Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins

Surprise... your target.

Kill... your enemy.

Vanish... without a trace.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units.
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.

• Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
• The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency
• Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis
• Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
• All Secure: A Delta Force Operator's Fight to Survive on the Battlefield and the Homefront
• Alone at Dawn: Medal of Honor Recipient John Chapman and the Untold Story of the World's Deadliest Special Operations Force
• To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence
• The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War
• Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations
• The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy)