New book’s espionage tale is big-screen material - Entertainment, Books - Army Times

New book’s espionage tale is big-screen material

Maj. Chris Stryker was part of a convoy heading back to Bagram “when the IED went off.”

“To maintain concentration, I literally had to take a step outside myself. This is Chris playing me in a movie, I told myself. It was a way of detaching to get over the shock of what just happened.”

Funny he should say that. Chris Stryker is an actor of sorts, an alias, one of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s 40 aliases over 22 years as an intelligence officer.

Shaffer’s new book, “Operation Dark Heart,” was to be released Aug. 31, but Shaffer’s lawyer says the Pentagon rescinded approval, claiming the original text contained classified information.

A cleared version is back on the press with sections blacked out by defense officials. Its publication date is unclear.

The original has all the makings of a movie. There’s action, a love story or two, spies — and a hero who fights the enemy and the machine.

Shaffer ran the Defense Intelligence Agency’s operations out of Bagram Airfield. He became infamous in some circles for telling members of the 9/11 Commission that by 2000 his Able Danger intelligence operation in Afghanistan had discovered “two of the three cells that were successful in conducting the 9/11 attacks.” Discovered, then disregarded, because of “bureaucratic bumbling and intellectual corruption.”

The book is a vindication that takes you inside the espionage world, a labyrinth of secret agencies that do not like to share secrets while they stumble over one another.

Shaffer’s unusual work habit is “to cut the bureaucracy” to get actionable information “to the people who could actually do something about it.”

• He convinces Col. Jose Olivero that not all Defense Intelligence Agency staffers are, in Olivero’s words, “high on talk and low on delivery.” Shaffer delivers — and receives a Bronze Star.

• He rejects “enhanced” interrogation. “I didn’t — and still don’t — believe such methods work.”

• He demonstrates disdain for a top Army general who refuses to allow Shaffer and the Operation Dark Heart team to look for Taliban inside Pakistan. The general is a “royal ass,” a “bureaucrat in uniform” who was “toeing the party line and didn’t want anything to go wrong on his watch.”

If Matt Damon didn’t get enough of Baghdad in “Green Zone,” maybe he ought to look at Bagram, Shaffer-style.

Also new this week

Delve deeper into the stories of six service members who chose to die so their comrades could live, told in Uncommon Valor: The Medal of Honor and the Six Warriors Who Earned it in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hardcover, St. Martin’s Press. List price: $26.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.