Provides an account of the history of covert operations in the Middle East, looking at how the United States and other Western powers have tried to establish control over the region's resources and commerce, while at the same time working to prevent the spread of communism.

Prologue: Stories from the bazaar -- Assassination -- The Mahdi -- The eclipse of imperial Islam -- Jihad for all occasions -- A new caliph -- Middle East delusions : the Great Arab Revolt -- Spies, adventurers, and religious warriors -- Absolute faith : the Muslim Brotherhood and the politics of intelligence -- The British-Jewish military alliance -- Kill the mufti : politics and blowback -- By blood and fire -- The CIA and Nasser : a Muslim Billy Graham -- The road to perdition : the Gehlen Organization -- A new kind of war : subversive operations and the CIA -- Nasser's Nazis -- A legacy of coups : Anglo-American intervention in Syria -- America's eyes in the Middle East : the CIA and Israeli intelligence -- The Iranian jihad -- Espionage, religion, and war in the Northwest Frontier -- Pakistan's inter-service intelligence and organized terror in South Asia -- Chronology -- Dramatis personae.