Good Hunting An American Spymaster's Story

by Devine, Jack; Loeb, Vernon

• ISBN13: 9780374130329
• ISBN10: 0374130329
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-06-03
• Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books

Summary

Jack Devine is one of the legendary spymasters of our time. He was in Chile when Pinochet fell; he ran Charlie Wilson's war in Afghanistan; he had too much to do for his own taste with Iran-Contra, though he tried to stop it; he caught Pablo Escobar in Columbia; he tried to warn George Tenet that there was a bullet coming from Iraq with his name on it. Devine served America's interests for more than thirty years in a wide range of covert operations, ultimately overseeing the entire Directorate of Operations, a CIA division that watches over thousands of American covert operatives worldwide.Good Hunting is his guide to the art of spycraft, told with great wit, candor, and commonsense wisdom. Caricatured by Hollywood, lionized by the right, and pilloried by the left, the CIA remains one of the least-understood instruments of the United States government. Devine knows more than almost anyone about the CIA's vital importance as a tool of American statecraft. Now, as he sees it, the agency is trapped within a larger bureaucracy, losing swaths of turf to the military, and, most ominous of all, being transformed into a paramilitary organization. Its capacity to do what it does best has been seriously degraded.In wonderfully readable prose, Good Hunting aims to set the record straight. This is a revelatory inside look at an organization whose history has not been given its real due.

Author Biography

Jack Devine is a thirty-two-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also a founding partner and the president of the Arkin Group, which specializes in international crisis management, strategic intelligence, investigative research, and business problem solving.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

 

Introduction

1. Inside the Invisible Government

2. Mules, Pickup Trucks, and Stinger Missiles

3. "Your Friend Called from the Airport"

4. "We Need to Polygraph Him"

5. "Jack, This Changes It All, Doesn't It?"

6. Do I Lie to the Pope, or Break Cover?

7. Selling the Linear Strategy, One Lunch at a Time

8. Jousting with the Soviets: When I Knew It Was Over

9. A New Boss, a Bad Penny, and a Principled Heroin Dissent

10. The Rooster and the Train

11. Raising the Bar

12. Undisclosed

13. Splitting a Steak

14. Good Hunting

Postscript