Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al QaedaOn September 11, 2001, as Central Intelligence Agency analyst Philip Mudd rushed out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, he could not anticipate how far the terror unleashed that day would change the world of intelligence and his life as a CIA officer. For the previous fifteen years, his role had been to interpret raw intelligence and report his findings to national security decision makers. But within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, he would be on a military aircraft, flying over the Hindu Kush mountains, en route to Afghanistan as part of the U.S. government's effort to support the fledging government there after U.S. forces had toppled the Taliban. Later, Mudd would be appointed deputy director of the CIA's rapidly expanding Counterterrorist Center and then senior intelligence adviser at the FBI. A first-person account of Mudd's role in two organizations that changed dramatically after 9/11, Takedown sheds light on the inner workings of the intelligence community during the global counterterror campaign. |
From inside the book
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... Dobbins, had served earlier in nation-building roles, developing a reputation for trouble-shooting in am- biguous environments—the Balkans and haiti—that required toughness to deal with the hard realities of political factionalism and ...
... Dobbins, and not knowing anything about what his mission might entail, I wanted to be on his team. This was weeks after thousands had been murdered, and any officer in any government service would feel a need to join or support the ...
... Dobbins proved to be a prescient choice. he succeeded in an environment that had encouraged failure, a place where ... Dobbins started coalescing early, meeting at the Department of State in the Foggy Bottom section of downtown ...
... Dobbins a few times in Kabul, along with other members of the emerging afghan coalition that grew out of the disparate groups fighting the Taliban after 9/11. he seemed to me to match the stories we had heard: articulate, thoughtful ...
... Dobbins told the team that he wanted to go in—initiallyjust for a day-trip, it turned out—to begin to draw in leaders from afghanistan's legendary warring factions. I had a modest role in his team, but at that time, in fall 2001, the ...
Contents
1 | |
2 A Return to Langley | 27 |
Moving Beyond the Core of Al Qaeda | 70 |
The Intelligence Problem of Iraq | 90 |
Deputy Director of the Counterterrorist Center | 104 |
6 The Years of Threat | 135 |
The FBI Calls | 145 |
Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security | 191 |
Index | 199 |