The Way of the Knife

_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 in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war_

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_ is the 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.

This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk,

lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed

as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies

just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled

instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of

accountability during wartime.

Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the

shadow war, from a CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard

way how the spy games in Pakistan are played to the chain-smoking Pentagon

official running an off-the-books spy operation, from a Virginia socialite

whom the Pentagon hired to gather intelligence about militants in Somalia to a

CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash.

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