Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the
CIA,
Afghanistan & Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, written by Steve Coll, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The book describes the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan to include the covert paramilitary programs against the Soviet Union and the Taliban. It also includes detailed descriptions of operations that attempted to kill or capture
Osama Bin Ladin before September 11, 2001 by commandos from the CIA's elite Special Activities Division. A slightly expanded edition, taking into account the work of the 9/11 Commission, was published by Penguin in 2005. According to a piece in The New York Times, then presidential candidate Barack Obama was reading
Ghost Wars in the final days of the 2008 presidential election campaign. The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan: With the publication of
Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.
Background Information
The Central Intelligence Agency succeeded the Office of Strategic Services after World War II as the country's espionage service. Afghanistan was invaded in 2001 as a result of the refusal of its Taliban government to reject Osama Bin Laden.
