The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
An absorbing, informative portrait of an embattled organization that is facing formidable challenges abroad and at home. Terrorism and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fill several opening chapters, which add fascinating details to what we know about the CIA’s role in those events ... Weiner is good at exploring spying’s psychological toll ... Knowing that they’ll be named, some of his sources speak in bloodless, extremely careful terms. This makes for some sluggish passages, but it’s better than not having those voices in the book at all.
Read Full Review >>
Weiner is clear in his condemnation...but inclined to give the CIA the benefit of the doubt ... Weiner’s sources, which are excellent, seem not to have included Haspel herself. But they do encompass several senior CIA figures from the period under discussion. These people opened up to him, and as a result the book contains many essential new details ... There are all sorts of other important and fascinating revelations in The Mission, but it’s the book of a journalist at the top of his game, not an academic. Some of it is written in white-hot anger at the thought of what Trump is doing to the US, and to the CIA in particular ... There is little doubt that Trump has damaged the CIA, but he may not have helped Putin as much as seemed likely when Weiner was writing his book ... As I say, this is a journalist’s book, and bears the marks of it. But no one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win Weiner a second Pulitzer. Given the intense unpopularity of Trump in the upper echelons of American journalism, he may well get it.
Read Full Review >>
The Mission is a masterwork of storytelling, giving a human face to a secretive institution and chronicling American foreign policy in a lively, detailed package that is accessible for a wide range of readers.
Read Full Review >>
