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The gripping true story of a spymaster, a bomb-maker and two brothers - one undercover in ISIS, the other his handler
Margaret Coker is an investigative journalist. She has lived and worked in Iraq and the wider Middle East since 2003. An ex-Baghdad Bureau Chief for the New York Times, she honed her reporting skills at The Wall Street Journal where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as part of a team chronicling Turkey's failed coup, political purges and teetering democracy. Her coverage of national security issues won the Overseas Press Club Award and the Edwin M. Hood Prize from the National Press Club, America's top prize for diplomatic reporting. This is her first book.
Authentic, moving, visceral, chilling, utterly revelatory, truly
masterful. A stunning tour de force by an author who has lived
every word of it on the ground. A story of our time that absolutely
needs to be told
*Damien Lewis, bestselling author of Zero Six Bravo*
Searing, pulse-pounding, yet also acutely human, this compelling
account of how Iraqi agents infiltrated ISIS takes us deep beneath
the lurid Baghdad and Mosul headlines and into a sharply focused
world of courage, ingenuity, terror and love. This is not just a
story of dry-mouthed espionage, but also of its profound
repercussions upon loved ones and family; the intense struggle to
live in peace in a land where extremists of all varieties seek to
bring death. Greatly illuminating and powerful
*Sinclair McKay, bestselling author of Dresden*
Coker's book would do John le Carré - and undoubtedly any number of
Operations Officers - proud for her treatment of the role, value,
and challenges of human intelligence and agent running. This book
is not about the high-tech gadgetry of surveillance drones, signals
intercepts, or cyber intelligence, though all three play a role in
this story. It is about the unrivaled value of the man or woman
on-the-ground or in the loop with access to the information. It is
about the delicate art of handling a source, an agent, or an
informant
*Diplomatic Courier*
This eye-opening account of the Iraqi intelligence unit which
infiltrated Islamic State may read like a thriller, yet it is also
grounded in the experiences of everyday Iraqis . . . a unique
masterpiece in the genres of espionage writing and spy
biography
*Scotsman*
Margaret Coker, formerly of The Wall Street Journal and The New
York Times, continued to cover Iraq after most of the American
press corps had moved on; she has produced a gripping new book
about the shadow war between Iraqi intelligence officers and the
Islamic State, The Spymaster of Baghdad . . . Her subject is an
elite Iraqi espionage unit called "the Falcons," composed of
ordinary men who helped save their country from the onslaught of
ISIS. Coker's reporting on these men, their families, and the
family of a young woman recruited by terrorists is so meticulous
that it lets her enter invisibly a closed, sometimes frightening
world and portray it with cinematic detail
*Atlantic*
Fast-moving and suspenseful
*Wall Street Journal*
Who needs spy fiction, when fact can provide as thrilling a story
as this? In Margaret Coker's deeply reported, unputdownable
account, the previously unknown Iraqi heros of the war against the
Islamic State turn out to be braver than Bond and as subtle as
Smiley. Until this book, we had no idea how much we owe the
spymaster of Baghdad and his operatives
*Lindsey Hilsum, author of In Extremis*
A fascinating, character-driven chronicle of the battle against
al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq . . . Coker ties the threads of the
narrative together in a gripping and well-crafted conclusion worthy
of a spy novel . . . A dramatic and edifying must-read for
espionage fans and anyone interested in Middle Eastern affairs
*Publishers Weekly, starred review*
The Spymaster of Baghdad is the amazing true story of the secret
war against ISIS in Iraq, which Margaret Coker tells with great
verve and authority
*Peter Bergen, New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt*
A heartbreaking and courageous story of the secretive Iraqi Falcons
intelligence unit . . . well worth reading and sharing with the
entire world. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Abu Ali Al-Basri
and the Iraqi Falcons Unit for their important role in the fight
against the most lethal terrorist group of our time
*Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study
of Violent Extremism (ICSVE)*
A thrilling and skillfully reported tale of the invisible heroes of
the Iraqi fight against terrorism, that, at its heart, is a
poignant story of family and sacrifice
*Tamer Elnoury, covert operative and New York Times bestselling
author of American Radical*
Margaret Coker has brought to readers a gripping spy drama that
doubles as a page-turning story of family and survival. A moving
window into patriots who faced down terror and fought for their
country
*Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, New York Times bestselling author of
Ashley’s War and The Daughters of Kobani*
Margaret Coker's The Spymaster of Baghdad is a stunning and
meticulous account of exceptional bravery and espionage carried out
by Iraqis in the most dangerous stages of the war against ISIS.
These are the type of stories we so rarely get to hear, and we are
lucky to have journalists like Coker to tell them
*Phil Klay, award-winning author of Redeployment and
Missionaries*
This gripping, eye-opening true story of a spymaster, a bomb-maker
and two brothers named Harith and Munaf (one went undercover in
ISIS, the other was his handler back in Baghdad) reveals the
extraordinarily courageous work of Iraq's Falcons intelligence cell
in infiltrating ISIS. Coker, investigative journalist and Pulitzer
Prize finalist, tells a story of old-fashioned spycraft, and of
home-grown heroes willing to die in the cause of saving their
country from a new tyranny
*The Bookseller*
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