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CIA expert and best selling author, John Weisman will be discussing the shape of the U.S. intelligence community, and the culture inside the organization.

JOHN WEISMAN is one of the select company of writers whose books have appeared on both the fiction and nonfiction New York Times best-seller lists. John's latest work, Direct Action, will be released by HarperCollins/William Morrow on June 14. His 2004 hit, Jack in the Box, will be released simultaneously as a mass market paperback by Avon books.

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh called Jack in the Box "The insider’s insider spy novel." The Washington Times said that Weisman’s Jack in the Box “bolsters his growing stature as one of the best in the thriller business.”

Jack in the Box was one of two thrillers selected by National Public Radio book critic Alan Cheuse for his All Things Considered summer reading list. Cheuse called JIB "engrossing," and said "Reading [Jack in the Box] is like eating a meal of desserts. Jack in the Box is lavishly sprinkled with scenes and details of state of the art tradecraft."

Simultaneously with JIB, Morrow released a mass market paperback of John's 2003 hit, SOAR: A Black-Ops Mission. Former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen said of SOAR: "There are only a few authors who are able to climb inside the culture, mind-set, and passions of the people who conduct covert and special operations. In SOAR, John Weisman reveals why he's the best in the business in writing about it."

John's prior work includes the nine book Rogue Warrior series, with more than two million copies in print. The first, Rogue Warrior, the real-life story of Commander Richard Marcinko and the US Navy's elite counterterrorism unit, SEAL Team Six, spent eight months on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, four weeks at the #1 position. Rogue Warrior was the subject of a Mike Wallace 60 Minutes segment. John subsequently conceived, created, developed, and wrote Rogue Warrior's eight fictional sequels

John's much-acclaimed CIA short story, "There Are Monsterim," written for the 1996 anthology Unusual Suspects, was collected in Houghton Mifflin's Best American Mystery Stories of 1997," edited by Robert W. Parker. His most recent short fiction, "A Day in the Country," was published by Playboy in August, 2002 and selected by Best American Mystery Stories of 2003 as one of the year's most distinguished pieces of short suspense fiction.

In 1989, John wrote Shadow Warrior, the best-selling life story of Felix Rodriguez, the CIA agent who captured Che Guevara. The book was published by Simon and Schuster and was also the subject of a Mike Wallace 60 Minutes segment. Of Shadow Warrior, James Polk wrote in the Washington Post: "John le Carré would love this plot."

From 1989-1991, John was a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Washington Program for Communications Policy Studies of Northwestern University. There, he researched the symbiosis between effective communications policy and the development of a cohesive national drug strategy. Prior to his appointment, he was Washington, DC, Bureau Chief for TV Guide Magazine, a post he held since establishing the bureau in 1977. At TV Guide, John's articles ranged from spot news reporting of such breaking stories as the shooting of President Ronald Reagan and the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat, to lengthy analyses of television news coverage dealing with such varied subjects as undercover narcotics investigations, Soviet disinformation, video technology on the battlefield, and transnational terrorism. He has worked in more than three dozen countries on assignments that included covering wars in Central America and the Middle East. In 1985-1986, John was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations seminars on media and foreign policy.

He is also the author of three well-received novels. His first, Evidence (Viking), dealt with the ethos of reporting, and its psychological toll. The book was called "brilliant" by the New York Times. "[Evidence]," said the Times, "probes the mind of a dedicated newspaperman and a psychological cripple, written in realistic prose, with characters sharply delineated." The book was also a Times Summer Reading Guide selection. The Washington Post called Evidence "an intelligent, penetrating look at what it is like to be an investigative reporter--not only the techniques but the feelings (or non-feelings) and the ethical problems connected with the work."

Evidence was followed by Watchdogs (Viking), and Blood Cries (Viking). Kirkus called Blood Cries "A thought-provoking thriller, well above the standard." The New York Times called the novel "an engaging, provocative, and troubling book."

John was born in New York City. He received his BA in English Literature from Bard College, where he studied writing with Ralph Ellison, Paris Leary, and Anthony Hecht. He has published scores of articles in a wide range of periodicals running the gamut from Rolling Stone to the Columbia Journalism Review, to Soldier of Fortune, where he is currently a roving contributing editor. John also writes the Black Ops column on www.military.com. From 1994-2002 John war-gamed counterterrorist scenarios at Heckler & Koch's International Training Division. John and his wife live with their dogs in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia.