From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen comes the untold USA
Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units.
Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without
a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls
on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of
the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world.
Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD
conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to
defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since
World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes,
assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who
proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of
the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and
deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils
-- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in
treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and
saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external
secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign
policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill,
Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as
the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge
of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work.
Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior
Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its
counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities
Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters
killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the
enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain.
Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a
liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation
reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.
