Left of Boom: How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda

by Douglas Laux, Ralph Pezzullo

Overview

Left of Boom is the explosive New York Times bestselling memoir by a young CIA operative on the front lines in Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, Douglas Laux was a freshman in college, on the path to becoming a doctor. But with the fall of the Twin Towers came a turning point in his life. After graduating he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get himself to Afghanistan and into the center of the action. Through persistence and hard work he was fast-tracked to a clandestine operations position overseas. Dropped into a remote region of Afghanistan, he received his baptism by fire. Frustrated by bureaucratic red tape, a widespread lack of knowledge of the local customs and culture and an attitude of complacency that hindered his ability to combat the local Taliban, Doug confounded his peers by dressing like a native and mastering the local dialect, making contact and building sources within several deadly terrorist networks. His new approach resulted in unprecedented successes, including uncovering the largest IED network in the world, responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers.

Meanwhile, Doug had to keep up false pretenses with his family, girlfriend and friends--nobody could know what he did for a living--and deal with the emotional turbulence of constantly living a lie. His double life was building to an explosive resolution, with repercussions that would have far reaching consequences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466893214
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	830,564
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

DOUGLAS LAUX is a former CIA operations officer who served multiple tours throughout the Middle East. He was in Afghanistan for the 2010 Afghan Surge, and in Kandahar during Operation Neptune Spear, which resulted in the death of Usama bin Ladin. His final assignment was with the top secret task force involved with instigating the Syrian civil war. He lives in Washington, DC.

RALPH PEZZULLO is the bestselling author of Jawbreaker, Inside SEAL Team Six and others.

DOUGLAS LAUX is the pseudonym for a former CIA operations officer who served multiple tours throughout the Middle East. He was in Afghanistan for the 2010 Afghan Surge, and in Kandahar during Operation Neptune Spear, which resulted in the death of Usama bin Ladin. His final assignment was with the top secret task force involved with instigating the Syrian civil war. He lives in Washington, DC.
RALPH PEZZULLO is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning playwright, screenwriter and journalist. His books include Jawbreaker, Inside SEAL Team Six and others. He lives in California.

Table of Contents

1 Attack on Khowst 1

2 Onboarding 11

3 Training 23

4 Wadi Base 39

5 Abdul 51

6 Haji Jan 64

7 Commandant Khan 76

8 Stone Firebase 88

9 Bob 103

10 Pamplona 118

11 Camp Gecko 135

12 Mahmud 149

13 Mullah Salaam 162

14 Sarposa Prison 173

15 Wali Dalir/Mullah Rashid 186

16 Wolverine 200

17 Termination 212

18 Kate 224

19 Sucker-Punched 238

20 Downward Spiral 249

21 Syria 263

22 Endgame 277

23 Resignation 289

Letter 302

Editorial Reviews

02/29/2016
Smith, a pseudonymous CIA case officer, aided by Pezzullo (Zero Footprint), recounts his two-year stint trying to infiltrate and destroy the bomb-making network of the Afghan Taliban. The authors describe in detail the techniques, dangers, and stresses of creating a network of Afghan sources, some of whom are actual Taliban commanders. This is an unvarnished, critical look at the inner workings of the CIA, and seeing the organization function through Smith’s eyes can be both inspiring and disheartening. The field operatives, middle-age careerists, and enthusiastic newcomers generally demonstrate patriotism, intelligence, and sacrifice; the agency itself—perhaps unsurprisingly—is portrayed as overly political and incredibly bureaucratic. Smith is able to present unique descriptions of the psychological stresses endured by the CIA case officers who are forced to lie to even their closest family and friends about what they do, where they are, and whom they work for. It’s a fascinating and engaging look inside the fast-paced and dangerous daily workings of today’s CIA, and Smith reveals in stark terms that the personal stresses he endured were as dangerous as the physical threats he faced operating alone among the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Agent: Eric Lupfer, William Morris Endeavor. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Mr. Laux brings a raw perspective to the canon. His memoir is not filled with recollections of White House meetings or lengthy defenses of waterboarding. Mr. Laux was thousands of miles from Washington, a grunt in a secret war." - New York Times

"The first glimpse of a younger generation of CIA spies whose careers have been defined by the War on Terror. . . . Laux's narrative offers new insights, bludgeoned as they were by agency censors, into how the CIA goes about the business of war zone espionage." - NBC News

"Every bit as riveting and even more spellbinding than the best the thriller genre has to offer. . . . In addition to providing a superb glimpse at the minutia involved in [being a CIA case officer], Left of Boom also does a splendid job of revealing the psychological and emotional costs in undertaking such a dangerous undercover mission." —Providence Journal

"This is an unvarnished, critical look at the inner workings of the CIA...Smith is able to present unique descriptions of the psychological stresses endured by the CIA case officers who are forced to lie to even their closest family and friends about what they do, where they are, and whom they work for. It’s a fascinating and engaging look inside the fast-paced and dangerous daily workings of today’s CIA." - Publishers Weekly

"Left of Boom is a riveting personal story of how a young CIA operative, attached to the National Clandestine Service (NCS) and fresh out of college, managed to actually penetrate into the Talban and Al-Qaeda.... This story is absolutely fascinating and provides readers with a very rare look at just how CIA operatives live and work at the tip of the spear." - Don Mann, SEAL Team SIX (ret), co-author of Inside SEAL Team SIX

"Left of Boom is a rollicking read that really gets us inside the life and mind of a CIA operations officer." - Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad

From the Publisher

2016-02-15
A heavily redacted tale of how recruiting sources within the Taliban from top-secret CIA encampments in Afghanistan is exhilarating but not conducive to maintaining healthy relationships back home. Smith, a pseudonym, spent several years on the ground in remote areas of Afghanistan, clashing with agency bureaucracy, growing a large beard, achieving fluency in several dialects of the local language, and occasionally being mistaken for a local. With the aid of Pezzullo, a prolific collaborator on the memoirs of those in Special Forces and the intelligence community (Zero Footprint, 2016, etc.), Smith recounts his swashbuckling exploits in inelegant prose, distinguished chiefly by the conceit that huge amounts of it—lone words, whole paragraphs, occasionally the majority of a page—are visibly redacted. An example: "After a month of playing cowboy, I returned to the daily grind of Langley and started dating a sweet brunette named Hannah, ——— ——————————————— ———————————- ——————— —- ———-. Determined to maintain my cover, I told her, Austin, and my other friends that I worked for a —————— (private company)." Once the author moves from headquarters to the redacted but easily identifiable province in Afghanistan where he was first stationed, the redactions become ever longer and more frequent, leaving major questions for readers. One fully redacted paragraph even has a footnote sourcing the unshown information to a Wikipedia article. While Smith (purportedly) had little difficulty mastering the language and cultivating sources in hostile territory, maintaining his cover for his girlfriends was another matter, and his work led to the demise of multiple romances. Many friends, he learned, "thought I was deliberately being mysterious to make it appear that my life was more interesting than it was. Ironically, some of them thought that I wanted them to think that I was a spy." A highly amped, ————- book that ———- readers will find ————.

Kirkus Reviews