The CIA in the Post 9/11 World

Our attention span grows shorter while the events creating a whirlwind around the world, increase. N. Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, plus domestic turmoil is everywhere. In all of this, it’s easy to forget, just 18 short years after 9/11.

I often wonder how we’ll see this period that we are living through from the perspective of 50 years. But with respect to 9/11, the rearview mirror is starting to come into focus, as the objects are closer than they appear.

How the world and the US intelligence has transformed as a result of those events impacts everything we do today and is worth examining with this renewed hindsight.

In that sense, my guest Philip Mudd was present at the creation. He was in the White House as events of 9/11 unfolded and now he’s writing about them in ways that may inform or future. His recent book is Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World.

My conversation with Philip Mudd:

The 9/11 generation

As we approach this anniversary of 9/11, it's worth noting that the Afghan war has become the longest in American history. Also, to think about how many of the men and women who have served in that war, were motivated and inspired to act, by those events thirteen years ago.

Michael Golembesky is one of those. He would go on to become one of the first members of the US Marines Special Operations Team, that was created in 2006.

His story, his eight years of service, is a telling snapshot of both the good and bad of our efforts in Afghanistan.

He shares the personal and military nuances of his story in his memoir Level Zero Heroes: The Story of U.S. Marine Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan.

My conversation with Michael Golembesky:

What did we know, and when did we know it?

For eleven years U.S. foreign policy and even domestic attitudes about our place in the world, have been shaped by the reaction to the events of 9/11. But that reaction did not take place in a vacuum. In many ways, as we are coming to learn, the Bush administration's reaction was shaped by what they knew, when they knew it and what they did or did not do about it.

Further the mistakes made in the eighteen months after 9/11, created a kind of alternative universe in which policy was shaped not by real events, but by a perception of reality, shaped by repeated mistakes. This is the backdrop for prize winning and best selling author Kurt Eichenwald, in his new work 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.

My conversation with Kurt Eichenwald:

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