The book "The Mission" by American journalist Tim Weiner begins with a catastrophic event for the CIA: the aftermath of September 11, 2001, which affected an agency weakened by the end of the Cold War. According to the author, it culminated in another crisis, no less serious: Donald Trump's second term in the White House, which he describes as a complete destruction of American intelligence.
After the attack on the World Trade Center, the agency was embroiled in the fiasco over weapons of mass destruction - a lie that would have allowed the United States to invade Iraq. The CIA became, according to Weiner, a "retaliatory paramilitary force". Intelligence quickly gave way to the fight against terrorism and the search for Osama bin Laden. But with limited success: the mastermind of the September 11 attacks eluded the United States for ten years.
The war on terror led to the creation of the CIA's secret prisons (or "black sites") - a program for the secret detention and torture of terrorist suspects. After this disaster, the CIA rebuilt its intelligence and espionage capabilities. But this return to its roots now faces an unprecedented challenge: the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
For this book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in 1988, and then the National Book Award nineteen years later - interviewed six CIA directors, thirteen station chiefs, and officers who worked undercover for decades.
In an interview with the French newspaper L'Express, Weiner recounts the CIA's turbulent quarter-century and reveals the intelligence agency's behind-the-scenes work.
L'EXPRESS: A large part of "The Mission" is dedicated to the Trump years. How do you assess the development of his relationship with the CIA since his first term?
TIM WEINER: There is a "before" and "after" 2020. At that time, the first impeachment proceedings were initiated against him. Trump was accused of pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden, then a front-runner in the 2020 Democratic primary. But the Senate acquitted him. Then he went crazy. He began his attack on the intelligence community by firing the Director of National Intelligence. He replaced him with John Ratcliffe. His replacement was Kash Patel. These two men now head the CIA and FBI, respectively.
Let’s see what’s at stake here after Trump’s second inauguration. What has Ratcliffe done since joining the CIA on January 23? First, he systematically fired the most experienced and competent employees. Then he fired all CIA employees hired between 2023 and 2024 under Biden. And all of this in a matter of days. Finally, he repealed the CIA’s diversity hiring policy that had been in place for many years. Why is diversity important at the CIA?
Not because the agency is a bastion of "Woakism", but because it operates on a very solid principle: sending exclusively white men to spy in China, Pakistan or Sudan is a reprehensible policy. You want people who know the languages and cultures of the countries they are spying on. You want them to be able to blend in with the crowd.
That's the CIA's superpower. That's how they stay hidden. But this structure is falling apart, very quickly, on the orders of the President of the United States. And that's very dangerous. The biggest threat to American national security is the President of the United States.
L'EXPRESS: You're revealing the name of a previously unidentified senior CIA official, Tomasz Rakushan. Why is it important for the general public to know his identity?
TIM WAINER: In "The Mission" Rakushan's name appears after Russia's attack on our democracy in 2016. This covert operation is perhaps the most successful attack since the Trojan Horse of antiquity. Through political warfare, "social media warfare" - a non-combat approach combining disinformation, espionage, sabotage and subversion - Moscow managed to divide the American people, destroy Hillary Clinton and elevate Donald Trump.
In this context, Tomasz Rakushan was appointed head of the CIA's secret services in August 2017. It was he who led the counteroffensive against the Russians. Rakushan had one distinguishing feature. He was of Czech origin and was nine years old when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968. Therefore, his feelings towards the Russians were very strong. After taking over the Secret Service, he called together all the senior officers responsible for operations and told them, "The Russians rigged our damn election. How can we make sure it never happens again?"
He asked them to use their years of experience tracking terrorists against the Russians. Not to kill them, but to get to know them better. Who were they, publicly and privately? What was their real name? Who did they love? Who did they hate? In order to get close to them and recruit them. Rakushan ordered his soldiers: recruit Russian spies; Russian diplomats; Russian oligarchs. Get into the Kremlin.
This was a real challenge: the CIA had been trying to infiltrate it since 1947. Without success, until a mobilization led by Rakushan led to the theft of Putin’s war plans for Ukraine a few years later. The operation was a masterclass in espionage. So it was important that his name be written in black and white.
L'EXPRESS: How do you explain the success of this operation, after years of failures?
TIM WEINER: Tom Rakushan and his successor, Tom Sylvester, managed to convince the general public that the Russians had seriously undermined our democracy. That feeling motivated the agents. But it didn't stop with the 2016 elections. Look at what the Russians are doing all over Europe today.
They are conducting a covert campaign of sabotage, subversion and espionage aimed at destroying democratic states. The United States served as a test case to assess Putin's ability to achieve this. And he won, because we have Donald Trump as president.
L'EXPRESS: Isn't that a bit biased? Not all Americans needed the Russians to vote for Trump.
TIM WEINER: Of course, his election is not solely about Russia. The responsibility is not the Kremlin’s, it’s ours. However, the social media war waged in the United States in 2014, 2015, and 2016 created the conditions for his election by injecting poison into the American political system. Since then, Republican politicians and Fox News commentators have been repeating Russian propaganda into our public space.
This is crazy! Yes, Trump is an American phenomenon. But his political success has been magnified and enhanced by Russia’s political warfare. What would you call a place where you can use the military in the same way you use the police — when that’s forbidden by the Constitution? A place where a head of state says no judge or court can arrest him? Trump is making America more like Russia every day.
