Undaunted: My Fight Against America's Enemies, At Home and Abroad

by John O. Brennan

Overview

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**

"John Brennan is one of the hardest-working, most patriotic public servants I've ever seen, and our country is better off for it. As president, he was one of my closest advisors and a great friend. And in his memoir, Undaunted, you'll see why. I hope you'll read it."
—President Barack Obama

A powerful and revelatory memoir from former CIA director John Brennan, spanning his more than thirty years in government.

Friday, January 6, 2017: On that day, as always, John Brennan’s alarm clock was set to go off at 4:15 a.m. But nothing else about that day would be routine. That day marked his first and only security briefing with President-elect Donald Trump. And it was also the day John Brennan said his final farewell to Owen Brennan, his father, the man who had taught him the lessons of goodness, integrity, and honor that had shaped the course of an unparalleled career serving his country from within the intelligence community.

In this brutally honest memoir, Brennan, the son of an Irish immigrant who settled in New Jersey, describes the life that took him from being a young CIA recruit enamored with the mystique of spy work, secretly defiant enough to drive a motorcycle and sport a diamond earring, and invigorated by his travels in the Middle East to being the most powerful individual in American intelligence. He details his experiences with very different presidents and what it’s been like to bear responsibility for some of the nation’s most crucial and polarizing national security decisions.

He pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of the Agency, describing the selfless, patriotic, and invisible work of the women and men involved in national security. He also examines the insularity, arrogance, and myopia that have, at times, undermined its reputation in the eyes of the American people and of members of other branches of government. Through topics ranging from George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq to his thoughts on the CIA’s controversial use of enhanced interrogation techniques to his eye-opening account of the planning of the raid that resulted in Bin Ladin’s death to his realization that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election, Brennan brings the reader behind the scenes of some of the most crucial moments in recent U.S. history. He also candidly discusses the times he has failed to live up to his own high standards and the very public fallouts that have resulted. With its behind-the-scenes look at how major U.S. national security policies and actions unfolded during his long and distinguished career—especially during his eight years in the Obama administration—John Brennan’s memoir is a work of history with strong implications for the future of America and our country’s relationships with other world powers.

Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad offers a rare and insightful look at the often-obscured world of national security, the intelligence profession, and Washington’s chaotic political environment. But more than that, it is a portrait of a man striving for integrity; for himself, for the CIA, and for his country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250241771
Publisher:	Celadon Books
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	111,103
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

John O. Brennan was one of President Obama's most trusted national security advisors during all eight years of the Obama Administration, first as assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism and then as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Brennan had previously worked in the CIA from 1980 to 2005, where he specialized in Middle Eastern affairs and counterterrorism and served as President Clinton's daily intelligence briefer. Mr. Brennan received a bachelor's degree in political science from Fordham University in 1977 and a master's degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Preface 1

1 Friday, January 6, 2017 5

2 Jersey Boy 20

3 Coming of Age 31

4 Discovering the Middle East 37

5 "So, You Are Interested in Joining the CIA?" 43

6 Out of Operations 54

7 John of Arabia 67

8 Analyze This 78

9 Countering Terror 84

10 Briefing the "First Customers" 92

11 Saudi Arabia Redux 106

12 Back at Langley During Stormy Times 118

13 Falling Short 129

14 The Challenge of a Government "Start-Up" 138

15 A New TAC(K) 155

16 Joining the Obama Team 168

17 Working in the West Wing 189

18 Taking Life to Save Life 209

19 The "Pacer" of Abbottabad 225

20 Factoring in Fourth-Order Effects 249

21 Second Shot at the Best Job in Government 272

22 Stirring the CIA Pot 284

23 A Tortured Senate Report 302

24 Oh, the People I've Met 331

25 Dealing with Russian Intrigue 349

26 What the Hell Just Happened? 378

27 Undaunted 391

Acknowledgments 411

Glossary 417

Principal Characters 425

Index 433

Editorial Reviews

2020-10-06
Former CIA director Brennan gives a fly-on-the-wall view of life in Langley as well as a host of global hot spots.

After the usual autobiographical preliminaries—“While my birth roots are in the urban jungle of Hudson County, I come from 100 percent rural Irish stock”—Brennan recounts a few formational encounters abroad: landing in Indonesia not long after the government had murdered untold numbers of suspected communists, with CIA support; or chasing down bad guys who might wind up in an offshore rendition site being tortured—though, writes the author, “Agency officers who carried out their covert-action responsibilities consistent with…lawful interrogation procedures, by definition, were not involved in the unlawful activity of ‘torture.’ ” Two principal events figure in the text. The first, ably narrated, is the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the subsequent negotiations about what to do with his bullet-riddled body; Brennan reveals that the Saudi leadership, offered the chance to bury him in his homeland, were perfectly fine with dumping him in the Indian Ocean. The second is the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election; here, the author is unsparing, as when he describes an intelligence briefing to high-level members of Congress: “The fact that the Russians attempted to undermine the integrity of the presidential election was well known to all those gathered around the conference table that morning, even if most of the Republicans were following Donald Trump’s lead in publicly downplaying, if not denying, the Russian role.” Brennan goes out of his way to scorn Trump, whose victory in 2016 threw him for a loop: “I could not understand how so many voters thought he was qualified—intellectually, morally, ethically, temperamentally, or experientially—to be president of the United States.” His scorn, of course, was reciprocated when, against all precedent, Trump removed his security clearance after Brennan retired.

Not likely to sway established opinions about Trump but offers plenty of damning evidence.

Kirkus Reviews

"John Brennan is one of the hardest-working, most patriotic public servants I've ever seen, and our country is better off for it. As president, he was one of my closest advisors and a great friend. And in his memoir, Undaunted, you'll see why. I hope you'll read it."
—President Barack Obama

"Brennan’s memoir presents a rich portrait of his unusual life, which took him from a working-class New Jersey neighborhood to a position as a Middle East specialist who met with kings and presidents and witnessed the rise of Al Qaeda...[His] reflections on his long and momentous career are a worthy addition to the available history of the post-9/11 era."
—The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

"It’s a full Brennan, from beginning to end. This is a headstrong and unapologetic book, one whose author tells us what he really thinks."
—The Washington Post

"Former CIA director Brennan gives a fly-on-the-wall view of life in Langley"
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher