In 1999, Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, DC, to join the CIA. In her new book The Targeter: My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House, Bakos takes the reader from Langley deep into Iraq, explaining the inner workings of the intelligence community after 9/11, and her role finding the godfather of ISIS and mastermind of al Qaida in Iraq: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Along the way, Bakos explores other issues from the sisterhood entrenched in a predominantly male world of the CIA that led Special Operations Forces to the doorsteps of wanted terrorists to her effort to improve the intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Nada Bakos, in addition to being the author of The Targeter, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. As a CIA analyst, the subject of her new book, she was a key member of the team charged with analyzing the relationship between Iraq, al-Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks, and also served as the Chief Targeting Officer tracking Zarqawi.

Join New America’s International Security Program as it welcomes Nada Bakos for a discussion of the hunt for Zarqawi and intelligence operations in the war on terror.

Follow the conversation online using #TheTargeter and following @NewAmericaISP.

Participants:

Nada Bakos, @nadabakos
Author, The Targeter: My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House
Former Chief Targeting Officer Tracking Zarqawi, CIA

Moderator:
Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America