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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... Taliban refusing to sever its links to al Qaeda, which had used the afghan safehaven to create the expanding network that had led to the 9/11 attacks, there seemed little option other than mounting an effort to oust the Taliban and ...
... Taliban elements in northern afghanistan known as the northern alliance and began to sweep south in a remarkable offensive, other agencies in washington contemplated the political problem that had confounded policymakers since the ...
... Taliban face a crushing Coalition force—that must be about as stark as any in the history of foreign policy. One day the patron of the Taliban, as it moved north and was chipping away at the last resistance. weeks later, accepting a ...
... Taliban after 9/11. he seemed to me to match the stories we had heard: articulate, thoughtful, and soft-spoken, not at all the rough-hewn warlord you might expect to emerge from one of the world's bloodiest civil wars. and he was the ...
... Taliban. It was hard to argue that the diplomatic team there to help couldn't manage, even for a few hours, to visit the warzone. There were obviously questions about security, but, to a person, the team was enthusiastic about a trip ...
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 |