Toby Harnden

Toby Harnden(born 14 January 1966)is a British-American author and journalist who was awarded theOrwell Prizefor Books in 2012.He is the author ofFirst Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11,published by Little, Brown in September, 2021.He spent almost 25 years working for British newspapers, mainly as a foreign correspondent. From 2013 until 2018, he was Washington bureau chief ofThe Sunday Times.He previously spent 17 years atThe Daily Telegraph,based inLondon,Belfast,Washington,JerusalemandBaghdad,finishing as US Editor from 2006 to 2011.The book's title is a reference to paramilitary officerJohnny Micheal Spann,a member of theCIA's Team Alpha, whose eight members became the first Americans behind enemy lines inAfghanistanfollowing the9/11 attacksof 2001. He is the author of two previous books:Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh(1999) andDead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan(2011). He was reporter and presenter of the BBC Panorama Special programmeBroken by Battleabout suicide andPTSDamong British soldiers, broadcast in 2013.

Background

The son of architect Keith Anthony Harnden and Valerie Anne Steadman Harnden (nee Dixon),he was born inPortsmouthand grew up inMarpleandRusholme,Manchester.He attended Harrytown Comprehensive SchoolinBredbury,Cheshire andSt Bede's College, Manchester.He enteredBritannia Royal Naval College,Dartmouthin January 1985 and passed out the following August. After studying Modern History atCorpus Christi College, Oxford,he graduated fromOxford Universitywith a First in July 1988, receiving a College Prize and the Miles Clauson Prize.While at the university, Harnden was Junior Common Room President of Corpus Christi in 1987, succeedingDavid Milibandand was president of the JCR Presidents' Committee.Before becoming a journalist, Harnden was an officer in theRoyal Navy,retiring in the rank of Lieutenant in 1994after service ashore and at sea in the assault shipsHMSFearless,andHMSIntrepid,the minesweeperHMSItchen,the destroyersHMSManchesterandHMSEdinburghand the frigateHMSCornwall.During his training, he was an exchange officer with theRoyal Norwegian Navy,helping to transport reindeer on troop landing craft.His final naval appointment was in theMinistry of DefenceasFlag Lieutenantto theSecond Sea Lord.In August 2009, he became an American citizen.He has two children.

Books

Harnden has written three non-fiction books:First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA's Secret Mission to Avenge 9/11(2021);Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan(2011); andBandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh(1999).

Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh,published byHodder & Stoughtonin November 1999, was critically acclaimed and sold more than 100,000 copies. It led to the formation of theSmithwick Tribunal,which investigated whether, as Harnden had alleged in his book, there had beenGarda(Irish police) collusion in the 1989 murders of two seniorRUCofficers,Chief SuperintendentHarry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. In December 2013, the tribunal confirmed the allegations, concluding that there had been Garda collusion in the murders.The Irish government apologized to the families of the dead officers. The author Ed Moloney, one of the foremost experts on the modern IRA, supported Harnden's account: "The other thing I know is that the IRA did have an agent inside the Dundalk Garda station. The Smithwick Tribunal was established largely because of allegations from Toby Harnden in his book Bandit Country – The IRA and South Armagh that a Dundalk-based Garda helped the IRA kill the two RUC men. Harnden got his information from security force sources on both sides of the Border and although he refused to give evidence to Smithwick – presumably on the laudable grounds that he would not compromise his sources – I believed him. I believed him not just because I know him to be a reputable and ethical journalist but also because I was told the same, that a well-known Dundalk Garda was in the back pocket of the IRA in South Armagh. My source was a well-placed member of the IRA whose position in the organization was such that he was in a position to know all about the Garda agent. The details about the agent that I was given dovetail exactly with Harnden's information."In 2016, Abebooks listed "Bandit Country" as the 14th most-searched-for out-of-print book in the English language.In 2019, novelist David Keenan named "Bandit Country" as one of the top 10 books written about the Irish Troubles, stating: "One of my fascinations with Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s is how it became a place where different rules applied, where reality itself seemed up for grabs. Nowhere was this more the case than the" Provisional Republic "of South Armagh, AKA Bandit Country, with its handmade 'sniper at work' signs and its community militias all surveyed by the watchtowers and helicopters of the British army. Toby Harnden's book is a compulsively fascinating tour of this alternative universe."BBC journalist and authorPeter Taylor,a veteran of more than three decades of reporting in Ireland, had named "Bandit Country" in his top 10 Irish Troubles books in 2002, concluding: "Courageous journalism and compulsive reading as Harnden goes inside the most impenetrable and deadly of the IRA Brigades. Good judgment; great sources."In 2003, it was reported that the British authorities had tried to use possession of a copy of "Bandit Country" as evidence against an alleged Irish republican dissident accused of terrorist offenses: "An attempt was also made to lodge the possession of Toby Handen's 'Bandit Country' as evidence against one of the accused."

Dead Men Risenwas published byQuercus Booksin March 2011.Publication was delayed after the Ministry of Defence objected to certain passages on "security" grounds. The book had already been cleared for publication by the MOD after a four-month review process that Harnden had agreed to as part of a contract that provided him with access to theWelsh Guards.Following a legal dispute between the MOD and Quercus, the MOD agreed to purchase all 24,000 copies of the first print run of the book, at a cost to the UK taxpayer of £151,450, and oversee their pulping.It was well-reviewed and reached number four onThe Sunday Timesbestseller list.In May 2012, it was awarded theOrwell Prizefor books.Orwell prize judgesHelena Kennedy,Miranda CarterandSameer Rahimsaid: "It sometimes seems that we only care about the soldiers fighting in our names when they are killed. Once the platitudes are over we forget about them. Toby Harnden's remarkable book takes us into the hearts and minds of the Welsh Guards in a way that is both compelling and visceral. It challenges every citizen of this country to examine exactly what we're asking soldiers to do in Afghanistan."

