Promotional Information

For decades the FBI has been seen as the ultimate crime-fighting force. In Enemies, Tim Weiner reveals its true role- as America's secret police.

About the Author

Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times where he has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and fifteen other nations. He was based for a decade in Washington, DC, where he covered the CIA and the military - the last topic being the basis for his famous book Blank Check- The Pentagon's Black Budget. His latest book is Legacy of Ashes- The History of the CIA (2007).

Reviews

Truly impressive ... [Enemies] could have been put together only by a journalist of Weiner's stature -- Keith Lowe * Sunday Telegraph *
A history that moves at the pace of a James Ellroy novel. But Weiner's truth is wilder even than Ellroy's fiction. Weiner sets the record straight on the FBI's first 100 years using only the Bureau's documents and oral testimony, most of which has never been seen -- David Blackburn * Spectator *
An outstanding piece of work, even-handed, exhaustively researched, smoothly written and thematically timely ... This is certainly the most complete book we are likely to see about the F.B.I.'s intelligence-gathering operations, from Emma Goldman to Osama bin Laden -- Bryan Burrough * New York Times *
Extensively researched, admirably understated, yet terrifically entertaining * Boston Globe *
Important and disturbing ... Weiner lays bare a record of embarrassing, even stunning failure, in which the bureau's lawlessness was matched only by its incompetence ... [he] has done prodigious research, yet tells this depressing story with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller * New York Times Book Review *
A fascinating account of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterespionage snooping over the past century ... A very good read * Wall Street Journal *
An authoritative and often frightening history of what has been, in effect, America's secret police ... A sober, monumental and unflinchingly critical account of a problematic institution * Kirkus Reviews *
An important, judicious account of the tension between national security and civil liberties * Publishers Weekly *
Fascinating ... an important and biting inquiry into an agency that protects Americans in a dangerous world while straining against the limitations we rightly impose upon it * San Francisco Chronicle *
[A] masterpiece ... reads like a thriller, but don't let the heart-pumping prose fool you ... a scholarly tour de force that will be an instant classic for any serious student of American national security -- Amy Zegart (author of Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI and the Origins of 9/11)
Fast-paced, fair-minded and fascinating ... turns the long history of the FBI into a story that is as compelling, and important, as today's headlines -- Jeffrey Toobin (author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court)
Riveting ... goes so deep into the agency's skullduggery, readers feel they are tapping the phones along with J. Edgar Hoover. This is a book that every American who cares about civil liberties should read -- Jane Mayer (author of The Dark Side)
The most comprehensive history of the FBI as an intelligence agency we have ever had ... essential reading for anyone concerned about American civil liberties -- Robert Dallek (author of John F. Kennedy)