Ghost Wars; The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. Seventh Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xix, [1], 695, [5] pages, List of Maps. Principal Characters. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Signed by the author. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Steve Coll (born October 8, 1958) is an American journalist, academic and executive. He has been the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he is also the Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the recipient of two Pulitzer Prize awards, two Overseas Press Club Awards, a PEN American Center John Kenneth Galbraith Award, an Arthur Ross Book Award, a Livingston Award, a Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize. Steve Coll is a writer for The New Yorker and author of the Pulitzer Prize- winning Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. He is president of the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington, D.C. Previously he served, for more than twenty years, as a reporter, foreign correspondent, and ultimately as managing editor of The Washington Post. The Taking of Getty Oil. Coll received a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding international print reporting and the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best magazine reporting from abroad. Ghost Wars, published in 2004, received the Pulitzer for general nonfiction and the Arthur Ross award for the best book on international affairs. With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. In this prehistory of the 2001 war in Afghanistan. The author, a Washington Post editor, pieces together the alliances, intrigue, and failures of intelligence that allowed Al Qaeda to get a foothold in that country. He chronicles the disturbing role of America's supposed ally, Saudi Arabia, in building up Osama bin Laden. And he examines the historical record of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations in regard to counterterrorism policy. Here he includes much insider information and analysis about the various intelligence agencies, their agendas, and rivalries. Coll connects America's effort to support anti-Soviet groups in Afghanistan in the 1980's with the eventual rise of Al Qaeda and, later, the events of September 11, 2001. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004. This is an 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. The author 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, this story 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.