Countdown bin Laden
The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice
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4.3 • 263 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Following Chris Wallace’s “riveting” (The New York Times) and “propulsive” (Time) first book Countdown 1945 comes a deeply reported, revelatory, and thrillingly told account of the final months of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
On August 27, 2010, three CIA officers ask for a private meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta. During that secret session, they tell Panetta that agents have tracked a courier with deep Al Qaeda ties to a three-story house at the end of a dead-end street in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But they say it’s more than a house—it’s a heavily protected fortress. No one in the meeting says the name bin Laden. They don’t have to. Everyone understands that finally, after nearly a decade, maybe, just maybe, they’ve found the world’s most wanted man.
In Countdown bin Laden, celebrated journalist and CNN anchor and Max host Chris Wallace delivers a vivid account of the final eight months of intelligence gathering, national security strategizing, and meticulous military planning that leads to the climactic mission when SEAL Team Six closes in on its target.
The book delivers new information collected from Wallace’s in-depth interviews with more than a dozen central figures, including Admiral William H. McRaven—leader of the operation in Pakistan—as well as CIA Director Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and the SEAL Team Six special operator who kills Osama bin Laden. Wallace also brings to life the human elements of this story, talking to families who lost loved ones on 9/11, sharing what relatives of SEAL Team Six went through, and bringing us inside the tense Situation Room during the raid.
Countdown bin Laden is a historical thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting about the race to apprehend and bring to justice the mastermind of the most consequential terrorist attack in American history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fox News Sunday host Wallace and Associated Press reporter Weiss follow Countdown 1945 with an engrossing if familiar account of the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011. Toggling between key players including CIA director Leon Panetta; Adm. William McRaven, who planned the mission; and Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, who fired the shots that killed bin Laden, the authors start in August 2010, when Panetta first learned that CIA agents had tracked a suspected al-Qaeda courier to a heavily fortified compound on a dead-end street in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Aerial surveillance led operatives to believe that a compound resident they nicknamed "the Pacer" might be bin Laden, though an attempt to collect DNA evidence confirming his identity through a CIA-funded vaccination program proved fruitless. Anxious to take action before the Pakistani government caught wind of the operation, President Obama made the "50-50 call" to authorize the raid, which got off to a rocky start when the lead helicopter went down. Synthesizing material from published memoirs, journalistic accounts, and interviews, the authors build a cohesive narrative, but break little new ground. Still, this is a cinematic overview of one of the CIA's most heralded missions. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Interesting read
The details of the hunt and operation that we’re allowed to know are interesting and enlightening. The limitations of our intelligence capabilities are somewhat surprising, at least as far as we’re so told. Bin Laden was smart enough to never raise his head to the sky so our surveillance could positively ID him. And, hiding in plain site in a location anyone would least expect.
Wallace’s Countdown
Well written, very engaging. I just can’t stand the subtle, and not so subtle, political jabs and rhetoric (very leftist) and omissions of how both sides of political thinking contributed to this great event in US history. If you weren’t astute as to what really occurred, you’d think anyone right of liberal didn’t contribute anything related to the war on terrorism and actually failed our country, and that any left-leaning human made every decision and action with virtual perfection, which is simply false and an example of poor journalism (maybe journalism wasn’t Wallace’s intent). Growing up I always thought Wallace was a great reporter/journalist - centrist, fair, balanced. Now I don’t know what to think of him.
Countdown bin laden
Best book I’ve read in years! Could not put it down.
Thanks
Dr. James roy appleton jr.