How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq
Alexander, a pseudonymous air force officer, and writer Bruning (House to House), collaborate to tell the stranger-than-fiction story of the intelligence operation that located and ultimately killed Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. An Air Force investigator turned interrogator, Alexander was trained in the post–Abu Ghraib interrogation techniques that replace fear and control with respect, rapport, hope, cunning and deception. He arrived in Iraq in March 2006, a month after al-Qaeda bombed the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra in an effort to incite sectarian violence, and Zarqawi became the most wanted man in Iraq and the primary focus of U.S. intelligence efforts. Using the new methods, Alexander interrogated five captured al-Qaeda members and tracked down Zarqawi's personal spiritual adviser, who unwittingly led U.S. Special Forces to Zarqawi's hideout; this vindicated Alexander's methods and eliminated the key terrorist leader. Alexander provides a front-row seat to the intelligence war inside the Global War on Terrorism in a riveting, fast-paced account that reads like a first-rate thriller.(Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.