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.


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 tells the previously 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.


Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the ‘shadow’ war, from the chain-smoking Pentagon official running an off-the-books spy operation to the CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash.


At the heart of the book is the story of two proud 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.