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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... conversations with managers. a test or two on general familiarity with world events, for which I'd prepared by trying to read the Washington Post every day. Despite the seriousness of the process, and the intimidating prospect ofjoining ...
... conversation with another adult, I also fumbled my opportunity for what was then known as the “CT” (career trainee) program. The interviewer posed the classic question: Can you describe one ofyour weaknesses? There began a conversation ...
... conversations that make up the information exchanges that are the heartbeat of policymaking in the city. new York does money; washington does power, policy, and politics. none of us was rich, but we all had interestingjobs. Many of us ...
... conversations, as members of the interagency team started appearing in makeshift State Department offices: in the midst of global diplomacy, a national security emergency, and a human tragedy now hard to fathom, we had many conversations ...
... conversations appear to me to be missing the point. what was the alternative? what would you have done? Find a different candidate? who? how? and for how long? we live in a country where we want others to see the world as we do, and to ...
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 |