It's been said that spying is the world's second oldest profession. The Central Intelligence Agency is without a doubt the most mysterious of all US law enforcement agencies. The CIA's primary mission is to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the President and senior U.S. governmental policymakers in making decisions relating to national security. To this end, the Agency recruits the finest minds in the fields of science, engineering, economics, linguistics, mathematics, and computer science. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to the CIA will also detail the origins of the agency, its often colorful and sometimes even comical missions (.i.e., poisoning Fidel Castro's beard); its evolution from the O.S.S.; its failures and successes, the key players past, present, and future; the CIA's role in wartime and in peacetime; and where the rapidly unfolding events of a very unstable world will take the Agency in the 21st century.