You're Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in

Washington DC. I'm Mark Stout historian of the museum. I'm a PhD author and historian who served for 13 years as an analyst in the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Every month, the museum brings you interesting talks with authors,

scholars, and practitioners who has something to do with the world of

intelligence and espionage.

We're joined today by Josh Meyer. Josh is the former chief terrorism

reporter for the LA Times and his reporting inside Al Qaeda was nominated

for a Pulitzer Prize, which unfortunately he did not win,

but he has twice been part of Pulitzer Prize winning teams for his reporting.

He was, interestingly enough, one of the creators and producers for the TV series

level nine which some of you may be familiar with and now he teaches journalism

for Northwestern University actually in a program here in Washington, the National Security Journalism Program in Washington.

Josh's first book, which he's co-authored with Terry McDermott, also a veteran of the LA Times,

is The Hunt for KSM, Inside the Pursuit and Take the Thanks Mark. So how did you and Terry come to write this book? This is a pretty ambitious topic which by the way I think you've done a brilliant job of but how did you how did you come to launch into this project?

Well, thanks. You know, somebody once said you should

never write a book unless it's a subject that you absolutely can't get out of your

head because it's certainly not worth the time or the money that you put into it.

And I have to say that in this case you know I was

reporting for the Los Angeles Times on Terrorism starting before 9-11 by

early 2002 I'd started hearing from sources about a mysterious Muktar or a guy who ultimately came

to be known as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

And I just was always fascinated by him as a character, but also even more so by the people that were hunting him

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