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Us Intelligence And Al Qaeda
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Book Synopsis US Intelligence and Al Qaeda by : de Werd Peter de Werd
Download or read book US Intelligence and Al Qaeda written by de Werd Peter de Werd and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out a new analytic methodology: analysis by contrasting narratives (ACN), which states that defining an enemy and attempting to counter threats can contribute to the manifestation of that threat. Peter de Werd applies ACN to the problem the US faced in understanding and responding to the phenomenon of Al Qaeda in the 1990s. He demonstrates how this approach can fill a gap in intelligence studies by enhancing the understanding of complex intelligence problems and strengthening the practice of intelligence analysis. Adopting a reflexivist theoretical stance, the book underlines the importance of an integrated approach to interpretation and action, and of a continuous dialogue between intelligence and policy.
Book Synopsis Intelligence Wars by : Thomas Powers
Download or read book Intelligence Wars written by Thomas Powers and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2004-06-30 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition contains new analysis on the situation in Iraq and the war against terrorism. Sold over 10,000 copies in hardcover. No one outside the intelligence services knows more about their culture than Thomas Powers. In this book he tells stories of shadowy successes, ghastly failures, and, more often, gripping uncertainties. They range from the CIA's long cold war struggle with its Russian adversary to debates about the use of secret intelligence in a democratic society, and urgent contemporary issues such as whether the CIA and the FBI can defend America against terrorism.
Download or read book Ghost Wars written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-03-03 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.
Download or read book Spying Blind written by Amy B. Zegart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Until now, those failures have been attributed largely to individual mistakes. But Zegart shows how and why the intelligence system itself left us vulnerable. Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001, drawing extensively from declassified government documents and interviews with more than seventy high-ranking government officials. She finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed to achieve the changes they sought. The same forces that have stymied intelligence reform for decades are to blame: resistance inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the rational interests of politicians and career bureaucrats, and core aspects of our democracy such as the fragmented structure of the federal government. Ultimately failures of adaptation led to failures of performance. Zegart reveals how longstanding organizational weaknesses left unaddressed during the 1990s prevented the CIA and FBI from capitalizing on twenty-three opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot. Spying Blind is a sobering account of why two of America's most important intelligence agencies failed to adjust to new threats after the Cold War, and why they are unlikely to adapt in the future.
Book Synopsis Intelligence Matters by : Bob Graham
Download or read book Intelligence Matters written by Bob Graham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2004-09-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this explosive, controversial, and profoundly alarming insider’s report, Senator Bob Graham reveals faults in America’s national security network severe enough to raise fundamental questions about the competence and honesty of public officials in the CIA, the FBI, and the White House. For ten years, Senator Graham served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he had access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Graham co-chaired a historic joint House-Senate inquiry into the intelligence community’s failures. From that investigation and his own personal fact-finding, Graham discovered disturbing evidence of terrorist activity and a web of complicity: • At one point, a terrorist support network conducted some of its operations through Saudi Arabia’s U.S. embassy–and a funding chain for terrorism led to the Saudi royal family. • In February 2002, only four months after combat began in Afghanistan, the Bush administration ordered General Tommy Franks to move vital military resources out of Afghanistan for an operation against Iraq–despite Franks’s privately stated belief that there was a job to finish in Afghanistan, and that the war on terrorism should focus next on terrorist targets in Somalia and Yemen. • Throughout 2002, President Bush directed the FBI to limit its investigations of Saudi Arabia, which supported some and possibly all of the September 11 hijackers. • The White House was so uncooperative with the bipartisan inquiry that its behavior bore all the hallmarks of a cover-up. • The FBI had an informant who was extremely close to two of the September 11 hijackers, and actually housed one of them, yet the existence of this informant and the scope of his contacts with the hijackers were covered up. • There were twelve instances when the September 11 plot could have been discovered and potentially foiled. • Days after 9/11, U.S. authorities allowed some Saudis to fly, despite a complete civil aviation ban, after which the government expedited the departure of more than one hundred Saudis from the United States. • Foreign leaders throughout the Middle East warned President Bush of exactly what would happen in a postwar Iraq, and those warnings went either ignored or unheeded. As a result of his Senate work, Graham has become convinced that the attacks of September 11 could have been avoided, and that the Bush administration’s war on terrorism has failed to address the immediate danger posed by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. His book is a disturbing reminder that at the highest levels of national security, now more than ever, intelligence matters.
