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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... attacking senior officials from the safe seat of a former intelligence official who never faced the pressure of elected office himself. If that renders the book less useful, so be it. This, then, is not a comprehensive history. Instead ...
... attacks, there seemed little option other than mounting an effort to oust the Taliban and clean out al Qaeda. The alternative—missile strikes from offshore, for example, or a more restricted effort against al Qaeda with covert ...
... attacks; history has a way of making what was in late 2001 a hazy future path seem as if it was pre-ordained, or inevitable. Despite that initial haziness, the outlines of what was to follow started emerging soon enough. a senior ...
... attacks, and it seemed to make little sense to stay on at the national Security Council now that the new counterterror campaign would require so many people to take new positions. Despite not having cleared my departure with my ...
... attacks. Meanwhile, still fighting thousands of miles away, the Taliban was resisting as winter closed in, and villagers who would never know the luxuries ofa Bonn castle were hoping that it would all just end. a peace conference in a ...
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 |