most Anticipated Books of 2025"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.

From Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, an urgent and gripping account of the 75-year battle between the US and Russia that led to the election and impeachment of an American president With vivid storytelling and riveting insider accounts, Weiner traces the roots of political warfare--the conflict America and Russia have waged with espionage, sabotage, diplomacy and disinformation--from 1945 until 2020. America won the cold war, but Russia is winning today. Vladimir Putin helped to put his chosen candidate in the White House with a covert campaign that continues to this moment. Putin's Russia has revived Soviet-era intelligence operations gaining ever more potent information from--and influence over--the American people and government. Yet the US has put little power into its defense. This has put American democracy in peril. Weiner takes us behind closed doors, illuminating Russian and American intelligence operations and their consequences. To get to the heart of what is at stake and find potential solutions, he examines long-running 20th-century CIA operations, the global political machinations of the Soviet KGB, the erosion of American political warfare after the cold war, and how 21st-century Russia has kept the cold war alive. The Folly and the Glory is an urgent call to our leaders and citizens to understand the nature of political warfare--and to change course before it's too late.

From Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, an urgent and gripping account of the 75-year battle between the US and Russia that led to the election and impeachment of an American president With vivid storytelling and riveting insider accounts, Weiner traces the roots of political warfare--the conflict America and Russia have waged with espionage, sabotage, diplomacy and disinformation--from 1945 until 2020. America won the cold war, but Russia is winning today. Vladimir Putin helped to put his chosen candidate in the White House with a covert campaign that continues to this moment. Putin's Russia has revived Soviet-era intelligence operations gaining ever more potent information from--and influence over--the American people and government. Yet the US has put little power into its defense. This has put American democracy in peril. Weiner takes us behind closed doors, illuminating Russian and American intelligence operations and their consequences. To get to the heart of what is at stake and find potential solutions, he examines long-running 20th-century CIA operations, the global political machinations of the Soviet KGB, the erosion of American political warfare after the cold war, and how 21st-century Russia has kept the cold war alive. The Folly and the Glory is an urgent call to our leaders and citizens to understand the nature of political warfare--and to change course before it's too late.

A shocking and riveting look at one of the most dramatic and disastrous presidencies in US history, from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Tim Weiner. Based largely on documents declassified only in the last few years, One Man Against the World paints a devastating portrait of a tortured yet brilliant man who led the country largely according to a deep-seated insecurity and distrust of not only his cabinet and congress, but the American population at large. In riveting, tick-tock prose, Weiner illuminates how the Vietnam War and the Watergate controversy that brought about Nixon's demise were inextricably linked. From the hail of garbage and curses that awaited Nixon upon his arrival at the White House, when he became the president of a nation as deeply divided as it had been since the end of the Civil War, to the unprecedented action Nixon took against American citizens, who he considered as traitorous as the army of North Vietnam, to the infamous break-in and the tapes that bear remarkable record of the most intimate and damning conversations between the president and his confidantes, Weiner narrates the history of Nixon's anguished presidency in fascinating and fresh detail. A crucial new look at the greatest political suicide in history, One Man Against the World leaves us not only with new insight into this tumultuous period, but also into the motivations and demons of an American president who saw enemies everywhere, and, thinking the world was against him, undermined the foundations of the country he had hoped to lead.

