[1] The book discusses how the CIA works and how its original purpose (i.e. collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers) has, according to the author, been subverted by its obsession with clandestine operations.

Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles, reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce, finance, and labor.

The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism.

Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader.

And its worldwide war against communism has to some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available.