Joby Warrick

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags comes the thrilling unknown story of America’s mission in to find and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and keep them out of the hands of the Islamic State In August 2012, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was clinging to power in a vicious civil war. When secret intelligence revealed that the dictator might resort to using chemical weapons, President Obama warned that doing so would cross “a red line.” Assad did it anyway, bombing the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with sarin gas, killing hundreds of civilians and forcing Obama to decide if he would mire America in another unpopular Middle Eastern war. When Russia offered to broker the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama leapt at the out.So begins an electrifying race to find, remove, and destroy 1,300 tons of chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war. The extraordinary little-known effort is a triumph for the Americans, but soon Russia’s long game becomes it will do anything to preserve Assad’s rule. As America’s ability to control events in Syria shrinks, the White House learns that ISIS, building its caliphate in Syria’s war-tossed territory, is seeking chemical weapons for itself, with an eye to attacking the West.Red Line is a classic Joby Warrick true-life a character-driven narrative with a cast of heroes and villains, including weapons hunters, politicians, doctors, diplomats, and spies. Drawing on astonishing original reporting, Warrick reveals how the United States embarked on a bold adventure to prevent one catastrophe but could not avoid a tragic chain of events that empowered America’s enemies.

WINNER OF THE 2016 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION A Best Book of 2015 "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," "People" Magazine, "San Francisco Chronicle," "Kansas City Star," and "Kirkus Reviews" ""In a thrilling dramatic narrative, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Joby Warrick"traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents." When the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In "Black Flags, " an unprecedented character-driven account of the rise of ISIS, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrickshows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Presidents Bush and Obama led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swaths of Syria and Iraq.Zarqawi began by directing terror attacks from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the American invasion in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By falsely identifying him as the link between Saddam and bin Laden, U.S. officials inadvertently spurred like-minded radicals to rally to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings persisted until American and Jordanian intelligence discovered clues that led to a lethal airstrike on Zarqawi s hideout in 2006.His movement, however, endured. First calling themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq, then Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, his followers sought refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, and as the U.S. largely stood by, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi s dream of an ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate.Drawing on unique high-level access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. "Black Flags" is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today s most dangerous extremist threat. "From the Hardcover edition.""

A stunning narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated both the inner circle of al-Qaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a devastating impact on the war on terror. In December 2009, a group of the CIA’s top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden’s top deputy. Instead, as he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped to his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agency’s worst loss of life in decades. In The Triple Agent , Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Joby Warrick takes us deep inside the CIA’s secret war against al-Qaeda, a war that pits robotic planes and laser-guided missiles against a cunning enemy intent on unleashing carnage in American cities. Flitting precariously between the two sides was Balawi, a young man with extraordinary gifts who managed to win the confidence of hardened terrorists as well as veteran spymasters. With his breathtaking accounts from inside al-Qaeda’s lair, Balawi appeared poised to become America’s greatest double-agent in half a century—but he was not at all what he seemed. Combining the powerful momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side , Warrick takes the readers on a harrowing journey from the slums of Amman to the inner chambers of the White House in an untold true story of miscalculation, deception, and revenge.

The spectacular rise and dramatic fall of super-assassin Carlos the Jackal—one of history’s most infamous terrorist masterminds—told with new revelations from the Jackal himself, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags.A black-bereted, gun-slinging avatar of one of the most turbulent eras in global politics, Carlos the Jackal burst onto the world stage in 1975 as the first true celebrity terrorist and the TV-ready face of a violent Palestinian resistance movement that was then just beginning to gain traction. In a bloody career that would ultimately span three decades, Carlos innovated a new kind of spectacular terrorism, one that embraced hijackings, hostage crises, airport bombings, and international assassinations. And he personally masterminded one of the most shocking operations of the era: the kidnapping of an entire conference of world oil ministers for ransom in Vienna. The polar opposite of today’s most infamous terrorists, Carlos was a hard-drinking libertine and self-styled romantic who entranced dozens of beautiful women and murdered his victims with callous disregard, often with his own hand.But Carlos was not all that he seemed to be.Through newly declassified archives, secret witness accounts, and a rare interview with the Jackal himself, acclaimed journalist Joby Warrick reveals a previously hidden side of the man born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez—an ideologically driven figure whose myth was as carefully constructed as his attacks were deadly.As he did in his Pulitzer Prize–winning Black Flags, Warrick delivers a powerful and highly cinematic tale that explains and illuminates the root causes, and founding personalities, behind one of the great conflicts of our time.