Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination.

Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. “I believe that what the source told me is true, to him.From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units.

Jacobsen later refused to name her sole source for this cockamamie story and not-so-cleverly insisted, This is a book in which she claims that an unidentified flying object cited in 1948 was actually a flying saucer sent by Joseph Stalin and flown by mutant, bug-eyed teenagers created by the notorious Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele. Dick Teresi critically reviewed Jacobsen’s “Phenomena,” a silly book about the paranormal, and archly observed that “Jacobsen’s sources should have used mind control to get her a more receptive Times reviewer.” Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes called one of her books (“Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base”) an “error-ridden job of reporting” and accused her of being “at a minimum extraordinarily gullible or journalistically incompetent.” Rhodes was being gentle.

Her topics - Nazi scientists, UFOs, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the history of government-financed investigations of the paranormal - must appeal to some readers’ desire for astounding revelations. Annie Jacobsen has a history of publishing sensational, conspiracy-driven books that sell well.

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