Short Synopsis
The Ghosts of Langley will be essential listening for anyone who cares about the next phase of American history—and the CIA's evolution—as its past informs its future and a president of impulsive character prods the agency toward new scandals and failures.

Full Synopsis
During his first visit to Langley, the CIA's Virginia headquarters, President Donald Trump told those gathered, "I am so behind you . . . there's nobody I respect more," hinting that he was going to put more CIA operations officers into the field so the CIA could smite its enemies ever more forcefully. But while Trump was making these promises, behind the scenes the CIA was still reeling from blowback from the very tactics that Trump touted—including secret overseas prisons and torture—that it had resorted to a decade earlier during President George W. Bush's war on terror. Under the latest regime it seemed that the CIA was doomed to repeat its past failures rather than put its house in order.

The Ghosts of Langley is a provocative and panoramic new history of the Central Intelligence Agency that relates the agency's current predicament to its founding and earlier years, telling the story of the agency through the eyes of key figures in CIA history, including some of its most troubling covert actions around the world. It reveals how the agency, over seven decades, has resisted government accountability, going rogue in a series of highly questionable ventures that reach their apotheosis with the secret overseas prisons and torture programs of the war on terror.

"The narration by Charles Constant is clear, and his skillful use of inflection to convey a point only adds to the experience." ---Library Journal Audio Review

"John Prados, who knows more than anyone else about the CIA, has written a book that summarizes four decades of his research and relates a tale that is always gripping, often dismaying, frequently infuriating, and suddenly more timely than ever." ---H.W. Brands, New York Times bestselling author of The First American

"The Ghosts of Langley is a relentless portrait of the Agency, crafted with vivid stories about its zealots, its ignored heroes and celebrated schemers." ---Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer

"John Prados is a one-man truth commission who wants to know three things---what the United States really wanted, really feared and really did in the world since the birth of the CIA in 1947. His latest book, The Ghosts of Langley, offers a deep look into that history." ---Thomas Powers, author of The Man Who Kept Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA


"Writing with characteristic verve and passion and exploiting his unsurpassed expertise, John Prados has produced an account of the CIA’s origin, evolution, and behavior certain to engage and inform scholars, practitioners, and general readers." ---Richard Immerman, professor and Marvin Wachman Director Emeritus, Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Temple University