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 70
... knew it wasn't for me. not knowing anything about the CIa, it nonetheless sounded a lot more interesting than what I was doing. It was international, with the allure of travel and working with an organization with a brand name that ...
... knew instantly, despite my ignorance about intelligence, national security, or washington itself, that this was the CIa. Declaring only his first name—Bob? John? Jim? I don't remember, except that it was not memorable—a voice on the ...
... knew this job was not a good fit: within ten minutes, I had not only told him of my CIa interviews, but we had also progressed enough to agree that I would leave the firm, and my departure would come within two weeks. all this before he ...
... knew about a career change that would define my professional life. Still unanswered were basic questions about what job I would actually have—what is an analyst, after all, and what do they do every day?—and how long I would stay at it ...
... knew how what exactly was happening in new York. I knew he wasn't in the Trade Center buildings, but no one could have avoided the thought that perhaps he'd been caught in falling debris. The news of the Pentagon strike added to the ...
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 |