| | |  | Security Jobs | Home » » A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran | | | | | | | Description: | | A true story as exhilarating as a great spy thriller, as turbulent as today's headlines from the Middle East, 2010 National Best Books Award-winning A Time to Betray reveals what no other previous CIA operative's memoir possibly could: the inner workings of the notorious Revolutionary Guards of Iran, as witnessed by an Iranian man inside their ranks who spied for the American government. It is a human story, a chronicle of family and friendships torn apart by a terror-mongering regime, and how the adult choices of three childhood mates during the Islamic Republic yielded divisive and tragic fates. And it is the stunningly courageous account of one man's decades-long commitment to lead a shocking double life informing on the beloved country of his birth, a place that once offered the promise of freedom and enlightenment--but instead ruled by murderous violence and spirit-crushing oppression.
Reza Kahlili grew up in Tehran surrounded by his close-knit family and two spirited boyhood friends. The Iran of his youth allowed Reza to think and act freely, and even indulge a penchant for rebellious pranks in the face of the local mullahs. His political and personal freedoms flourished while he studied computer science at the University of Southern California in the 1970s. But his carefree time in America was cut short with the sudden death of his father, and Reza returned home to find a country on the cusp of change. The revolution of 1979 plunged Iran into a dark age of religious fundamentalism under the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Reza, clinging to the hope of a Persian Renaissance, joined the Revolutionary Guards, an elite force at the beck and call of the Ayatollah. But as Khomeini's tyrannies unfolded, as his fellow countrymen turned on each other, and after the horror he witnessed inside Evin Prison, a shattered and disillusioned Reza returned to America to dangerously become "Wally," a spy for the CIA.
In the wake of an Iranian election that sparked global outrage, at a time when Iran's nuclear program holds the world's anxious attention, the revelations inside A Time to Betray could not be more powerful or timely. Now resigned from his secretive life to reclaim precious time with his loved ones, Reza Kahlili documents scenes from history with heart-wrenching clarity, as he supplies vital information from the Iran-Iraq War, the Marine barracks bombings in Beirut, the catastrophes of Pan Am Flight 103, the scandal of the Iran-Contra affair, and more . . . a chain of incredible events that culminates in a nation's fight for freedom that continues to this very day.
A TIME TO BETRAY was the winner of The 2011 International Book Awards in two categories of: Autobiography/Memoirs and Best New Non-Fiction. It was also the winner of The National Best Books 2010 Awards for Non-Fiction Narrative and honored as the "Finalist" in the "Autobiography/Memoirs" category. It is now part of JCITA's (Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy of DOD) and CI CENTRE (The Leader in Counterintelligence), Iranian Program's readings. A TIME TO BETRAY was chosen as the Book of the Month for January 2011 by the Magazine of The Marines - Leatherneck. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Reza Kahlili | | Hardcover:
| 352 pages | | Publisher:
| Threshold Editions | | Publication Date:
| April 06, 2010 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 143918903X | | Product Width:
| 1.56 centimeters | | Product Height:
| 2.43 centimeters | | Product Weight:
| 0.01 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.3 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.15 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 148 reviews |
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189 of 195 found the following review helpful:
 a real heroApr 06, 2010
By bookfan
I'm a cynical guy. US politics teaches me that leaders are cowards and fakers who are really out for their own glory. Americans desperately need a hero, and this author is the real deal. He started as a religious idealist whose talents made him the ultimate insider. When he witnessed unspeakable tortures committed against the families of people suspected of betrayal, he betrayed his "brothers." He volunteered to spy for the CIA, loading us up with invaluable information about Khomeini's associates. Every day he had to stare into the faces of people who would torture his wife and baby if they found out, but he kept going. He never got any fame or credit, and he did it totally alone, on his own initiative.
I'm a hard-hearted guy. I don't cry at sappy movies. But Khalili's rendering of his two best friends and their youthful idealism, and the separate paths they chose in the Iranian Revolution, repeatedly got me choked up. The story is tragic and horrifying, the espionage is nail-biting, and as the risks get more intense, I kept saying, "I can't believe this guy is doing this!"
I stayed up all night reading this, surprised the author waited over two decades to tell his story-- why not cash in on his heroism back in 1988?-- until I realized he's driven by one mission, which can be summed up as: "The governing mullahs in Iran cannot be negotiated with, because they've been explicitly planning Armageddon all along." If we can't trust this insider, who can we trust?
I'm not an effusive guy, just groggy from lack of sleep after I stayed up all night with this book. I dare you to read page one. Get hooked by this story and remind yourself what courage is really all about. Our nation should work for a free Iran, if only because the culture produces sterling characters like this author and his childhood friends.