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 powerful of these forces. Following his award-winning history of the C.I.A., Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner has now written the first full history of the F.B.I. as a secret intellligence service. Drawn entirely from firsthand materials in the F.B.I.'s own files, Enemies brilliantly brings to life the entire story, from the cracking of anarchist cells to the prosecution of the 'war on terror'. It is the story of America's war against spies, subversives and saboteurs - and the self-inflicted wounds American democracy suffered in battle.Throughout the book lies the long shadow of J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the F.B.I. with an iron fist for forty-eight years. He was not a monster, but a brilliant confidence man who ruled by fear, force, and fraud. His power shaped America; his legacy haunts it.Reviews:'Truly impressive ... [Enemies] could have been put together only by a journalist of Weiner's stature' Keith Lowe, Sunday Telegraph'A history that moves at the pace of a James Ellroy novel. But Weiner's truth is wilder even than Ellroy's fiction. Weiner sets the record straight on the FBI's first 100 years using only the Bureau's documents and oral testimony, most of which has never been seen' David Blackburn, Spectator'An outstanding piece of work, even-handed, exhaustively researched, smoothly written and thematically timely ... This is certainly the most complete book we are likely to see about the F.B.I.'s intelligence-gathering operations, from Emma Goldman to Osama bin Laden' Bryan Burrough, New York Times'Extensively researched, admirably understated, yet terrifically entertaining' Boston Globe'Important and disturbing ... Weiner lays bare a record of embarrassing, even stunning failure, in which the bureau's lawlessness was matched only by its incompetence ... [he] has done prodigious research, yet tells this depressing story with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller' New York Times Book ReviewAbout the author:Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, where he has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and fifteen other nations. He was based for a decade in Washington, DC, where he covered the C.I.A. and the Military - the latter topic being the subject of his Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget. He is the author of the bestselling Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

The hidden history of the FBI and its hundred-year war against terrorists, spies, and anyone it deemed subversive--including even American presidents. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NOW A SHOWTIME ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES "Turns the long history of the FBI into a story that is as compelling, and important, as today's headlines."--Jeffrey Toobin, author of American Heiress Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. We think of the FBI as America's police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau's first and foremost mission. The FBI's secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties, a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI to conduct political warfare--and how it has sometimes been turned against them. And it is the story of how the Bureau became the most powerful intelligence service the United States possesses. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, New York Daily News, and Slate "Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tim Weiner has written a riveting inside account of the FBI's secret machinations that goes so deep into the Bureau's skulduggery, readers will feel they are tapping the phones along with J. Edgar Hoover. This is a book that every American who cares about civil liberties should read."--Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money "Outstanding."--The New York Times "Absorbing . . . a sweeping narrative that is all the more entertaining because it is so redolent with screw-ups and scandals."--Los Angeles Times "Fascinating."--The Wall Street Journal "Important and disturbing . . . with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller."--The New York Times Book Review "Exciting and fast-paced."--The Daily Beast

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 operatives and fatal errors, Tim Weiner shows how the CIA now poses a threat not only to the security of the US, but the world.

"Es war nie ein Geheimnis, dass die CIA Leichen im Keller hat. Doch was Tim Weiner in über zwanzig Jahren Recherche zusammengetragen hat, lässt zahlreiche weltpolitische Ereignisse - beginnend mit dem Korea-Krieg bis hin zum 11. September - und ihre Akteure in neuem Licht erscheinen. Weiners Blick hinter die Fassade des angeblich omnipotenten Geheimdienstes enthüllt viel bislang Unbekanntes. Einmalig ist, dass Weiner alle Fakten und seine brillanten Schlussfolgerungen vollständig mit Primärquellen belegen kann. Dafür sichtete er über 50000 Dokumente in den Archiven des Geheimdienstes, des Weißen Hauses und des State Department, die teilweise bis heute als geheim eingestuft waren, und führte Hunderte von Interviews mit hochrangigen Politikern, Ex-Agenten und Insidern, u.a. mit zehn ehemaligen CIA-Direktoren."

A New York Times reporter offers a powerful indictment of the CIA and its intelligence-gathering capabilities as he traces the history of the organization from the end of World War II to Iraq, in a study that condemns the CIA for its record, its inability to understand world affairs, the violence it has unleashed, and its undermining of American politics. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles, this is a thorough, astonishing expose of the "Black Budget"--a 36-billion-dollar cache used by the Pentagon to fund its own agenda of top-secret weapons and wars.

Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles, this is a thorough, astonishing expose of the Black Budget--a 36-billion-dollar cache used by the Pentagon to fund its own agenda of top-secret weapons and wars.