The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

Mark Mazzetti

Apr 2013 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

“The new American way of war is here, but the debate about it has only just begun. In The Way of the Knife, Mr Mazzetti has made a valuable contribution to it.” —The Economist

A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s riveting account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war

The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.

This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.

Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the shadow war, from a CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played to the chain-smoking Pentagon official running an off-the-books spy operation, from a Virginia socialite whom the Pentagon hired to gather intelligence about militants in Somalia to a CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash.

At the heart of the book is the story of two proud and rival entities, the CIA and the American military, elbowing each other for supremacy. Sometimes, as with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, their efforts have been perfectly coordinated. Other times, including the failed operations disclosed here for the first time, they have not. For better or worse, their struggles will define American national security in the years to come.

Ratings and reviews

A really terrific book that does an excellent job unpacking the complexities surrounding the CIA's actions post-9/11. In particular, Mazzetti does a good job in walking the reader through the complexities of the Taliban and the tribal regions of Pakistan, especially within the context of Pakistan/India relations. While I highly recommend the book the reader should be warned: the structure of the book often feels slipshod, leaving the reader wondering about the logical structure of the various chapters, especially when relating the chapters to one another. Still, once you put everything together at the end of the book you come away with a good overview of the complexities of US-Pakistan relations, as well as the issues that have arisen more generally surrounding the use of UAVs to strike suspected terror suspects around the world.

It was assigned as a project on my U. S. government class. Once I begin, couldn't really believe my ignorance. Definitely a recommended book!

Pretty good tho' it's inconsistent n incomplete n shies away from providing sensitive details necessary in the spirit of the topic/discourse undertaken here!

About the author

Mark Mazzetti is a national security correspondent for the New York Times. He has received numerous awards, including the George Polk Award, and he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. He lives in Washington, D.C.