The Secret Service arranged interviews with a range of Secret Service officials, gave demonstrations and tours of the agency’s training center and the most secret headquarters components, gave approval to former agents to talk with me, and provided photos and compiled data in response to questions.
Mark Sullivan, director of the Secret Service; James W. Mackin, deputy assistant director of Government and Public Affairs; Eric P. Zahren, special agent in charge of that office; and Edwin Donovan, assistant special agent in charge of that office, have my appreciation for their help.
In the end, more than a hundred current or former agents up to the level of director and deputy director agreed to be interviewed, either on the record or without attribution. I am grateful to them for providing what I believe is a complete portrait of an agency that is a bulwark of our democracy. My hope is that the problems revealed in the book will lead to reforms that could avert a calamity.
Also by Ronald Kessler
The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack
Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady
A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush
The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror
The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI
The Season: The Secret Life of Palm Beach and America’s Richest Society
Inside Congress: The Shocking Scandals, Corruption, and Abuse of Power Behind the Scenes on Capitol Hill
The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded
Inside the White House: The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Institution
The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency
Inside the CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency
Escape from the CIA: How the CIA Won and Lost the Most Important KGB Spy Ever to Defect to the U.S.
The Spy in the Russian Club: How Glenn Souther Stole America’s Nuclear War Plans and Escaped to Moscow
Moscow Station: How the KGB Penetrated the American Embassy
Spy vs. Spy: Stalking Soviet Spies in America
The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi
The Life Insurance Game
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Ronald Kessler
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-307-46137-7
v3.0