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A “colorful and fascinating” history of the CIA and its clandestine activities overseas from the Cold War to 9/11 and the War on Terror (The Washington Post Book World).Investigative reporter Ronald Kessler draws on his unprecedented access to CIA insiders to tell the full story of the agency and its spymasters. Kessler interviewed numerous current and retired CIA officers, including George Tenet and other top officials. He recounts the story of how Tenet transformed the CIA from a pathetic, risk averse outfit to one that has rounded up thousands of terrorists since 9/11.The CIA at War discloses highly sensitive information about its unorthodox methods, its stunning successes, and its shocking failures. The book explores whether the CIA can be trusted, whether its intelligence is politicized, and whether it is capable of winning the war on terror. In doing so, the book weaves in the history of the CIA and how it really works.From the CIA's intelligence failure of 9/11 to its critical role in preventing further attacks, The CIA at War tells a riveting, unique story about a secretive, powerful agency and its confrontation with global terrorism.

The unvarnished and unbiased inside story of President Donald Trump and his White House by New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler Based on exclusive interviews with the president and his staff, The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game tells the real story of what Donald Trump is like, who influences him, how he makes decisions, what he says about the people around him, and how he operates when the television lights go off, while portraying the inside story of the successes that have already brought solid results as well as the stumbles that have turned off even longtime supporters and undercut his agenda.The Trump White House reveals: • Trump aides Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have been responsible for Trump's most disastrous decisions. Trump is aware that his daughter and son-in-law are problems and has hinted to them that they should go back to New York. Seeing Jared on TV, Trump said, “Look at Jared, he looks like a little boy, like a child.” • First Lady Melania Trump has a tremendous impact on policy and strategy. She sits in on meetings and is widely admired by aides for her judgment. • Kellyanne Conway is the No. 1 White House leaker. • Trump's Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles proposed withdrawing protection from some Trump family members and aides to save money. Horrified White House staffers shot down the idea. • Trump has told friends that billionaires are constantly asking him to fix them up with longtime Communications Director Hope Hicks, a former model, but he says he refuses. • Trump calls certain reporters directly, feeding them stories attributed to “a senior White House official,” creating the impression that the White House leaks even more than it already does. Never before has an American president had so much impact on the country and the world in so short a time as Donald Trump. Yet no president has stirred so much controversy, dominating media coverage and conversation both pro and con. Months after Trump took office, consumer confidence hit a seventeen-year high, unemployment plummeted to the lowest level in seventeen years, and the stock market zoomed to repeated record highs. At the same time, ISIS was nearly defeated, Arab countries banded together to stop financing terrorists and promoting radical Islamic ideology, and Trump's decision to send missiles into Syria because of its use of chemical weapons and his strident warnings to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made it clear to adversaries that they take on the United States at their peril. Yet for all the media coverage, Trump remains a cipher. Ronald Kessler has known Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for two decades and understands him better than any other journalist. The book includes an exclusive interview with Trump, the only interview he says he has given or will give for a book as president. Crammed with media-grabbing revelations. The Trump White House is the unvarnished and unbiased inside story that answers the question: Who is Donald Trump?

From the bestselling author of The FBI comes another explosive work of investigative journalism, revealing the inner world of the CIA.Based on extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including several with former Directors of Central Intelligence, Inside the CIA is the first in-depth, unbiased account of the Agency's core operations, its abject failures, and its resounding successes. Kessler reveals how: -CIA analysts botched the job of foreseeing the Soviet economy's collapse -The Agency spies on every country in the world except Great Britain, Australia, and Canada -The CIA undertakes covert action to influence or overthrow foreign governments or political parties -The Agency trains its officers to break the laws of other countries Inside the CIA is an extraordinary guide to the world's most successful house of spies.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Ron Kessler appears to get everything first.”—Slate As in a play, presidents, vice presidents, and presidential candidates perform onstage for the public and the media. What the nation's leaders are really like and what goes on behind the scenes remain hidden. Secret Service agents have a front-row seat on their private lives and those of their wives and children. Crammed with new headline-making revelations, The First Family Detail by New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler tells that eye-opening, uncensored story. The First Family Detail reveals: • Vice President Joe Biden regularly orders the Secret Service to keep his military aide with the nuclear football a mile behind his motorcade, potentially leaving the country unable to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack. • Secret Service agents discovered that former president Bill Clinton has a blond mistress—code-named Energizer by agents—who lives near the Clintons'home in Chappaqua, New York. • The Secret Service covered up the fact that President Ronald Reagan's White House staff overruled the agency to let unscreened spectators get close to Reagan as he left the Washington Hilton, allowing John W. Hinckley Jr. to shoot the president. • Because Hillary Clinton is so nasty to agents, being assigned to her protective detail is considered a form of punishment and the worst assignment in the Secret Service. “Kessler's such a skilled storyteller, you almost forget this is dead-serious nonfiction.”—Newsweek

