Ghost Wars

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.

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize “The CIA itself would be hard put to beat his grasp of global events . . . Deeply satisfying.” —The New York Review of Books From the award-winning and bestselling author of Directorate S, the explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. To what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising thread of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research and firsthand accounts by key government, intelligence, and military personnel both foreign and American, Ghost Wars details the secret history of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan (including its covert operations against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989), the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

From the managing editor of the Washington Post, a news-breaking account of the CIA's involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to bin Laden's al Qaeda. For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies-invisible wars which sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and which provide its context. From the Soviet invasion in 1979 through the summer of 2001, the CIA, KGB, Pakistan's ISI, and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department all operated directly and secretly in Afghanistan. They primed Afghan factions with cash and weapons, secretly trained guerrilla forces, funded propaganda, and manipulated politics. In the midst of these struggles bin Laden conceived and then built his global organization. Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll tells the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, from its covert program against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989, to the rise of the Taliban and the emergence of bin Laden, to the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. Based on extensive firsthand accounts, Ghost Warsok is the inside story that goes well beyond anything previously published on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It chronicles the roles of midlevel CIA officers, their Afghan allies, and top spy masters such as Bill Casey, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al Faisal, and George Tenet. And it describes heated debates within the American government and the often poisonous, mistrustful relations between the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies. Ghost Warsanswers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail?

In counterterrorism circles, the standard response to questions about the possibility of future attacks is the terse one-liner: “Not if, but when.” This mantra supposedly conveys a realistic approach to the problem, but, as Joseba Zulaika argues in Terrorism, it functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy. By distorting reality to fit their own worldview, the architects of the War on Terror prompt the behavior they seek to prevent—a twisted logic that has already played out horrifically in Iraq. In short, Zulaika contends, counterterrorism has become pivotal in promoting terrorism. Exploring the blind spots of counterterrorist doctrine, Zulaika takes readers on a remarkable intellectual journey. He contrasts the psychological insight of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood with The 9/11 Commission Report, plumbs the mindset of terrorists in works by Orianna Fallaci and Jean Genet, maps the continuities between the cold war and the fight against terrorism, and analyzes the case of a Basque terrorist who tried to return to civilian life. Zulaika’s argument is powerful, inventive, and rich with insights and ideas that provide a new and sophisticated perspective on the War on Terror.

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

Jimmy Gurulé knows how to bankrupt terrorists like few others do. As Undersecretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, he spearheaded the fight against al-Qaeda s global bank accounts, helping to earn the highest grade awarded on the 9/11 Commissioners report card. As an author, he performs once again. Unfunding Terror provides policymakers and laymen alike a clear roadmap on how to keep terrorists out of the global financial system. Timothy J. Roemer, Center for National Policy, former US Congressman and member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) Jimmy Gurulé has given us a superbly comprehensive and well-written assessment of why, regarding terrorism, Deep Throat s principle is bang on: follow the money. R. James Woolsey, venture partner, VantagePoint, and former Director of Central Intelligence, US A detailed study by a true scholar-practitioner, Unfunding Terror explains the legal response to terror finance in language accessible to both the expert and layman. Required reading. Matthew Levitt, Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Intelligence and Analysis, US Professor Gurulé is comprehensive: he describes the problem (terrorist funding by those in the free world), analyzes the legal responses (make it a crime, freeze terrorist assets, impose regulations on financial institutions), critiques the administration s and international community s efforts to unfund terrorists (political rhetoric, not in fact backed up with effective strategies or implementation), and outlines concrete legal and administrative remedies. Would that they to whom the recommendations are addressed act on them quickly. Too much is at stake to let terrorists, who condemn the West as corrupt, get their funding to attack the US and its allies from the West itself. That would be a form of social suicide. G. Robert Blakey, Notre Dame Law School, US The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 2,973 innocent civilians required as much as $500,000 to stage. At the time, al Qaeda was operating on an annual budget of between $30 and $50 million. However, despite the obvious fact that terrorists need money to terrorize, preventing the financing of terrorism was not a priority for the United States or the international community prior to 9/11. Jimmy Gurulé, former Under Secretary for Enforcement in the US Department of the Treasury, provides the first book-length, comprehensive analysis of the legal regime that evolved following the terrorist attacks. The book begins with a discussion of how shutting down the pipelines of funding is as important as dismantling the terrorist cells themselves. Next, the book covers the various means and methods used by terrorist groups to raise money, and examines how money is transferred globally to finance their lethal activities. The principal components of the legal strategy to disrupt the financing of terrorism are then discussed and evaluated. Unfortunately, the author concludes that the legal regime has met with mixed results, and finds that the sense of urgency to deprive terrorists of funding that existed following 9/11 has since dissipated. As a result, international efforts to freeze terrorist assets have dramatically declined. Moreover, the US Department of Justice has suffered several embarrassing and disappointing legal defeats in prosecuting major terrorist financiers. The author provides numerous recommendations to Congress, the Executive Branch, and the UN Security Council for strengthening the legal regime to deny terrorists the money needed to wage global jihad, acquire weapons of mass destruction, and launch another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. Unfunding Terror fills an important gap in the literature and will be essential reading for counter-terrorism experts, law enforcement and national se

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.

Given the importance of violent non-state actors (VNSA) and their evolving role in global politics, dynamic frameworks of analysis are needed both to trace historical trajectories in the evolution of violent non-state actorness and to identify emerging patterns by examining modern day cases. This book examines the defining characteristics and evolutionary dynamics of VNSAs, and introduces a framework based on their autonomy, representation and influence providing a comparative analysis of the late 19th and early 20th centuries’ Anarchist movement and the modern-day Jihadist network. It explores the distinct characteristics of the Anarchists and Jihadists as VNSAs with global potential, not just describing them, but also seeking to understand what they are instances of. With a longitudinal analysis, the book also considers the types of changes that have occurred in the past 150 years and the possible role VNSAs may play in current and future power polity shifts away from states toward non-state actors. It concludes with both theoretical implications for the study of non-state actors and transnational relations, and practical implications for government agencies or private groups tasked with finding ways of countering such violent non-state actors. This important book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, political science, and terrorism/security studies. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the security services including think-tank analysts and government security analysts.