Overview
āGrippingā¦a terrific action narrative.ā -Max Hastings, The Sunday Times
An award winning journalist reveals the dramatic true story of the CIAās Team Alpha, the first Americans to be dropped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan after 9/11.
First Casualty places you with Team Alpha as the CIA rides into battle on horseback alongside the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. In Washington, DC, few trust that the CIA men, the Green Berets, and the Americansā outnumbered Afghan allies can prevail before winter sets in. On the ground, Team Alpha is undeterred. The Taliban is routed but hatches a plot with Al-Qaeda to hit back. Hundreds of suicidal fighters, many hiding weapons, fake a surrender and are transported to Qala-i Jangiāthe āFort of War.ā
Team Alphaās Mike Spann, an ex-Marine, and David Tyson, a polyglot former Central Asian studies academic, seize Americaās initial opportunity to extract intelligence from men trained by bin Ladenāamong them a young Muslim convert from California. The prisoners revolt and one CIA officer fallsāthe first casualty in Americaās longest war, which will last two decades. The other CIA man shoots dead the Al-Qaeda jihadists attacking his comrade. To survive, he must fight his way out against overwhelming odds.
Award-winning author Toby Harnden gained unprecedented access to all living Team Alpha members and every level of the CIA. Superbly researched, First Casualty draws on extensive interviews, secret documents, and deep reporting inside Afghanistan. As gripping as any adventure novel, yet intimate and profoundly moving, it tells how America found a winning strategy only to abandon it. Harnden reveals that the lessons of early victory and the haunting foretelling it containedāunreliable allies, ethnic rivalries, suicide attacks, and errant US bombsāwere ignored, tragically fueling a twenty-year conflict.
This book title, First Casualty (The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11), ISBN: 9780316540957, by Toby Harnden, published by Little, Brown and Company (September 7, 2021) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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