Download or read book Intel Wars written by Matthew M. Aid and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the monumental growth of the American intelligence community after the September 11 attacks, citing the billions that have been spent on intelligence efforts while explaining why its sophisticated systems are still being eluded by ragtag enemies. By the author of The Secret Sentry.
Book Synopsis A Pretext for War by : James Bamford
Download or read book A Pretext for War written by James Bamford and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2005-05-10 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pretext for War reveals the systematic weaknesses behind the failure to detect or prevent the 9/11 attacks, and details the Bush administration’s subsequent misuse of intelligence to sell preemptive war to the American people. Filled with unprecedented revelations, from the sites of “undisclosed locations” to the actual sources of America’s Middle East policy, A Pretext for War is essential reading for anyone concerned about the security of the United States. Acclaimed author James Bamford–whose classic book The Puzzle Palace first revealed the existence of the National Security Agency–draws on his unparalleled access to top intelligence sources to produce a devastating expose of the intelligence community and the Bush administration.
Book Synopsis Transforming U.S. Intelligence by : Jennifer E. Sims
Download or read book Transforming U.S. Intelligence written by Jennifer E. Sims and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-24 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intelligence failures exposed by the events of 9/11 and the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have made one thing perfectly clear: change is needed in how the U.S. intelligence community operates. Transforming U.S. Intelligence argues that transforming intelligence requires as much a look to the future as to the past and a focus more on the art and practice of intelligence rather than on its bureaucratic arrangements. In fact, while the recent restructuring, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, may solve some problems, it has also created new ones. The authors of this volume agree that transforming policies and practices will be the most effective way to tackle future challenges facing the nation's security. This volume's contributors, who have served in intelligence agencies, the Departments of State or Defense, and the staffs of congressional oversight committees, bring their experience as insiders to bear in thoughtful and thought-provoking essays that address what such an overhaul of the system will require. In the first section, contributors discuss twenty-first-century security challenges and how the intelligence community can successfully defend U.S. national interests. The second section focuses on new technologies and modified policies that can increase the effectiveness of intelligence gathering and analysis. Finally, contributors consider management procedures that ensure the implementation of enhanced capabilities in practice. Transforming U.S. Intelligence supports the mandate of the new director of national intelligence by offering both careful analysis of existing strengths and weaknesses in U.S. intelligence and specific recommendations on how to fix its problems without harming its strengths. These recommendations, based on intimate knowledge of the way U.S. intelligence actually works, include suggestions for the creative mixing of technologies with new missions to bring about the transformation of U.S. intelligence without incurring unnecessary harm or expense. The goal is the creation of an intelligence community that can rapidly respond to developments in international politics, such as the emergence of nimble terrorist networks while reconciling national security requirements with the rights and liberties of American citizens.
Download or read book The Targeter written by Nada Bakos and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A CIA analyst's "revealing and utterly engrossing account" of the world of high-stakes foreign intelligence and her role within the campaign to stop top-tier targets inside Al-Qaida (Joby Warrick). In 1999, 30-year-old Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, D.C., to join the CIA. Quickly realizing her affinity for intelligence work, Nada was determined to rise through the ranks of the agency first as an analyst and then as a Targeting Officer, eventually finding herself on the frontline of America's war against Islamic extremists. In this role, Nada was charged with determining if Iraq had a relationship with 9/11 and Al-Qaida, and finding the mastermind behind this terrorist activity: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Her team's analysis stood the test of time, but it was not satisfactory for some members of the Administration. In a tight, tension-packed narrative that takes the reader from Langley deep into Iraq, Bakos reveals the inner workings of the Agency and the largely hidden world of intelligence gathering post 9/11. Entrenched in the world of the CIA, Bakos, along with her colleagues, focused on leading U.S. Special Operations Forces to the doorstep of one of the world's most wanted terrorists. Filled with on-the-ground insights and poignant personal anecdotes, The Targeter shows us the great personal sacrifice that comes with intelligence work. This is Nada's story, but it is also an intimate chronicle of how a group of determined, ambitious men and women worked tirelessly in the heart of the CIA to ensure our nation's safety at home and abroad.