68 of 71 found the following review helpful:
Read This Book! It's BrilliantApr 06, 2010
By SmoothSail
I saw a review by Michael Totten who said this book is a real page turner - that he couldn't put it down. True words. It gripped me from the first page. I don't have enough words to describe all the emotions the writer evokes. It reads like a novel, but it's a true story, which the best spy book writers couldn't invent.
You are right there with him as he tries to carry on a normal life working for the Revolutionary Guards, all the while spying for the CIA. The events that turned him into a spy are heart wrenching. You get to know his family and friends as if they were sitting next to you. You feel the terror and sadness of the young people of Iran as they try to deal with a new Thugocracy that's taken over their country. You understand Reza's confusion and being torn, trying to find the right thing to do. You get anxious and feel the panic as he finds himself in situations that you know he can't get out, but he manages. He's still around.
This is the first book I've read about Iran (and I've read several) that paints an accurate picture of the Iranian culture, families, friendships, neighborhoods, home life, schooling, military and the government.
This book should be required reading for everyone in our government so they can understand what's really behind the intentions of the ruling clerics and Amahdinejad. This is an insider's front row view of what's really going on in Iran. Iran's ruling clerics are truly bad people who mean to do us harm and Kahlili clearly presents case after case testifying to it.
Reza Kahlili is an alias and after you read this book, you'll understand why he can't use his real name. I expect since radical Islamists won't know where to find him, they'll attack this book. After you read this book, you'll understand why they'll attack him. This is the most definitive indictment of the corruption and true intentions of some very nasty people.
58 of 60 found the following review helpful:
A Time For Love and CourageApr 24, 2010
By Trapper
A Time to Betray
This book wears a mask. Behind the mask there is neither Mister Phelps nor a tape that will self-destruct, but there is an almost unbelievable bundle of real flesh and blood courage and there is a real `Mission Impossible.' Without the mask there would be no book, or only a posthumous one.
So, for God's sake put aside reservations about filters and pseudonyms and fictionalized settings for this stunning first-hand account of a double agent living a double life one heartbeat away from certain death, deep inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran.
Read the book.
If it doesn't change your life, it will change your outlook.
It did mine. It changed my view of Iran, which I previously believed to be a nation of madmen. Now I know it is only ruled by madmen, but, just under the surface, it is the home of unmatched heroism.
Despite the vast gulf between our life histories, I feel a kinship with Reza, the man who lived this double life. He came to America as a young man when Shah Pahlavi was still in power and Iran lived in unbalanced prosperity without freedom. Reza drove around in a shiny red Mustang with mag wheels, enjoying his youth just like I did in my shiny red Oldsmobile 442. If we had passed each other on the highway, no doubt we would have waved.
While we were driving around in our shiny red muscle cars, Reza and I were similar in one other respect: we both had two close friends of the kind that might hand off a frog instead of shaking hands just to mock our superiors--or as easily die for each other. Like my friends, Reza's loved American Westerns and each had our favorite hero. Reza's, like mine, was Steve McQueen.
A three-legged stool is a very stable object, but a friendship composed of three souls is likely flawed by a weakness that we both experienced: At any given time, one of the three friends is a little on the outs with the other two.
My own triumvirate of friends morphed when one of us drifted off into a different life; Reza's ended suddenly and tragically. You will have to read the book to find out how.
Despite its title, "A Time to Betray" is a tale of courage and of love, not of treason. Love permeates. It is true love, a commitment that sustains Reza's relationship with his beautiful wife Somaya and their son Omid through stresses no one would willingly tolerate. Most of us would simply curl up and die, or, if we are more cowardly, walk away muttering "Who needs this?"
Aside from Somaya, my favorite character is Reza's Grandpa, Agha Joon, who admonished the young Reza to "Grow old, young man"--grow up, you child. Grandpa was a wise man, able to distinguish the similarities between the despot Shah Pahlavi, and Ayatolla Khomeini who succeeded him and mounted the infamous Iran Hostage Crisis that took Jimmy Carter's presidency down to defeat against Ronald Reagan.
Agha Joon, Grandpa, has more to tell. I know it.
I took four pages of notes as I read "A Time to Betray." The only time I take that kind of trouble is when I'm reading an extraordinarily important book, one that explains the present as well as the past by illuminating truth through veiled fictional devices.
"A Time to Betray" is such a book. It helped me to understand Iran, and villains, and heroes, and love. It changed me -- changed my outlook on Iran, the world, and the United States of America.
