“[A] tour de force exploring the CIA’s paramilitary activities…this excellent work feels like uncovering the tip of the iceberg. VERDICT Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal
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.
Tangos in Khartoum
Tali Bar at Ariana Hotel
Afghan Ground Branch
Last Outpost before Tora Bora
GB Indigs
Photos (left to right): CIA paramilitary operators chasing “tangos” or targets do not wear uniforms; The Tali Bar at the Ariana Hotel, Kabul, Afghanistan circa 2002; Ground Branch team members in Afghanistan; The last outpost before Tora Bora; A Ground Branch officer teaches indigs on a Counterterrorism Pursuit Team how to read a map
Waugh 1964
Waugh in Libya
Misc. NILE Cairo
Gardez
Waughs last parachute jump
Photos (left to right): Waugh as a young Green Beret, 1964; Waugh in Libya with Colonel Qadaffi’s men, 1977; Waugh spying in Cairo, 1997; Waugh fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, 2001; Waugh earned his paratrooper wings in 1948, when he was nineteen years old and has been jumping into war zones and training grounds and who knows where else, ever since. I took this photo of him in Varadero, Cuba, moments after he made what is likely his last parachute jump, age 87-1/2, in June 2017.
BILLY WAUGH
William D. Waugh, one of the oldest longest-serving covert-action operators in the United States and a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret, makes up the core of Surprise, Kill, Vanish. His is an extraordinary life spent dedicated to perfecting the art of covert action. Covert action is assigned to the CIA in peacetime but run jointly by the Defense Department during war.