TWO YEARS AFGHANISTAN ABANONED: 2/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War by David Grantham (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 28 August 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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TWO YEARS AFGHANISTAN ABANONED: 2/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War by David Grantham (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Consequences-Intelligence-Officers-David-Grantham/dp/098440631X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
We are still living in the long shadow of the Iraq War.
In 2006, David Grantham was fresh out of college and serving as a counterintelligence officer with the elite and secretive Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Iraq was veering toward civil war. The U.S. military desperately needed better on-the-ground intelligence to turn the tide. Grantham found himself in Kuwait and Afghanistan, then at Iraq’s infamous American prison, Camp Bucca. Not only was Bucca the breeding ground for the Islamic State, it was in southern Iraq, where America’s deadly fight with Iran was an open secret.
Consequences is both a riveting behind-the-scenes look at intelligence operations at the height of the Iraq war, and a charming and sobering story of one man’s journey through the pleasures and consequences that come with wartime intelligence.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelors. |
| 0:10.1 | This is the new John Bachelors Show, CBS Audio Network, it's a pleasure to speak to David |
| 0:14.7 | Grantham author, his new book is Consequences, an intelligence officer's war. |
| 0:20.6 | This draws upon David's experiences in the Air Force when he was an armed federal officer |
| 0:26.4 | in civilian clothes and Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base and outside his predecessor, a |
| 0:33.2 | lost his life because of an IED. |
| 0:36.0 | But he's now back to assignment and the assignment takes him into, well, at the edge of Kuwait |
| 0:43.3 | and Iraq, a place called Boca, which is on the road about six hours drive from Baghdad. |
| 0:49.8 | He deploys there in conditions that are organized, there's a prison at Boca at Camp |
| 0:56.2 | Boca. |
| 0:57.2 | But at the same time, this is the height of the murder squad known as Arkawi, the height |
| 1:03.3 | of it. |
| 1:04.3 | Arkawi was recruiting, we know now, everywhere in the prisons, in the camps, in the terps, |
| 1:10.7 | the interpreters, on the roads, everybody driving out there was a potential recruit for |
| 1:15.1 | the Arkawi. |
| 1:16.2 | David, you go to Camp Boca and your job is theirs to work with a fellow officer and the |
| 1:21.8 | two of you have an assignment that is not obvious to me at first and apparently it wasn't |
| 1:26.7 | obvious to the U.S. Army when you arrived and you spend some time to make it clear to |
| 1:32.4 | us that the U.S. Army is not in sympathy with Air Force federal armed officers. |
| 1:38.9 | Is that something that was because of the tension of the time, David, or is this a general |
| 1:43.7 | understanding that the services work suspiciously together? |
| 1:48.0 | Yes, and there is a brotherhood among the military and there is also competition within |
... |
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