Book Synopsis The Connection by : Stephen F. Hayes
Download or read book The Connection written by Stephen F. Hayes and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of 9/11 no one knew when the next attack would come, or where it would come from. America's enemies seemed gathered on all sides, and for several nerve-racking months, we lived in fear that the perpetrators might be plotting another action or, worse, that our most dangerous enemies -- al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's murderous regime in Iraq -- could be banding together against us. The Bush administration and CIA director George Tenet warned against complacency and pointed to growing indications that al Qaeda and Iraq were in league. But their case was undercut by unnamed intelligence officials, skeptical politicians, and a compliant media. So America relaxed. A comforting consensus settled in: Osama bin Laden was an impassioned fundamentalist, Saddam a secular autocrat. The two would never, could never, work together. ABC News reported that there was no connection between them, and the New York Times said so too, and pretty soon just about everyone agreed. Just about everyone was wrong. In The Connection, Stephen Hayes draws on CIA debriefings, top-secret memos from our national intelligence agencies, and interviews with Iraqi military leaders and Washington insiders to demonstrate that Saddam and bin Laden not only could work together, they did -- a curious relationship that stretches back more than a decade and may include collaboration on terrorist acts, chemical-weapons training, and sheltering some of the world's most wanted radicals. Stephen Hayes's bombshell Weekly Standard piece on this topic was cited by Vice President Cheney as the "best source of information" about the Saddam-al Qaeda connections. Now Hayes delves even deeper, exposing the inner workings of America's deadliest opponents and providing a clear-eyed corrective to reams of underreported, politicized, and just plain wrong information. The Connection is both a gripping snapshot of the War on Terror and a case study in how bureaucratic assumptions and media arrogance can put us all at risk.
Download or read book Agent Storm written by Morten Storm and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of a jihadi convert seeking redemption in “a rollicking read and a rare insider’s account of Western spying in the age of al Qaeda” (The New York Times Book Review). Standing over six feet tall with flaming red hair, Morten Storm was an unlikely jihadi. But after a troubled youth in his native Denmark, Storm found peace and purpose in his conversion to Islam. His absolute devotion only grew after he attended a militant madrasa in Yemen, named his son Osama, and became close friends with American-born terrorist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Then, after a decade of jihadi life, he not only rejected extremism—he began a quest for atonement, becoming a double agent for the CIA as well as British and Danish intelligence agencies. Agent Storm takes readers inside the fanatical jihadist mindset and into the shadows of the world’s most powerful spy agencies in an action-packed account that “reads like a screenplay for a James Bond movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen” (The Washington Post).
Download or read book Takedown written by Philip Mudd and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former CIA Deputy Director of Counterterrorism and FBI Senior Intelligence Adviser Philip Mudd recounts his involvement in the fight against Al Qaeda, revealing how intelligence analysts understand and evaluate potential terror threats and communicate with political leaders.
Book Synopsis Intelligence Cooperation and the War on Terror by : Adam D.M. Svendsen
Download or read book Intelligence Cooperation and the War on Terror written by Adam D.M. Svendsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth analysis of UK-US intelligence cooperation in the post-9/11 world. Seeking to connect an analysis of intelligence liaison with the wider realm of Anglo-American Relations, the book draws on a wide range of interviews and consultations with key actors in both countries. The book is centred around two critical and empirical case studies, focusing on the interactions on the key issues of counterterrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) counter-proliferation. These case studies provide substantive insights into a range of interactions such as 9/11, the 7/7 London bombings, the A.Q. Khan nuclear network, the prelude to the 2003 Iraq War, extraordinary rendition and special forces deployments. Drawing on over 60 interviews conducted in the UK and US with prominent decision-makers and practitioners, these issues are examined in the contemporary historical context, with the main focus being on the years 2000-05. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, foreign policy, security studies and International Relations in general. Adam Svendsen has a Phd in International History from the University of Warwick. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University, and has contributed to the International Security Programme at Chatham House and to the work of IISS, London.
