"In this exciting, meticulously researched spy story, Taubman takes readers behind the closed doors of the Eisenhower administration to tell about the small group of Cold Warriors whose technological innovations-including the U2 spy plane and Corona, the country's first spy satellite-revolutionized espionage and intelligence gathering." -Publishers Weekly"New York Times editor Taubman exudes admiration for the contrarian thinking and enterprise...

Traces the CIA's evolution from it's origins in the aftermath of World War I to the Iran Contra affair of today and major people involved.

In 1960, President Eisenhower was focused on Laos, a tiny Southeast Asian nation few Americans had ever heard of. Washington feared the country would fall to communism, triggering a domino effect in the rest of Southeast Asia. So in January 1961, Eisenhower approved the CIA's Operation Momentum, a plan to create a proxy army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces in Laos. While remaining largely hidden from the American public and most of Congress,...

On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union just weeks before a peace summit between the two nations. The CIA concocted a cover story for President Eisenhower to deliver, assuring him that no one could have survived a fall from that altitude. And even if pilot Francis Gary Powers had survived, he had been supplied with a poison pin with which to commit suicide. But against all odds, Powers emerged from the wreckage...