“The reality of the profession is long hours of menial work that don’t often fit into standard narratives. You make the best choices you can, about very serious matters, with imperfect information. You live with those choices for the rest of your life.” — Nada Bakos
Nada Bakos impresses the hell out of me.
I first became aware of her through HBO’s 2013 documentary “Manhunt: The Search For Bin Laden.” More recently, she features heavily in the book “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS” and Frontline’s documentary on the same subject.
Bakos was an exceptionally talented and capable CIA analyst who was on the Islamic terrorism beat from very early on — particularly focused on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the savage maniac who birthed the movement that has become ISIS.
She eventually became a Targeter — turning her analytical skills to gathering intel on specific militant targets that could then be swept up in the high-tempo special operations raids that Gen. Stanley McCrystal instituted in the effort to “fight for intelligence” and dismantle the Zarqawi network.
Targeter downrange.
The Target.
Bakos was downrange, accompanying some of those raids herself. She helped a lot of bad guys get dead. She’s obviously smart, dedicated, brave and diligent — and she’s a straight shooter; an unsparing truth-teller in a world that is sorely lacking in that admirable quality. She’s got a memoir coming out next year. I’ll be reading it. Meantime, her website has a worthwhile blog and an archive of articles that offer a lot of insight into how the War on Terror has been fought — and sometimes badly mishandled.
(Interestingly, “Nada” was the title of an H.Rider Haggard novel “Nada the Lily,” and the scout Frederick Russell Burnham and his wife Blanche named their daughter Nada).
Both docos are well-worth your time.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-secret-history-of-isis/
Matthew says
This certainly seems interesting. I’ll check it out.
Nada of the Lily was the backstory of the heroic Zulu warrior Umslopogaas. It’s unusual for a Victorian novel in that it has no white characters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nada_the_Lily
JimC says
That’s the one.
john roberts says
When I was in my teens I read all the Quatermain/Umslopogaas stories and loved them. I think some enterprising weapon-maker ought to make a repro of Umslopogass’s very distinctive axe, Inkosi-Kaas. “The Chieftainess.”The old Zulu’s explanation of why he gave it that name is hilarious, in his grim way. The penultimate chapter of “Allen Quatermain,” “How Umslopogaas held the stair,”is possibly the best piece of adventure fiction writing ever.
JimC says
Love that stuff too.
deuce says
An early piece of history regarding the axe of Umslopogaas can be found in the Opar novels of Farmer and Carey. Highly recommended.