December 27, 2021

TCR Episode #105 | Toby Harnden--FIRST CASUALTY

53 minutes

In this episode, accomplished author and veteran foreign correspondent Toby Harnden joins the Crew Reviews to discuss First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11, his riveting account of the first U.S. military action in Afghanistan.

"Harnden skillfully interweaves dramatic action sequences with the backstories of the book’s central figures, and briskly highlights the failures of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Readers will be swept up in this little-known chapter of America’s 'forever war.'" –Publishers Weekly

America is reeling; Al-Qaeda has struck and thousands are dead. The country scrambles to respond, but the Pentagon has no plan for Afghanistan—where Osama bin Laden masterminded the attack and is protected by the Taliban. Instead, the CIA steps forward to spearhead the war. Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again.

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 Americans’ 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 Jangi—the “Fort of War.”

Team Alpha’s Mike Spann, an ex-Marine, and David Tyson, a polyglot former Central Asian studies academic, seize America’s initial opportunity to extract intelligence from men trained by bin Laden—among them a young Muslim convert from California. The prisoners revolt and one CIA officer falls—the first casualty in America’s 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.

Toby Harnden reported from 33 countries as a foreign correspondent while based in London, Belfast, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Washington D.C. During his work for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times of London, he was imprisoned in Zimbabwe and faced prosecution in Northern Ireland for his work. A dual U.S. and British citizen and former Royal Navy officer, he lives in McLean, Virginia.

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