Former CIA Counterterrorism Official On 'Torture': 'We Were CRUSHING Al Qaeda'

Townhall.com offers a video showing Philip Mudd (seen in the above photo), the former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, being interviewed about the CIA's enhanced interrogation program on CNN.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/greghengler/2014/12/16/fmr-cia-counterterrorism-director-on-torture-we-were-crushing-al-qaeda-n1932770

Note: I interviewed Philip Mudd for Counterterrorism magazine a while back. You can read my interview with Philip Mudd via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/a-q-with-philip-mudd-former-deputy.html

Review Of Jack Devine's CIA Memoir "Good Hunting"

Philip Mudd, a retired CIA officer, reviewed Jack Devine's CIA memoir Good Hunting for The Nation.

Nearly two decades into Jack Devine’s career at the CIA, he was tasked with what was then the agency’s largest-ever covert program: the effort to aid the ‘mujahedeen’ fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Should the agency take a huge risk by providing the Afghan fighters with sophisticated shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles? Mr Devine and his colleagues decided that the answer was yes.

He remembers walking into the CIA director’s office in 1986 with a report on the controversial introduction of hundreds of these Stingers. “Mr Director,” he recalls saying, “we had a tremendous breakthrough yesterday. We deployed the Stinger and we shot down three helicopters.” Director William Casey, a passionate Cold Warrior, responded: “Jack, this changes it all, doesn’t it?”

“Good Hunting,” Mr Devine’s memoir, is a refresher course on the breadth of America’s covert campaigns against the spread of Soviet influence and ideology, and Mr Devine’s 32-year career is a microcosm of the secret thrust and counterthrust that defined those years.

The son of a blue-collar, Irish-Catholic family from Philadelphia, Mr Devine began at the CIA in the 1960s after reading a book about the agency and sending in a handwritten request for employment. He rose through the ranks, ultimately overseeing the entirety of the agency’s clandestine operations in the mid-1990s.   

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.nation.com.pk/international/12-Jun-2014/secret-agent-man

I interviewed Philip Mudd, who was the former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, for Counterterrorism magazine. You can read the interview via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/a-q-with-philip-mudd-former-deputy.html

Gangland Mentality In Terror Recruiting: Philip Mudd, Former Deputy Director of CIA's Counterterrorism Center, On Terrorist Attack In Kenya

Philip Mudd, former Deputy Director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and former Deputy Director of the FBI's National Security Branch, offers his take on the terrorist attack in Kenya on Fox News.

You can watch the interview via the below link:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/2687783374001/gangland-mentality-in-terror-recruiting/

You can also read my Q&A with Philip Mudd, which appeared in Counterterrorism magazine, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/a-q-with-philip-mudd-former-deputy.html

Takedown: Inside The Hunt For Al Qaeda

Joshua Sinai wrote a good review of Philip Mudd's Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda for the Washington Times.

"Takedown: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda"is an insider account by a former high-level official at the CIA and the FBI about how both agencies substantially upgraded their counterterrorism capabilities after the U.S. government's failure to prevent al Qaeda's catastrophic attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Philip Mudd is ideally positioned to discuss these issues after a distinguished 24-year career at the CIA, where he rose to become deputy head of its Counterterrorism Center, culminating in a four-year detail in 2005 to the FBI as a deputy director of its National Security Branch.

... Mr. Mudd explains that a measure of success in counterterrorism is not merely “who was captured or killed … but whether operations broke plots and destroyed the networks that could sustain long-term training and planning resulting in another strategic strike.” In this sense, Mr. Mudd concludes, “the focus on these operational figures was well founded: virtually no one, in 2001, would have bet that the United States would not have witnessed another 9/11-style event by now. In this most critical sense, the operational focus was successful. Bin Laden took nine-plus years to take down, and al-Zawahri is still out there, but their organization poses nowhere the strategic threat it did a decade ago, and its leadership is decimated beyond recognition.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/23/book-reviewtakedown/