Company Confessions

Résumé du livre

Spies are supposed to keep quiet, never betraying their agents or discussing their operations. Somehow this doesn't apply to the CIA, which is routinely asked to vet fifty or so books by former officers every month. Many of these memoirs command huge advances and attract enormous publicity. Take Valerie Plame, the CIA officer whose identity was leaked by the Bush White House in 2003 and who reportedly received $2 million for her book Fair Game. Or former CIA director George Tenet whose 2007 memoir reached no. 2 in the Amazon bestseller chart, beaten only by the final Harry Potter novel. If the CIA's director is allowed to write it can be little wonder that regular agents are choosing to tell their stories.Company Confessions also reveals the steps taken by the agency to counter such leaks - including breaking into publishing houses to steal manuscripts, putting authors on trial and creating a secret programme of authorised 'memoirs' to repair the reputational damage.Based on interviews, private correspondence and secret files, Christopher Moran examines why America's spies are so happy to spill the beans on the service, and looks at the damage done when they leak America's secrets.