Publisher, Tantor Audio (March 2010)

NOTE: RETAIL EDITIONS are packaged in attractive, compact cardboard, jewel-case or DVD shrink-wrapped cases, with full-color art.

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The Reluctant Spy reveals the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the truth behind the torture debate, and the incredible dedication of ordinary men and women doing one of the most extraordinary jobs on earth.

Long before the water boarding controversy exploded in the media, one CIA agent had already gone public. In a groundbreaking 2007 interview with ABC News, John Kiriakou called water boarding torture---but admitted that it probably worked. This book, at once a confessional, an adventure story, and a chronicle of Kiriakou's life in the CIA, stands as an important, eloquent piece of testimony from a committed American patriot.

In February 2002, Kiriakou was the head of counterterrorism in Pakistan. Under his command, in a spectacular raid coordinated with Pakistani agents and the CIA's best intelligence analyst, Kiriakou's field officers took down the infamous terrorist Abu Zubaydah. For days, Kiriakou became the wounded terrorist's personal "bodyguard." In circumstances stranger than fiction, as al-Qaeda agents scoured the streets for their captured leader, the best trauma surgeon in America was flown to Pakistan to make sure that Zubaydah did not die.

In The Reluctant Spy, Kiriakou takes us into the fight against an enemy fueled by fanaticism. He chillingly describes what it was like inside the CIA headquarters on the morning of 9/11, the agency leaders who stepped up and those who protected their careers. And in what may be the book's most shocking revelation, he describes how the White House made plans to invade Iraq a full year before the CIA knew about it---or could attempt to stop it.

Chronicling both mind-boggling mistakes and heroic acts of individual courage, The Reluctant Spy is essential listening for anyone who wishes to understand the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the truth behind the torture debate, and the incredible dedication of ordinary men and women doing one of the most extraordinary jobs on earth.

About the Authors: John Kiriakou is a senior investigator on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, focusing on the Middle East, South Asia, and international terrorism. He served in the Central Intelligence Agency from 1990 to 2004, first as an analyst and later as a counterterrorism operations officer. He was later named executive assistant to the CIA's Associate Deputy Director for Operations, in which capacity he was intimately involved in planning the Iraq War. His op-eds on the Middle East and Afghanistan have appeared in more than eighty newspapers in dozens of countries.

Michael Ruby is an award-winning journalist who has worked for BusinessWeek, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His book collaborations include Don Hewitt's Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television.

About the Narrator: Arthur Morey has performed in theaters and cabarets in New York, Chicago, and Milan. He freelanced scripts for Paramount and ABC-TV and won awards for both plays and fiction. A former literary manager of Chicago’s Body Politic Theatre, he taught acting at Fordham and writing at SUNY Rockland, Northwestern University, and the School of the Art Institute. He edited Viola Spolin for Northwestern University Press and later was managing editor at Renaissance Books in Los Angeles. Winner of three Earphones Awards, he has narrated novels by John Irving, Nathan Englander, Richard Russo, and John Burnam Schwartz, as well as nonfiction by Kurt Eichenwald, John McCain, George Tenet, Deepak Chopra, Gay Talese, and others.