The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner

The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century

by Tim Weiner

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History & Foreign Affairs

Tim Weiner's history of the CIA from 9/11 to the present — the post-9/11 expansion, the torture program, the bin Laden hunt, the China/Russia pivots, and the Trump-era institutional stress — written as the continuation of his 2007 Legacy of Ashes.

Core ideas
  • The post-9/11 CIA expansion didn't just grow the agency; it transformed it into a paramilitary organization with intelligence as a secondary mission — the drone program is the centerpiece, but the cultural shift went deeper than the specific program.
  • The torture-program reckoning is treated as unfinished — the Senate Intelligence Committee report's findings remained politically contested, and the agency's institutional response has been to bury rather than confront, with consequences for current foreign relationships.
  • The Trump-era stress is the book's contemporary stake — an intelligence agency under a president openly hostile to its core mission, surviving on procedural and personal restraint rather than structural protection.
Published2025
Pages464
ISBN9780063270183
ReadDec 2025
intelligence history

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