New York Times bestselling author reveals the FBI's most closely guarded secrets, with an insider look at the bureau's inner workings and intelligence investigations. Based on inside access and hundreds of interviews with federal agents, the book presents an unprecedented, authoritative window on the FBI's unique role in American history. From White House scandals to celebrity deaths, from cult catastrophes to the investigations of terrorists, stalkers, Mafia figures, and spies, the FBI becomes involved in almost every aspect of American life. Kessler shares how the FBI caught spy Robert Hanssen in its midst as well as how the bureau breaks into homes, offices, and embassies to plant bugging devices without getting caught. With revelations about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, the recent Russian spy swap, Marilyn Monroe's death, Vince Foster's suicide, and even J. Edgar Hoover, The Secrets of the FBI presents headline-making disclosures about the most important figures and events of our time.

Palm Beach is known around the world as the most wealthy, glamorous, opulent, decadent, self-indulgent, sinful spot on earth. With their beautiful 3.75 square-island constantly in the media glare, Palm Beachers protect their impossibly rich society from outside scrutiny with vigilant police, ubiquitous personal security staffs, and screens of tall hedges encircling every mansion.To this bizarre suspicious, exclusive world, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler brought his charm, insight, and award-winning investigative skills, and came to know Palm Beach, its celebrated and powerful residents, and its exotic social rituals as no outside writer ever has. In this colorful, entertaining, and compulsively readable book. Kessler reveals the inside story of Palm Beach society as it moves languidly through the summer months, quickens in the fall, and shifts into frenetic high speed as the season begins in December, peaks in January and February, and continues into April.When unimaginable wealth combines with unlimited leisure time oil an island barely three times the size of New York's Central Park, human foibles and desires, lust and greed, passion and avarice, become magnified and intensified. Like laboratory rats fed growth hormones, the 9,800 Palm Beach residents—87 percent of whom are millionaires—exhibit the most outlandish extremes of their breed.To tell the story, Kessler follows four Palm Beachers through the season. These four characters—the reigning queen of Palm Beach society, the night manager of Palm Beach's trendiest bar, a gay'walker'who escorts wealthy women to balls, and a thirty—six-year-old gorgeous blonde who says she'can't find a guy in Palm Beach'—know practically everyone on the island and tell what goes on behind the scenes.Interweaving the yarns of these unfor-gettable figures with the lifestyle, history, scandals, lore, and rituals of a unique island of excess, The Season creates a powerful, seamless, juicy narrative that no novelist could dream up.

After conducting exclusive interviews with more than one hundred current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time.Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service, that elite corps of agents who pledge to take a bullet to protect the president and his family. Kessler portrays the dangers that agents face and how they carry out their missions--from how they are trained to how they spot and assess potential threats. With fly-on-the-wall perspective, he captures the drama and tension that characterize agents'lives and reveals what they have seen, providing startling, previously untold stories about the presidents, from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as about their families, Cabinet officers, and White House aides.

“You make a mistake, there are dead people.” —FBI Special Agent Art Cummings, head of international counterterrorism operations Drawing on unprecedented access to FBI and CIA counterterrorism operatives, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler presents the chilling story of terrorists'relentless efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the heroic efforts being made to stop those plots. Kessler takes you inside the war rooms of this battle—from the newly created National Counterterrorism Center to FBI headquarters, from the CIA to the National Security Agency, from the Pentagon to the Oval Office—to explain why we have gone so long since 9/11 without a successful attack and to reveal the many close calls we never hear about. The race to stop the terrorists, Kessler shows, is more desperate than ever.Based on exclusive interviews with FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director Michael Hayden, White House Counterterrorism Chief Fran Townsend, and dozens of key intelligence operatives at all levels, The Terrorist Watch:• tells the previously unreported story of how the United States helped thwart the 2006 London terrorist plot, broke up terrorist cells in Canada, and prevented numerous other attacks • reveals how the CIA and FBI have rolled up more than 5,000 terrorists worldwide since 9/11 • provides a stunning insider's account from the FBI agent who spent eight months debriefing Saddam Hussein after his capture• pinpoints press leaks that have resulted in CIA agents'deaths, caused foreign countries to stop cooperating on key investigations, and even tipped off Osama bin Laden to U.S. surveillance• destroys numerous media myths, such as the canard that the FBI and CIA still don't cooperate on investigations • discloses the truth about the number of U.S. mosques where imans preach jihad• shows how the intelligence community has radically changed its mission—and how the media have misled the public about those changes Never before has a journalist gained such access to the FBI, the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the other agencies that are doing the unheralded work of finding and capturing terrorists. Ronald Kessler's you-are-there narrative tells the real story of the war on terror and will transform the way you view the greatest problem of our age.

