Black Site

The CIA in the Post-9/11 World

By: Philip Mudd

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

When the towers fell on September 11, 2001, nowhere were the reverberations more powerfully felt than at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Almost overnight, the intelligence organization evolved into a warfighting intelligence service, constructing what was known internally as "the Program": a web of top-secret detention facilities intended to help prevent future attacks on American soil and around the world. With Black Site, former deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center Philip Mudd presents a full, never-before-told story of this now-controversial program, directly addressing how far America went to pursue al-Qa'ida and prevent another catastrophe.

Heated debates about torture were later ignited in 2014 after the US Senate published a report of the Program, detailing the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to draw information from detainees. The report, Mudd posits, did not fully address key questions: How did the officials actually come to their decisions? What happened at the detention facilities - known as "Black Sites" - on a day-to-day basis? What did they look like? How were prisoners transported there? And how did the officers feel about what they were doing?

Black Site seeks answers to these questions and more.

©2019 Philip Mudd (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A lot of insight and context

When I first learnt about black sites, its through scary and over-exaggerated graphic dicpition from movies. I simply thought: CIA, TOURTURE. BAD. After reading the book, I learnt about the complexity behind it: Mental state of the country after 911; Urgency of the CIA to scramble resources and get fast result on cracking down terrorist organisation which is well-funded, well organised and well-led. The meticulous design of the interrogation and the precise calibration in a case by case nature makes it more like a surgical extraction of life-saving intel rather than trying to inflict pain on the enemy to exact vengence.

Pain and immense discomfort was present. But letting the terrirists who are funding and organising upcoming attack to talk to their lawyers and plead the fifth will only lead to more innocent death. The line is very carefully drawn behind a lot of scrutiny by the executive and judical body and it is not crossed. I just wish there were some form of emergency voting in congress to let the people pledge their will and do not flinch when they are told the ugly details of what needs to be done to save the country and its people from fear and death.

p.s. English is not my first language and I am never a good writer, so pardon my convuluted sentences and grammatical mistakes.

Important book for historians

Phillip Mudd set out as his objective to memorialize what led to the CIA black sites. He does an excellent job of describing the immediate post-9/11 atmosphere. In addition, he records from interviews with insiders the decision making process that led to the enhanced interrogation methods. Future leaders and historians must consult this important reference. There are elements where outside observers can disagree with the judgments made by CIA leadership but Mudd should be thanked for making this historical record.

CIA DETAILS

this book seemed to drag and was difficult for me to get through it. I can't recommend this as entertainment or something informative. There is a lot of name dropping and attempts to explain what was going on during this time period. But it just wasn't that interesting.

A very well articulated Compare, Contrast, Reflect

Right, Wrong or Indifferent... this book provides background that as Paul Harvey used to say, Is the rest of the story". Having deployed in support of OEF and OIF... I wanted intelligence that would protect our people. Sometimes I felt let down... but not through folks lack of trying. Intelligence and IPB... is tough. What this book showed me was simply that folks were trying to get Intel and IPB was ongoing... but policy and the way the US conducts business is.... complicated.

Good Book

Good book. Easy to follow and very informative. I would recommend to anyone with interest.

Story not The Story

telling half truths the truths in other words a story just not the story, alot of lives could have been saved had it not been run by media, political corruption.

information

love it .put the world in prospective .teaching not to rush to judgment. things are not always as they seem