Book Synopsis Transforming US Intelligence for Irregular War by : Richard H. Shultz Jr.
Download or read book Transforming US Intelligence for Irregular War written by Richard H. Shultz Jr. and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Joint Special Operations Command deployed Task Force 714 to Iraq in 2003, it faced an adversary unlike any it had previously encountered: al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI’s organization into multiple, independent networks and its application of Information Age technologies allowed it to wage war across a vast landscape. To meet this unique threat, TF 714 developed the intelligence capacity to operate inside those networks, and in the words of commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, USA (Ret.) “claw the guts out of AQI.” In Transforming US Intelligence for Irregular War, Richard H. Shultz Jr. provides a broad discussion of the role of intelligence in combatting nonstate militants and revisits this moment of innovation during the Iraq War, showing how the defense and intelligence communities can adapt to new and evolving foes. Shultz tells the story of how TF 714 partnered with US intelligence agencies to dismantle AQI’s secret networks by eliminating many of its key leaders. He also reveals how TF 714 altered its methods and practices of intelligence collection, intelligence analysis, and covert paramilitary operations to suppress AQI’s growing insurgency and, ultimately, destroy its networked infrastructure. TF 714 remains an exemplar of successful organizational learning and adaptation in the midst of modern warfare. By examining its innovations, Shultz makes a compelling case for intelligence leading the way in future campaigns against nonstate armed groups.
Download or read book Takedown written by Philip Mudd and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-22 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Directorate S written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan. Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
Book Synopsis Intelligence and Human Rights in the Era of Global Terrorism by : Steven Tsang
Download or read book Intelligence and Human Rights in the Era of Global Terrorism written by Steven Tsang and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facing the threats posed by dedicated suicide bombers who have access to modern technology for mass destruction and who intend to cause maximum human suffering and casualties, democratic governments have hard choices to make. On the one hand, they must uphold the basic values of democratic societies based on due process and human rights. On the other, they need to pre-empt the kind of destruction inflicted upon New York, Madrid, London, and Bali. The premise of this book is that for intelligence organizations to be able to face up to the challenges of global terrorism, they must think outside the box and utilize all of their resources effectively and creatively. To overcome the enemy, we must also secure the peace. Winning the hearts and minds of the terrorists' pool of potential recruits will be essential to cutting off the supply of suicide bombers. The support and cooperation of the people in countries where the terrorists strike must be sustained by ensuring they have confidence in the government and intelligence services. If a government and its intelligence services become so focused on pre-empting terrorist attacks that they infringe on the rights of their citizens and encroach on democratic norms, they unwittingly fall into a trap set by Al Qaeda and its kind. These organizations aim to destroy the democratic way of life so cherished in the West, and to incite the Muslim populations in democratic countries and their non-Muslim fellow citizens into a vicious circle of mutual hatred and violence. This book therefore addresses not only the question of how intelligence organizations can improve their efficacy in pre-empting terrorist outrages, but also the wider issue of removing the forces that sustain global terrorism as a scourge of the 21st century. The general public in the target countries and recruiting grounds must also be persuaded that—despite their rhetoric—the terrorists are not engaged in a holy war. Ultimately, the brand of global terrorism promoted by Osama bin Laden and his associates is meant to satisfy their own vanity and aspirations toward semi-divine status; the organization they have formed for this purpose is merely a global syndicate that commits serious crimes of a particularly heinous nature. Intelligence services of various countries need to find convincing evidence to prove this point. But it is up to governments, civil society, and the media in different parts of the world to work together if the evidence unearthed by national intelligence services is to be accepted by the general public. Unless the emotional or quasi-religious appeal of the global terrorists can be removed, the simple arrest of bin Laden and his close associates—or even the destruction of Al Qaeda as an organization—will not be sufficient to prevent others from rising to replace them.
