Product Description

In the wake of the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the government has rushed to Iraq a new breed of interrogator. Matthew Alexander, a former criminal investigator and head of a crack interrogation team, tells the story of how he and his team used psychological warfare to track down Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The interrogator's job is simple: get the right information in a timely fashion. Finding Abu Musab Zarqawi had long been the US military's top priority--even trumping the search for Osama Bin Laden. No brutality was spared in trying to squeeze information from detainees. But when the Military brought in Matthew the exertions of Special Forces had yielded exactly nothing. So Matthew and his team decided to sit down and get to know their opponents. Who were these monsters so impervious to violence? Who were they fighting for? What were they trying to protect? The intelligence coup that enabled the June 7, 2006 air strike on Zarqawi's rural safe house northeast of Baghdad was the result of a painstaking and dramatic manhunt, but it was not the result of what Matthew calls "force on force" interactions.First featured in an Atlantic cover story by Mark Bowden, this is more of a true-crime or psychological suspense story than a war memoir.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195639 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book
I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is very interesting and gives good insight into interrogation and the military. Matthew is one of the good guys.

A gripping page-turner - I read it all in a night!
This book reads like a mysetery novel, it's really compelling stuff. There's a fairly small cast of characters, and we follow the author and his team as they interrogate some key suspects to find out which of them is Mr Big, and where Mr Really Big is hiding. It's a fascinating insight. The author clearly has more insight into Iraq and Islam than many people, although he doesn't seem to really acknowledge that it was the American decision to invade Iraq that kicked everything off. Still, if you ignore that and take the book for what it is, you'll really enjoy it. I couldn't put it down!