Thomas Powers is the author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (1979), Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (1993), Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda (2002; revised and expanded edition, 2004), and The Confirmation (2000), a novel. He won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 and has contributed to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. »

Intelligence Wars (Revised and Expanded Edition)

American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda

By Thomas Powers

This updated edition contains new analysis on the situation in Iraq and the war against terrorism.

Sold over 10,000 copies in hardcover.

No one outside the intelligence services knows more about their culture than Thomas Powers. In this book he tells stories of shadowy successes, ghastly failures, and, more often, gripping uncertainties. They range from the CIA's long cold war struggle with its Russian adversary to debates about the use of secret intelligence in a democratic society, and urgent contemporary issues such as whether the CIA and the FBI can defend America against terrorism.

Reviews

A remarkable, twisted tapestry of intrigue.
— The New York Observer

Powers brilliantly conveys the ethos and culture of intelligence agencies—a complexity he has been studying and writing about for almost 30 years.
— The Washington Post

Essential wartime reading... you get a sense not of what to expect—that's not the job of history—but of the smart questions we need to ask to be confident that we are winning our current secret war.
— The New York Times Book Review

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