Book Description

The CIA was founded on the best of intentions--to battle the Soviet Empire during the Cold War. For over 50 years, hundreds of men and women in America's foremost intelligence agency have engaged nobly in espionage that was both risky and mysterious, in the name of national security. But the real CIA, as revealed in this eye-opening book, was an organization haunted from the very beginning by missed opportunities, internal rivalries, mismanagement, and Soviet moles. In "The Secret History of the CIA, you will descend into the murky underworld of double and triple agents, of divided loyalties and tortured souls, and of high-stakes operations that played out on virtually every continent. Nationally respected investigative journalist Joseph J. Trento peels away the shroud of secrecy that protected the CIA to reveal how the agency suffered from the profoundly human frailties of those who were chosen to lead it. For over a decade the author conducted countless interviews with legendary spymasters and pored through top-secret files to compile an engrossing history, rich with coloful characters and chilling intrigue. You'll come face-to-face with Igor Orlov, the cold-blooded Soviet double agent who infiltrated the upper echelons of American intelligence; James Angleton, the infamous CIA mole hunter, who implicated the Soviets in John F. Kennedy's assassination; George Weisz, the Hungarian emigrant who worked for the Soviets as he recruited Nazi scientists for the West; and many more. Riveting and majestic in scope, this book takes you down the shadowy corridors of an organization comprised of America's best and brightest, whose thirst for power and influence compromised security, led toincredible mistakes that strengthened the Soviets, and at the same time, resulted in the needless sacrifice of thousands of patriotic agents. "Today, spy wars are conducted in sterile clean rooms by physicists and mathematicians examining pixels and dissecting algorithms. In his new book, Joe Trento returns the reader to the vortex of the Cold War, when a spy's only weapons were wit and guile, deceit and treachery." --James Bamford, bestselling author of "The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets "Must reading. Joe Trento has woven together the loves and lives of the mysterious men and women inside the world's premier spy agency. Sometimes they resemble the work of James Bond--and occasionally they perform like the Keystone Cops." --Tom Jariel, correspondent, ABC NEWS "20/20 "With "The Secret History, Joe Trento has totally penetrated the CIA." --Plato Cacheris, attorney to Aldrich Armnes and Robert Hanssen