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 46
... ofthe line left a short, vague message, and a phone number. Please call, he asked, sounding appropriately ... of the process, and the intimidating prospect ofjoining an intelligence organization, my enduring memories are humorous. I've ...
... 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 left. This is the story of what I ...
... of the Soviets from afghanistan in 1989 and the collapse ofthe Soviet-backed afghan government in the early 1990s. That question quickly became front-and-center: how to piece together a credible central government in a country long ...
... ofthe fence it would sit on. I suspect that President Pervez Musharraf knew that he had little choice, and he made a foreign policy U-turn—watching the Taliban face a crushing Coalition force—that must be about as stark as any in the ...
... of the same farmland I had bought, and we shared a property line. we were neighbors, meeting for the first time halfway ... ofthe Tajik northern alliance should have a greater or lesser share of “power” ministries in the Cabinet, for ...
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 |