How bin Laden and his gang slipped through the noose during fierce Afghan battles

Written by an expert at The Investigative Project, a counterterrorism institute and America's largest private data-gathering center on militant Islamic activities, this text fills a critical gap in the understanding of the new threats posed by Islamist terrorism.

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.

The world’s leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the “riveting” (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America’s long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen’s “comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling” (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush promised a grieving nation that the United States would capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. Almost a decade later, the Al Qaeda leader is still alive and free, even after an occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. troops of more than eight years.In November 2009, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by John F. Kerry, issued a report on what could be characterized as one of the greatest joint military and intelligence failures of recent American history: Bin Laden's escape from his stronghold in the mountains of Tora Bora, and his subsequent flight to a location that remains unknown.Who was responsible for the decision to put too few troops on the ground, and what justification could there have been for such a decision? What alternative plans were available? What can we learn from the flaws of the Afghan occupation?Anyone interested in current affairs-and especially in the beginning of the Global War on Terror-will find this essential reading.

Almost ten years before Osama bin Laden was killed, the United States had the opportunity of a decade to decapitate the organization that so ruthlessly enacted the deadliest foreign attack on American soil in the nationÆs history. Battles raged across Afghanistan in the 102 days following September 11, from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul to Tora Bora. Yet bin Laden escaped while al Qaeda and the Taliban endured the initial onslaught. In 102 Days of War, Yaniv Barzilai takes the reader from meetings in the White House to the most sensitive operations in Afghanistan to explain how AmericaÆs enemies survived 2001. Using a broad array of sources, including interviews with top-level U.S. officials at every level of the war effort, Barzilai concludes that the failure to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda at the Battle of Tora Bora was not only the result of a failure in tactics but, more importantly, the product of failures in policy and leadership. 102 Days of War provides novel information and a new level of understanding about the opening campaign of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Informed citizens and military historians alike will find compelling this vivid and relevant narrative.