When Laura Bush moved into the White House on January 20, 2001, everyone wanted to know what kind of first lady she would be. Would she be like Mamie Eisenhower? Would she follow in Barbara Bush's footsteps? Would she be another Hillary Clinton?“I think I'll just be Laura Bush,” she would say.On Saturday, April 30, 2005, the world got a glimpse of what that meant when she pushed aside the leader of the free world and stole the show at the White House Correspondents'Association dinner. Wearing a shimmering lime green Oscar de la Renta gown, Laura wisecracked that she was a “desperate housewife” married to a president who was always asleep at nine.Replayed constantly on the air, the stand-up routine with its impeccable comedic timing turned the first lady into a glittering star. But while the performance catapulted her to new status, it did not answer the question of who this former teacher and librarian really is and just what role she plays in influencing her husband and shaping his administration. The Bushes are more effective than the FBI or CIA at keeping secret what goes on behind the scenes at the White House, the ranch, or Camp David.Now, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler draws back that curtain in the first biography of Laura Bush to be written with White House cooperation. Based on interviews with her closest friends and confidantes from childhood to the present, as well as family members and administration heavyweights like Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card, Kessler paints a portrait of a woman who, even as she ascended to the heights of political fortune and power, never lost touch with the bedrock American values she absorbed in her youth.In this unprecedented account, Kessler reveals:How Laura's opinions have brought budget changes to a range of federal agencies and have affected her husband's policies, appointments, and worldview.Why Laura told her press secretary in May 2001 she did not want to do any more media interviews.What President Bush said to Laura at the dinner table after giving the “go” for the invasion of Iraq, and what his father, former President George H. W. Bush, wrote him the next day about the war.What Laura's own political opinions are and what her relationship with twin daughters Jenna and Barbara is really like.What Laura says in private about Hillary Clinton, media attacks on her husband, and his victory in the 2004 election.And why Laura, at the age of seventeen, missed a stop sign and caused a fatal accident that tragically left one of her best friends dead.LAURA BUSH offers a remarkable look at the private world of this famously reserved woman, as well as the beliefs and attitudes that shape it. The book will surprise readers whose knowledge of the first lady comes from cautious media interviews and speeches.Laura Bush's approval rating stands at 85 percent. Since opinion polls first began asking about them, no first lady has received a higher rating. This moving biography is the first to penetrate the secret world of the president's stealth counselor who is one of our most admired public figures.

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler goes inside the infamously lavish life of billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, once the richest man in the world.He made more money than anyone in history. And he spent it at a dizzying clip of $330,000 a day, every day of the year. He was Adnan Mohamed Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian middleman who started out with nothing and in twenty-five years parlayed his connections to the Saudi royal family and genius at dealing with people into a fortune of colossal proportions.Uncle to Dodi Al-Fayed, Princess Diana's once boyfriend before a fatal car crash and Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist allegedly murdered in Istanbul, Adnan Khashoggi's American Express bill often exceeded $1 million. When he felt like having spaghetti, he flew to Venice for dinner on one of his three commercial-size airplanes. One of his luxury yachts, the 282-foot Nabila, was considered the most opulent modern yacht afloat and was borrowed for a James Bond movie. He even sold Donald Trump one of his 285-foot luxury super yachts for $200 million, although it is now in the hands of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. This remarkable book is a rare glimpse into a life of opulence beyond most people's wildest imaginings--a compelling closeup of a complex and driven man who has explored the outer reaches of success, power, and all that money can buy.

From the New York Times bestselling author of 20 books about the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA comes the detailed account of the life and times of the ambitious, powerful, masterfully manipulative Joseph Patrick Kennedy.For all his wealth and power, Joe Kennedy was not a happy man. He also had no shame. What he cared about was having power. Through the political dynasty that he founded, he achieved that for generations to come. If he hurt and corrupted others in the process, no one had the courage to challenge him.The results are the myths that continue to enshrine the Kennedy family and maintain it as a national obsessions. This book explodes those myths. Utilizing extensive research and interviews with Kennedy family members and their intimates, speaking on record for the first time, Kessler reveals stunning details of Joseph Kennedy's enormous accomplishments and the terrible personal losses he suffered.