Dirty Wars

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, examines the United States' covert military campaigns. Small teams of operators, working around the world and at times inside the country, act on instructions from the White House to find, seize or kill people the president has named as enemies of the nation. Their work is paid for from classified budgets and includes targeted killings, abductions, and strikes carried out by drones and AC-130 gunships. The Bush administration built this apparatus, and the Obama administration expanded its reach and gave it greater standing. Scahill traces the consequences of the doctrine that "the world is a battlefield."

The book reports from Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia, places where these operations take place largely beyond journalists' view and with little meaningful oversight from Congress or public debate. Scahill profiles the people who carry out these secret missions and documents the civilians who die in the violence that has become official policy.

A central thread follows an American citizen whom his own government put on a list for assassination, showing how a single decision can reach a specific individual far from any battlefield.