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*
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