Tim Weiner — The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century - with Dana Priest

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.PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063270183?ic_referral=xiuF0o6DNGXMKxUDl8sbja4dyHKj3rtbWFDnooA_hIQwM1tOf-kaIsyTigUxtAD0w0OfcGU2mdIVCu6IDmZBvyezBc1oIUsiTdeYcj_LJtIeUxpuSuT_IJVnjrm3-t4PE09WGAUTim 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. At the New York Times, he covered the CIA in Washington and conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and many other nations. Legacy of Ashes was acclaimed as one of the year's best books by The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Time, and many other publications. His five other books include the national bestseller Enemies: A History of the FBI. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Kate Doyle, an expert in human rights and freedom of information.Weiner is in conversation with Dana Priest. Dana is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at The Washington Post where she has worked on national security issues for more than three decades. She is also the Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and on the board of the Fauquier Times in Warrenton, Va. Dana worked with PBS FRONTLINE on “The Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus” in 2023, which won a George Polk Award and “The Facebook Dilemma” in 2018 which won a Peabody and Emmy Award. She also authored two best-selling books: Top Secret America: The Rise of the Security State in 2011 and The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, which was a Pulitzer Finalist in Non-Fiction.