The mission: the CIA in the 21st century

Prologue: The spy and the scribe

The dark horizon

Denial and deception

"It was all sadly absurd"

The Bay of Goats

The new world

"We were all making it up as we went along"

Unprecedented trouble

What you do when you do not know

Sufi mystics and walking zombies

A beautiful operation

The butcher's bill

Guerrilla warfare

The black cloud

"How far were we prepared to go?"

The god's-eye view

No middle ground

The keys to the castle

The right side of history

"Someone is always watching"

Lethal and legal

Face-eating baboons

The useful idiot

Ring-kissing and kneecapping

The enemy of intelligence

"We are on the way to a right-wing coup"

The glory gate

Human intelligence

The morality of espionage

Epilogue: Autocracy in America.