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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... answered, through a rolled-down car window. It is hard to imagine what that guard thought, but I had no other option I could think of in order to offer my application to a place I'd only ever heard ofin movies and books. I didn't have ...
... answering machine—the old boxy type that now probably exists only in museums. I rolled the tape and knew instantly, despite my ignorance about intelligence, national security, or washington itself, that this was the CIa. Declaring only ...
... answer the “what are your major strengths and weaknesses” questions—and with a naive idea that an interview was just a conversation with another adult, I also fumbled my opportunity for what was then known as the “CT” (career trainee) ...
... answering questions in the well ofthe Congress of the United States, traveling around the world, and seeing some of the most remarkable people doing some unusual and interesting things. It wasn't until twenty-five years later that I ...
... answered. There's somebody else on the detail who has land out there. So in the midst of a dusty Third world town, many thousands of miles from home, I sat down with one ofthe Diplomatic Security officers on the detail. after fewer than ...
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 |