When the Soviet Union swept into Afghanistan in 1979, there was immediate pressure in Washington to support the Mujahideen, the profoundly religious local fighters whose struggle against their atheist invaders was seen as just, even spiritual.
This book tells in unprecedented detail and for the first time the story of what became the most expensive secret operation in CIA history - one that grew eventually to cost more than $1 billion a year.
George Crile, who has spent nearly a decade researching and writing this original account, reveals how the key decisions were made and by whom, what their consequences were and what, precisely, American intelligence did and did not know about its new Islamist allies.
Moving from the meeting rooms on Capitol Hill to secret chambers in CIA headquarters; and from arms fairs to stand-offs in the Khyber Pass, this book is one of the most thorough and vividly readable descriptions of the workings of the CIA ever written.