L'EXPRESS: In the mid-2010s, Russian hackers created Cozy Bear, a malicious software that they were going to use to hack into the Democratic Party's servers. You write that it was "the most devastating covert operation since 9/11". Without a single shot being fired.
TIM WEINER: People don't realize the seriousness of the situation. Social warfare brought Donald Trump to power. Today, he is systematically destroying the CIA and the FBI because these agencies were investigating the connections between "Team Trump" and "Team Putin" during the 2016 election. What is happening is extremely dangerous because it increases the risk of an intelligence-related disaster comparable to that of September 11, 2001. Imagine if an attack were to occur on American soil tomorrow.
What would Trump do? He would declare martial law. In fact, he is already doing so to some extent, by deploying troops to the streets of some American cities. He would cancel the next election. That would be the end of our noble experiment in representative democracy. These are serious times. This danger threatens not only the United States, but the entire planet. Because the CIA is capable of thwarting the plans of many terrorist organizations around the world.
A year ago, they prevented an attempted terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. If that plan had been carried out, thousands of people would have died. What would have happened if the CIA had ceased to function?
L'EXPRESS: Let's go back in time a little. In "The Mission" we realize that the CIA, probably one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world - if not the most powerful - was blind in many areas, such as Iraq and Pakistan. How is this possible?
TIM WEINER: When I started covering the CIA in the 1980s, it took me a while to realize that "The Agency" is the executor of American foreign policy. With rare exceptions, it always carries out the orders of the president. Its history reveals the true intentions of presidents much better than diplomatic or military records. Often what we consider intelligence failures are actually political failures.
Intelligence does not have the authority to conduct covert operations. The president makes the decisions. In "The Mission" I tell how the President of the United States decided to invade Iraq six days after September 11. Luis Rueda - the author of the secret plan to infiltrate Saddam Hussein's military intelligence services - says that the Bush administration would have invaded the country even if Saddam had shown up with a rubber band and a paper clip!
Let's not forget that the invasion was made possible by the CIA's disastrous - and completely wrong - assessment that Saddam Hussein did in fact have a weapons of mass destruction program. How could it have been so wrong? First, because the CIA hadn't had a single spy in Iraq since 1998. It had no intelligence. So the CIA chose to give the Bush administration what it wanted, since it had decided, no matter what, to invade Iraq.
After the invasion, the CIA finally reconstructed the intelligence on the ground. When the facts were reported to Bush - the occupation and the war were a disaster - he rejected the idea. The war was driven by ideology. Ideology is the enemy of intelligence.
That disaster still has consequences today. When American intelligence stole Vladimir Putin's war plans for Ukraine and decided to reveal them to the world, they were met with caution: "Weren't you the ones who told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction 18 years ago?" Some consider the CIA a malign force. But it is essential. As President Eisenhower once said, intelligence is an unpleasant but vital necessity.
L'EXPRESS: Judging by your words, the CIA's work is based on intelligence. That explains its power.
TIM WEINER: In one of the first chapters of the book, we read the story of a covert operation in Peru that led to a deadly disaster. The former head of the Latin America division, Jack Devine, sums up the disaster by saying: "The mission became more important than the rules. And that's dangerous." This sentence is the story of the CIA after 9/11. It illustrates how it has become a force dedicated entirely to fighting terrorism. That is not the agency's purpose.
With the return of espionage to its rightful place in 2017, with the call to arms against Russia, the CIA has rediscovered its true mission and regained its relevance. Espionage is said to be the second oldest profession in the world. It has certainly been around since the Israelis took Jericho. But we Americans are new to it. How long has the DGSE existed in your country, in one form or another? Since Richelieu! The Chinese have been practicing espionage since Sun Tzu and his "Art of War" 26 centuries ago. The Russians, since Peter the Great.
We have been doing it since 1947, when the CIA was created. We are children. But we do know one thing - Sun Tzu was right when he wrote: "Know your enemy and know yourself; even if you have to fight a hundred wars, you will win a hundred times." The only way to get to know someone is to talk to them. That's why the book is called "The Mission": the original work of the CIA was espionage, agent intelligence. If espionage is the essence of intelligence, then the recruitment of sources is its quintessence.
L" EXPRESS: You paint a bleak picture of Donald Trump's second term. In this context, how do you see the future of the CIA?
TIM WEINER: We know that the core of intelligence work is the recruitment of foreign agents. How do you recruit sources? Why do you become an American spy? Money is obviously a determining factor. Revenge is also a determining factor. Some want a plane ticket to the United States. But there is another reason. If you are Russian, Iranian, Chinese, North Korean... Maybe you want to change the world around you. Today, the CIA will face increasing difficulty in recruiting opponents of these regimes.
Why? Because Trump has joined the axis of authoritarian states. We can pinpoint the exact date that symbolizes this turning point: February 24, 2025, when he ordered the United States to vote against a resolution condemning Russia on the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Imagine for a moment that you are a CIA agent. You have spent the last ten years of your life working for the survival of Ukraine, against Russian imperialism. And you are witnessing it. It is enough to make your stomach churn!
After World War II, the "Agency" was filled with Russian, German, and Eastern European émigrés. So even if its leaders - white Anglo-Saxon Protestants - did not know the terrain, the agents did. They recruited agents driven by a fierce hatred of Stalin. They spoke to them, maintaining a mirror image of the Soviet Union: a land fighting for freedom and democracy. The shining city on a hill. Now its lights are going out one by one.