Disappointing.
It’s seems the best word that I can come up with to describe
Philip Mudd’s book, Take Down: Inside the
Hunt for Al Qaeda. For a book that carries the a subtitle that professes to
offer an insider’s point of view of critical piece of the war on terror it
falls more than a little flat.
Mudd, served as the Deputy Director of the Counterterrorist
Center at the CIA, so his creds would suggest an access to a multitude of
insider information. While there are certain understandable limitations due to national
security concerns, other who have had less access than Mudd, have offered up a
greater level of detail and insight into the inner workings of counter
terrorism.
In the preface, Mudd details how he came to work at the CIA
in what amounts to a post-graduate in need of a better job lark that turned
into a multiple decades long career that saw him rise to highest levels of the
Agency. I can’t quite decide if Mudd chose to play things close to the vest out
of loyalty or if he was more a political creation who showed an adeptness
working the corridors of power that groomed his steady rise or was just a guy
who was never a party to the heavy lifting and nasty side of intelligence.
Tapping out at just 200 pages including the less than
detailed index and no end notes, Take
Down is a rather thin, 30,000 foot perspective rather than the advertised
insider view.
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