The Mission

The CIA in the 21st Century

By: Tim Weiner

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

""No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win Weiner a second Pulitzer."" —The Guardian

A masterpiece of reporting based on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers: The Mission is a gripping and revelatory history of the modern CIA, reaching from 9/11 through its covert operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to today’s secret battles with Russia and China, concluding with the Agency's own fight for survival under the current president of the United States

Tim Weiner's epic successor to Legacy of Ashes, his National Book Award–winning classic about the CIA's first sixty years

At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn’t being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA’s officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.

Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets—Moscow, Beijing, Tehran—while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.

From Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner, The Mission tells the gripping, high-stakes story of the CIA through the first quarter of the twenty-first century, revealing how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror—and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The struggle has life-and-death consequences for America and its allies. The CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

A masterpiece of reporting, The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before.

©2025 Tim Weiner (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Hold onto your seat!

Parts of this scared me, other parts pissed me off! All of us need to know this information. But I warn you: it's not easy!

Masterful history of the CIA since the turn of the century.

Insightful. Deep. Well researched. Well sourced. Important. Great read for all true Americans. Pick up or download this vital work of history and read it.

Relevance of cia history to today

Legacy of Ashes was, of course, a lot about Hoover but still very full of unknown detail and background/
backstories.
This book reads similarly well & doesn’t shy from cia’s history of deficits, though focus turns to lessons learned & efforts to build a new agency post 9-11.
Goes into detail about things current admin would hate, such as Russia’s intrusion on ‘16 election.
The epilogue brings us to 5/25 & sums up what keeps democracy lovers worldwide awake at night.
Great read. MAGAs will hate it but if you’re not that, it’s a useful history of CIA through 21st century so far.

All should read. This book puts so much together

Great book. All should read. Puts so much together. Very important book for American history

Incredible intelligence personnel

This book not only highlights the pitfalls of the American intelligence community, but it also recounts the incredible sacrifice and triumph of the CIA. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Even though im just a random nobody, I strongly emplore you to give this book a read. For those who are involved with or interested in intelligence, foreign policy and diplomacy this book delivers a great deal to learn from.

Historical significance

Found great relevance to current reality. I could also relate the events described to my life at certain times.

Research

The material is fascinating and the delivery was executed beautifully. Timely and frightening. A good listen.

The shopping things that Trump has done and continues to do to this country.

This book is a wake up call not just to every American, but to the world itself. We are on the brink of a catastrophe that will see the demise of the United States as we knew it before Trump. This book is an eye-opener and a must read for anyone who wants to save our democracy. Listening to this audible book was an eye opener for me. I think the epilogue sums up just how much danger we are in. Now is the time for action as this book so eloquently states!

Leftist Book - Disappointing

I assumed this book would be along the lines of his other book CIA Legacy Of Ashes. The book starts off good and interesting. But he gets into the Russia Hoax topic and incredibly after all we know about the misconduct of the FBI & CIA, he continues the BS narrative and does not provide the critical critique of the intelligence community. So disappointed but another leftist non-journalist putting out propaganda.

BIAS

I read Legacy of Ashes and thought it was well written and very informative, so when I saw this offering from the author, I quickly bought it and listened eagerly. As the book wore on, the level of anti-Trump bias rose exponentially. At 9 hours left, I thought I’d give it a little more time to see when it came full circle and began to present a more balanced picture… at 5 hours left, I stopped. This author clearly has an LD50 dose of Trump Derangement Syndrome and extends that to every person in Trump’s orbit. He minimizes the significant breaches of security that the Clinton cabal engaged in and took at face value, any statement or “belief” as he continued to refer the statements made by Fiona Hill, made by the IC writ large. A review is not designed to psychiatrically dissect the author, but my impression is that the author is using this work to present his biases. This is, unfortunately, the new way of “journalism” and, for those of us who try to educate ourselves with what we hope is unbiased sources, serves little real value. This book could have been written by James Clapper, James Comey, Brennan, and Peter Struk — I wouldn’t trust an iteration of the alphabet by those guys, so this author leaving me with the impression that he is overly reliant on these people cheapens this work.
Sorry, but this is actually the first Audible book that I haven’t finished and my advice to potential readers is to simply watch 15 hours of MSNBC or CNN or The View…