This book is not without flaws. It has a cliché or two, like `thugocracy', not that I could think of a better term to describe Iran's current regime. It has a few awkward sentences, the meaning of which is clear. Arranged differently, they would read easier.
These are the flaws of filters and pseudonyms and fictionalized settings, and accountants, and publishing realities - and spooks. I'm grateful that the CIA did not quash it altogether.
Get the book and read it. Then log on to Facebook and listen to some of the interviews where Reza's voice is masked to save his life and that of his family. This is not Mister Phelps' world, I assure you. Despite its flaws, this is Mission Impossible" made real.
30 of 35 found the following review helpful:
 Learn what has really been going on in Iran from an insider.Mar 21, 2011
By A. Nye
"Al Nye The Lawyer Guy"
Want to understand how the leaders in Iran rule from someone on the inside? Want to know what it's like to be a spy for the American government in the Middle East? Want to read how one man led a double life as a Revolutionary Guard for the Ayatollah Khomeini while secretly feeding information to the CIA?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, then this is the book for you.
Reza Kahlili (not his real name) grew up in Tehran surrounded by friends and family. During that time, Reza was allowed to think and act freely and was even able to come to the U.S. to study computer science at the University of California in the 1970s.
But that freedom all disappeared with the Iranian revolution in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini imposed religious fundamentalism in Iran and systematically terrorized his own people. This is the story of one brave man who pretended to be a devout Muslim in his own country while leaking vital information to the United States about some of the most well-known events of that time: the Iran-Iraq War, Pan Am Flight 103, the Iran-Contra affair, and others.
For a better understanding of the current situation in the Middle East, read this insider account of a country that has turned its back on the world - and its own people.
13 of 14 found the following review helpful:
A Time to Wake UpAug 03, 2010
By Mladen Andrijasevic
There are several books I wish Americans were reading today. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Nomad and Melanie Phillips's A World Turned Upside Down. But most of all I hope they would read this one, for it is time they begin to understand what is happening in Iran and the dangers of doing nothing. In 2005 Reza Kahlili's wife Somaya told him "Tell the world what you have witnessed and what these criminals have done to us." Thank you, Somaya.
It is almost impossible to explain to Americans what it is like to live in a totalitarian Islamic society, all the more so with journalists like Roger Cohen of the New York Times parachuting into Iran for a few weeks and thinking that by asking people in the street he would get a realistic picture. Yet Reza Kahlili has managed to do it. The book has a strange feel of Smiley's People by John le Carré mixed with Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. But of course, it is a unique book by a brave and honest man who has decided to speak up and warn the world of the imminent danger of Iranian apocalyptic jihadists, and of American stupidity in not recognizing the danger.
This is not a thriller, a spy novel, an autobiography, a historical account and psychological drama. It is a combination of all of the above by a man whose sole motive was to try and do something and reverse the descent into barbarity that the 1979 revolution had plunged Iran into. This something was not writing letters to the editor from California but working among the Revolutionary Guards in Teheran while being a spy for the CIA - an extremely dangerous endeavor. If found out his family would have been tortured and executed in front of him, not put on the first flight back home like the Russian spy Anna Chapman a few weeks ago. .
What motivates a man to take such enormous risks? The turning point in the book are the horrific events in Evin prison which are conveyed with such power that all his subsequent actions become understandable, yet only someone with exceptional courage and determination could have persevered for so long.
However, despite all his efforts American policy towards Iran had from the start been one of appeasement of the mullahs, from the time of President Reagan to this day with President Obama. It is as if the political elites never understood what he had been risking his life to tell them. What a shame!
The political elites also did not seem to understand that so many Persians were proud of their great history, expressed in the words of Reza's grandfather, Agha Joon: "This is the land were Cyrus the Great ruled one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. He brought dignity and respect for all to this great civilization: a land where the first charter of human rights was introduced, a land where women were respected, where slavery was abolished, and a land where Jews were free to return to their native land at the end of the Babylonian captivity. This was the Persia where poets, philosophers, and scientists were the bedrock of national pride, where religion was based on three simple premises: good thoughts, good words, and good deeds".
Reza Kahili has remained true to his conviction. After settling in the US he could have lived a quite and secluded life. But after 9/11 and the rise of Ahmadinejad on the urging of his wife he decided to speak up and write this book. How many Americans have heard of the Mahdi? Will they take notice when Kahlili writes: "The hadiths predict that `many will be killed and the rest will suffer hunger and lawlessness'. People like Ahmadinejad so completely believed that these conditions would hasten the return of the twelfth Imam that they were willing to foment universal war, chaos, and famine to bring it about".
Reza Kahlili risked his life to help his people and help the US. He was there. His words carry weight. The West should listen.
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