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
... what I was doing. It was international, with the allure of travel and working with an organization with a brand name that inspired awe across america, and around the world. and despite my lack of depth on international affairs, I, like ...
... of Booth's escape; she did not. The first step I had to take to find my way out of this hole was to explain whyI had ... what are your major strengths and weaknesses” questions—and with a naive idea that an interview was just a conversation ...
... of CIa headquarters in langley, Virginia. I look back incredulous at how little I really knew about a career change that would define my professional life. Still unanswered were basic questions about what job I would actually have—what ...
... of what it's like to be on the ground floor of something so big that no single person will ever see or understand all the angles. like many of us who have left, I do not believe I will ever go back. But it was a heckuva ride along the ...
... on September 11, we went quickly from a buzz about what appeared to be a tragic but isolated airplane hitting a tower in new York—I first thought it might be a wayward Cessna—to twin strikes by commercial airliners that had us believing ...
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 |