Chris Whipple’s “The Spymasters” is masterful at every level, the best book about the CIA I’ve ever read. Its revelations are eye-popping, alternately exhilarating and depressing, as he tells the story of the people who have guided our nation—and misguided it. It will make you proud, and depressed. It will also cause you to lose sleep, not just because of the dangers we face but because it’s so damned riveting it will keep you up until all hours. How he managed to pull so much history together, how he extracted such a wealth of detail from his principal sources—the CIA leaders themselves—is quite simply mind-boggling. This is an important book. And one hell of a story.

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

New York Times bestselling author of The White House Mess and Thank You for Smoking

Better than anyone, Chris Whipple knows how to root out the secrets buried deeply in the federal bureaucracy, and turning his eye to the CIA he’s done it again. When he gives the most secret of our agencies a good shaking the headline stories and secrets come tumbling out—tales of gut-wrenching valor, inexplicable mistakes, ethical dilemmas, even a revelation concerning table manners (Reagan’s spy chief Bill Casey used his tie as a napkin). This is the CIA with the bark off and Washington reporting at its best.

BOB SCHIEFFER

CBS News, former anchor, Face the Nation

Chris Whipple is an accomplished historian, hard-nosed journalist, and master story teller with a knack of getting to the heart of an issue. His latest book, The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, is a must read for anyone interested in America’s intelligence gathering and national security.

JAMES A. BAKER, III

61st U.S. Secretary of State.

In his compelling new book, The Spymasters, Chris Whipple does for the CIA and Washington, D.C. what Plutarch did for those whose job it was to expand and defend the glory of Rome—drawn an indelible portrait of how the servants of government seek to know and control the world. Whipple’s reach is wide. He tells the stories of eighteen men and one woman who have run the CIA over the last fifty years. One theme emerges from the career of each—how difficult it is to tell presidents anything they don’t want to hear.

THOMAS POWERS

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA

A welcome and fascinating look at the men and women who dedicate their lives to the mission of spycraft. Whipple parts the curtains on the dark art to show the triumphs and failures, the personalities and rivalries of those who work in the shadows of espionage.

TOM BROKAW

Special Correspondent for NBC News and bestselling author of The Greatest Generation

Here’s a secret: The best way to learn the history of the CIA is from the top, and Chris Whipple goes there, with amazingly candid interviews with the spymasters. This engrossing, well-researched book also breaks new ground with the untold story of the CIA’s biggest-ever manhunt.

JONATHAN ALTER

Author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life 

Provides astute profiles of the men, and one woman, in charge of the modern Central Intelligence Agency, and the presidents for whom they have worked. At a time when America’s intelligence community is under attack from conspiracy theories and fake news, Whipple provides a real-world history of those who have held one of the most difficult posts in Washington. These portraits are accurate, fair and informative.

JOHN W. DEAN

Nixon Administration White House Counsel and bestselling author of Conservatives Without Conscience

Chris Whipple has previously garnered wide acclaim for his history of the White House chiefs of staff. He now replicates that methodology with equal success in this history of CIA directors from Richard Helms to Gina Haspel. His group portrait of the DCIs offers a highly readable, fair, and well researched history of the CIA over the past fifty years. He comes neither to pillory the CIA nor to praise it but, rather, to understand it—and he fully succeeds.

MAX BOOT

New York Times bestselling author The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize)

The job of CIA Director is as difficult as it is important. He or she must predict the future while steering through a moral morass. No wonder the spymasters in Chris Whipple’s engrossing story so often trip up. Whipple is at once clear-eyed and fair-minded while giving us a riveting read.

EVAN THOMAS

New York Times bestselling author of The Very Best Men

A riveting history of the CIA told from the top down, focusing on the spy agency’s colorful, and often controversial, directors. Chris Whipple’s The Spymasters is a timely reminder of the outsized influence of our nation’s intelligence bureaucracy—and the men and women who live in this wilderness of mirrors. ‘They were all asked to do things they shouldn’t do,’ says Cynthia Helms, wife of the legendary CIA Director Richard Helms. Whipple explores these ethical quandaries with nuance and fairness.

KAI BIRD

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, and Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at City University of New York’s Graduate Center

Chris Whipple has in recent years become something of a Washington elite-whisperer. In The Spymasters—as in his equally masterful book, The Gatekeepers—he gets almost everyone to spill their secrets.

DAVID FRIEND

Vanity Fair