Lost Crusader - The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby

" John Prados does a better job of explaining and defending William Colby than the controversial director of the CIA did for himself in his own memoirs. Colby was a classic old boy - schooled in secret intelligence during the Second World War, quick to rejoin the CIA when it was gearing up to fight the Cold War, a true believer during America's disastrous adventure in Vietnam. But Colby also became the CIA's first champion of openness, and he helped save the agency from itself during the scandals of the 1970s. Nobody knows this history better than Prados; in Lost Crusader he has written a lively narrative that is a fine one-volume introduction to the history of American intelligence. " Thomas Powers, Author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA and Heisenberg's War: The Secret History o f the German Bomb. " John Prado's biography of legendary Cold War spymaster William Colby is a formidable achievement by a wonderfully accessible historian. Through the prisme of Colby's controversial CIA career, Prados has written a gripping and revealing new history of our intelligence Establishment. In the wake of the 9 / 11 tragedy, as Congress begins to investigate yet another intelligence failure, Lost Crusader is a timely reminder of the importance of knowing our hidden history. " Kai Bird, author of The Color of Truth: mcgeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms and The Chairman: John McCloy & The Making of the American Establishment. " John Prados, in a meticulously researched biography of William Colby, has also produced an insightful history of the CIA - in Vietnam and Washington corridors of power. This is a book that delivers far more than the life of a secret man ". Thomas B. Allen, co-author of Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage.