Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda

by Philip Mudd

On 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.

Here Mudd tells how the Al Qaeda threat looked to CIA and FBI professionals as the focus shifted from a core Al Qaeda leadership to the rise of Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and homegrown violent extremism from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. As a participant in and a witness to key strategic initiatives—including the hunt for Osama bin Laden and efforts to displace the Taliban—Mudd offers an insider's perspective on the relationships between the White House, the State Department, and national security agencies before and after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Through telling vignettes, Mudd reveals how intelligence analysts understood and evaluated potential dangers and communicated them to political leaders.

Takedown is a gripping narrative of tracking terrorism during what may be the most exhilarating but trying times the American intelligence community has ever experienced.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War

216 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2013

About the author

Philip Mudd has decades of experience as an analyst and executive at the CIA, FBI, and the White House National Security Council, and has taught courses around the world on methodologies for understanding difficult analytic problems. He has also commented about terrorism in open and closed congressional testimony, and is regularly featured on CNN, NBC, Fox News, and NPR. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post, and he is the author of Takedown, a detailed account of intelligence gathering in the hunt for al-Qa’ida.

Reviews

[Michael McCormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great to read Philip Mudd's "Take Down" and to hear all of the stories that he relates about his career at the CIA and FBI. I appreciate how Mr. Mudd describes the transition that took place at the FBI while he was assigned there that involved the Bureau and intelligence. The key questions that he describes that the FBI wrangles with, namely, whether or not to act to make arrests or whether to wait until the scenario develops more fully are key questions. I cannot help but think that the United States is faced with such questions now in our foreign policy on Afghanistan. Leaving before a lasting, durable peace is in place in that country invites the Taliban to transition into what it was before: a savvy and brutal regime that will continue the cycle of inviting terrorists to train within Afghan borders to inflict spectacular acts of terrorism on Western countries, namely, the United States of America. We are, without a doubt, leaving our Afghan allies in the lurch, and in the end, it will bite us in the ass, and Joe Biden will be to blame for it.

[Alex Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Brian Tibby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book tries to be many things (memoir of a career CIA analyst, inside story of US CT operations after 8/11, overview of threats the U.S. faced after 9/11, frustrations working in federal government) and doesn't do any of them particularly well.

The book is also horribly edited with countless typos and other errors. It is also incredibly repetitive within he same chapters and throughout the book. Stories told on one page will be retold two or three pages later without any acknowledgement the reader just read about this.

The author does a decent job recounting the positions he held within CIA and other government agencies but fails to provide any new insights into stories told elsewhere better and in much more detail. The focus on personal connections by an author not well known to the public rather than on Intel and CT stories is probably the books biggest flaw. The last chapter ends with the author contemplating what to do after the government and wondering where his next paycheck will come from. Apparently he decided it would be this book.

[David Ricciardi · Rating 4 out of 5]

TAKEDOWN probably isn't what most people expect. It is an interesting take on the retooling of the US intelligence and federal law enforcement communities post 9/11. Mudd is a keen analyst and thoughtful writer, but one who took his confidentiality oaths seriously, so there is little in the way of gripping action or interesting stories. If you're interested in the analytical PROCESS and how the world's largest bureaucracy uses the end product, and how that product has evolved, you'll enjoy TAKEDOWN. If you're looking for hot pursuit, look elsewhere.