Inside the CIA: Revisedealing the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Spy Agency

by Ronald Kessler

Overview

From the bestselling author of The FBI comes another explosive work of investigative journalism, revealing the inner world of the CIA.

Based on extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including several with former Directors of Central Intelligence, Inside the CIA is the first in-depth, unbiased account of the Agency’s core operations, its abject failures, and its resounding successes. Kessler reveals how:

-CIA analysts botched the job of foreseeing the Soviet economy’s collapse
-The Agency spies on every country in the world except Great Britain, Australia, and Canada
-The CIA undertakes covert action to influence or overthrow foreign governments or political parties
-The Agency trains its officers to break the laws of other countries

Inside the CIA is an extraordinary guide to the world’s most successful house of spies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439140772
Publisher:	Pocket Books
Publication date:	01/10/2012
Series:	A History of American Espionage
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	197,030
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Ronald Kessler is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Escape from the CIA, Inside Congress, and Inside the Whitehouse. He lives with his wife in Potomac, Maryland. 

Editorial Reviews

Kessler ( Escape from the CIA ), who is the first journalist to be accorded the full cooperation of the CIA, here reveals more about the agency's structure, policies and key personnel than any previous writer has. He defines the missions of the agency's five components--the director and the directorates of operations, science and technology, intelligence, and administration. Kessler explores such diverse subjects as the agency's employment policies (the CIA, he maintains, prefers aggressive, manipulative recruits willing to lie and to break the laws of foreign countries), the director's daily presidential briefing, the CIA's counter-narcotics efforts, the physical plant itself (``The CIA compound is indeed a spooky place'') and the agency's struggle to create a viable public-relations policy. As to the agency's mandate, given the diminution of the Soviet threat, Kessler reports that the CIA is intensifying its effort to track nuclear proliferation, international drug trafficking and terrorism. A largely objective, evenhanded, highly informative survey. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Kessler ( Escape from the CIA , LJ 5/15/91) returns to ``the Company'' to relate how it has evolved since the mid-1970s. Here, he describes the organizational structure of the CIA, along with the responsibilities and day-to-day routines of the different directorates. Some of the details, such as those regarding the location and operation of the CIA complex in Virginia, are very interesting. Kessler makes the point that intelligence agencies are vital in today's dangerous world and that the CIA is a big bureaucracy full of ordinary people trying to do a good job at a difficult and complex task. While it reveals no startling ``secrets,'' Kessler's book is a good source of background information. Suitable for all intelligence collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/92.-- Daniel K. Blewett, Loyola Univ. Lib., Chicago

Library Journal

This could be called most indispensable book of the year for the aspiring technothriller writer. It is definitely one of the most important books on the U.S. intelligence community in some years. Writing with the cooperation of active and retired personnel, Kessler offers a working portrait of the contemporary CIA. His background in journalistic study of intelligence, augmented by an unusual array of other resources, enables him to provide an account unique for balance, perspective, clarity of writing, and the large amount of factual material. One may quarrel with that amount, and one may quarrel with Kessler's emphasis upon William Webster, William Casey's successor. Otherwise, it is difficult to question Kessler's choice of material or deny the book a place in any current-affairs collection.

Roland Green