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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... wide 1970s lapels and all, and commuting to a high-rise office building in suburban Bethesda, Maryland. Making $13,500 a year. It was clear this wasn't the future. Until my father called. he told me that al, our Preface.
... 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 inspired awe ...
... wasn't until twenty-five years later that I left. This is the story of what I learned, after growing up and moving up in the CIa and then taking part in the campaign of my generation: the counterterrorism fight after 9/11. It is not ...
... 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 chaos, and then stories, later proven false, broke of an event ...
... wasn't interested in niceties. “Direct” would understate his personal style. There was a scramble to find aircraft that could fly us to Central asia and Pakistan, but not a clear sense of where we might find ourselves even a month out ...
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 |