What We Won

Reviews:

"The foremost intelligence and policy expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan has produced a vital and concise history of America's first engagement in that pivotal part of the world that is still President Obama's war today. This book is both cogent history and dramatic lesson."

—Bob Woodward, Washington Post

"An exceptionally fine piece of work by someone superbly qualified to address the subject with authority and perspective, it changed my mind on several key issues and players in the war."

—John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of the CIA and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies

“A penetrating analysis of America's covert war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 and of the important lessons of that ‘secret war’. In What We Won, Bruce Riedel shows once again that he ranks with the most authoritative voices on this episode, providing a brilliant chronicle of the development of the Afghan covert operation and offering an unblinking assessment of the consequences of the mujahedin defeat of the Soviets."

—General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army (Retired)

Description:

In February 1989, the CIA?S chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple message: "We Won." It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history. In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the conflict that proved to be the final and decisive battle of the cold war. By answering the question-why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly?-Riedel presents a nuanced narrative about how, counterintuitively, America won this intelligence battle.