Main works

• First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11,Little, Brown, New York, 2021.ISBN978-1-84916-421-4
• Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan,Quercus, London, 2011.ISBN978-1-84916-421-4
• Bandit Country -The IRA and South Armagh,Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1999.ISBN0-340-71736-X

Journalism career

Harnden spent 24 years with British newspapers, 19 of them as a foreign correspondent based in Washington D.C., the Middle East and London. He has interviewed three U.S. presidents:George W. Bush(in 2000 and 2014).),Bill Clinton(in 2006) andJimmy Carter(in 2015).

He started his career in journalism as a theatre reviewer at theEdinburgh Fringe Festivalfor The Scotsman and a writer of obituaries for The Independent.He began atThe Daily Telegraphin 1994 as a home news reporter. He was posted toBelfastas the newspaper'sIrelandCorrespondent in March 1996, shortly after theIRA'sfirst ceasefire had ended. He subsequently covered the IRA's second ceasefire, theGood Friday Agreementand theOmagh bombingof 1998Harnden was ordered by Lord Saville's Bloody Sunday Tribunal to hand over recordings and notes of his interviews with two anonymous Paratroopers who had been present during the 1972 killings. He refused to do so, arguing that it was his duty to protect the anonymity of his sources.According to the Irish Times: "With contempt of court proceedings hanging over him, Mr. Harnden faced a heavy fine or up to two years' imprisonment."In June 2004, Saville dropped contempt proceedings with Harnden stating that he would never have revealed the identity of "Soldier X", who had opened fire on Bloody Sunday.

From 1999 to 2003, Harnden was Washington Bureau Chief ofThe Daily Telegraph.He reported from Washington during the9/11 terrorist attacksin 2001. Six months after 9/11, he spoke of his growing affinity with the United States, saying at a Brookings Institution forum: "There's a great difference at the moment between the language that's used in America and in Europe...Since September 11, I feel like I'm more like an American than a European...I find myself more and more having a problem with people in Europe. At least what you get here is people saying what they mean, which is what I find refreshing."He became Middle East Correspondent ofThe Daily Telegraphin October 2003 and was based inJerusalemand thenBaghdad.Harnden spent much of 2004 and 2005 covering the war in Iraq.In November 2004, he was embedded with the US Army's Task Force 2-2 during the battle ofFallujah,including Staff SergeantDavid Bellavia,later awarded the Medal of Honor.Of Bellavia's platoon, Harnden reported: "With Dope's 'Die Motherfucker Die' blaring out from the psychological operations Humvee, the Terminators entered Fallujah to go about their business in the way they know best. They played 'Rage Against the Machine' in the backs of their Bradleys and enjoyed the buzz of killing. When it was over, they sat laughing about the insurgents who had jumped out of closets to fight them or wrapped themselves in curtains to hide. They joked about the cat they'd seen eating the face of a corpse, about the fighter who had been 'fragged' by a grenade and shot several times but who still managed to jump off a roof and escape. They celebrated victory but most of all they were intoxicated by being alive."

Harnden joinedThe Sunday Telegraphin 2005 as London-based Chief Foreign Correspondent, traveling to report fromIraq,Afghanistan,Israel, theOccupied Palestinian Territories,Lebanon,Bahrain,Zimbabwe,Mozambique,Austria, Italy,Estonia,Saudi Arabia,Pakistan,the United States andThailand.In May 2005, Harnden was imprisoned inZimbabwefor 14 days after being arrested at a rural polling station on the day of the country's parliamentary elections and deported following acquittal on charges of illegally entering the country and "practicing journalism without accreditation".During court appearances, Harnden and photographer Julian Simmonds were shackled together with handcuffs and leg irons.

Harnden returned to Washington DC in May 2006 as a correspondent forThe Sunday Telegraphand in October 2006 became United States Editor ofThe Daily Telegraph.He covered the 2008 primariesand general election, traveling extensively as part of the Obama campaign press corps.

He was shortlisted for the UK'sPress Gazettefor Digital Journalist of the Year 2008.In 2011, he was ranked at 27 in a list of Top 50 most influential media users of Twitter in the UK.He left theTelegraphat the end of 2011 to join theDaily Mail.In January 2013, he joinedThe Sunday Timesas Washington Bureau Chiefand spent almost six years as the newspaper's senior American correspondent, covering the Boston bombings,unrest in Ferguson, Missouri,the 2016 presidential election,and the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

On 3 August 2021, two weeks before the collapse of Afghan forces and the return of the Taliban government, Harnden argued in aWall Street Journalopinion articlethat the U.S. had succeeded in Afghanistan in 2001 because the CIA-led campaign had only used small number of American intelligence agents and Special Forces, combined with U.S. air power, and had left the bulk of the fighting to indigenous Afghan forces. He warned against a complete U.S withdrawal and stated that a U.S. approach based on similar principles could still succeed in 2021: "A small residual force of CIA officers and special forces, using U.S. air power when needed, while letting the Afghans fight would prevent a Taliban rout. Such an approach could prevent Afghanistan returning to what it was before 9/11—an ungoverned space where terrorists can plot with impunity." In September 2021, Harnden wrote in a Guest Essay inThe New York Timesthat the Taliban had not changed fundamentally and that it was foolish to assume so: "The Taliban seem to have calculated that the West's wishful thinking and desire to move on from two decades of bloody conflict would be enough to win them global acceptance." Harnden was involved in evacuating his translator Rohullah Sadat from Afghanistan

External links

• Official website
• Toby Harnden's blog
• AppearancesonC-SPAN
• Official information page about 'Dead Men Risen'
• "Toby Harnden interview on Quercus Books website".Archived fromthe originalon 28 October 2011.