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
Results 1-5 of 69
... analyst, after all, and what do they do every day?—and how long I would stay at it. I assumed in those first days and weeks that it would be for a maximum of two years. I'll try this, I figured, but I have no real idea what it is, aside ...
... analyst should have been able to create a narrative that would have been compelling enough to lead others to believe that this nightmare scenario was real, and to change foreign policy so dramatically. It is not that reasoned ...
... analyst more accustomed to producing written reports in washington for policymakers, offer a seat at a diplomatic table that might never be repeated: the launch of an effort that would be part of american history. Much to my surprise, I ...
... analyst in washington; it was the operations officers on the other side of CIa headquarters, and in the freezing ... analyst guy asking for a flight into Bagram? But he delivered. John Mclaughlin, former deputy director and then acting ...
... analyst who shared a room that included both agency field personnel and Special Forces officers. nobody asked any questions; I didn't know who they were, and they never approached me. Both elements, intelligence, and military, brought ...
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 |