Interview: Tim Weiner and 100 years of the FBI

It was a glorious spring day, but Tim Weiner was thinking about the folly of men. “It’s a beautiful day outside. I go past a statue of [Field Marshal] Haig and I remembered all those poor bastards who died on beautiful spring days.”

Weiner has made a career documenting folly — and deceit. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 reporting on black budget spending at the Pentagon and the CIA, and has spent the succeeding 24 years examining the American intelligence community. He is in London promoting his latest book, Enemies: A history of the FBI.

Enemies is a history that moves at the pace of a James Ellroy novel. But Weiner’s truth is wilder even than Ellroy’s fiction. Weiner sets the record straight on the FBI’s first 100 years using only the Bureau’s documents and oral testimony, most of which has never been seen. He offers no opinions, just facts.