CIA Life: 10,000 Days With the Agency

by Tom Gilligan

CIA LIFE: 10,000 Days in the Agency sets the stage for understanding the internal and external causes for the massive Counterintelligence failures of the past decade (Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen etc.) as well as America's most recent National Intelligence failure, that of September 11, 2001. CIA LIFE is an inside Operations Officer description of Agency developments over the three-decade period preceding the fall of the Soviet Union. In this Second Edition, Tom Gilligan shows how U.S. Congress success in destroying CIA Covert Action capabilities has made the President and the country reliant exclusively in the 21st century on overt military response to international threats such as Terrorism. CIA LIFE gives prospective CIA Operations Officers an unvarnished look at both the career and the institution they - and their families -- will be joining. CIA LIFE identifies also the principles that must guide future Covert Operations if we are to avoid the disasters that would await an ill-informed and weakened America whose future options are sending in the Marines or surrendering key areas of the world to the Terrorists, the Narcotics Traffickers, the Illegal Weapons proliferators, and the International Financial Criminal networks. The author, Tom Gilligan, served 28 years in CIA's Operations Directorate and was responsible for forewarning DCI Helms and the White House on Marxist Salvador Allende's 1970 electoral victory in Chile, later managed the undercover CIA Operation that penetrated international criminal networks, including BCCI, and worked in "deep cover" Operations for more than half of his career. As America wrestles with the future direction of CIA in this dangerous world, CIA LIFE is essential for understanding what is right, what is wrong, and what is needed to restore solid leadership and direction to this necessary organization in the War on Terror.

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2003