Listen to this engaging conversation between Bruce Riedel, director of the Brookings Intelligence Project and a former CIA officer, and Philip Mudd, a former CIA and FBI counter-terrorism official. The two intelligence veterans had a provocative, wide-ranging coversation about how the U.S. intelligence community does its work, touching on the Boston Marathon bombings, the investigation of the two Tsarnaev brothers suspected of commiting the act and their origins in Chechnya, and comparison to the 2006 plot to blow up jumbo jets flying between Britain and North America. The conversation also considered to free speech rights and the potential conflict with extremist actions.
On April 22, the Intelligence Project at Brookings, hosted a discussion with Philip Mudd on his new book, Takedown: the Hunt for al Qaeda (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), which examines how the intelligence community collects, analyzes and employs data to combat terrorism, and details the challenges still ahead in the war against al Qaeda. Mudd served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center, the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Security Branch and as the FBI’s senior intelligence adviser.
Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.