NOBODY BELIEVED THAT THIS NEW PATH COULD BE EFFECTIVE

In HARPOON: INSIDE THE COVERT WAR AGAINST TERRORISM’S MONEY MASTERS, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz explain a surprising tactic against terrorism: Track the money and cut it off.

For most of the traditional warriors, this approach was not viewed with favor. In fact, at first, “nobody believed that this new path could be effective.”

The idea of targeting “terror money” was not a “West Wing” idea.” Rather, the idea “was drawn up in the West Bank of the Jordan River some twenty years earlier. “ The focus was to simply “Stop the money,” which would be like removing oxygen from a fire.

The Harpoon task force was like a group of super-accountants. The goal: “a true forensic analysis of how the terrorist groups funded their activities.”

This book covers in great detail the background beyond Harpoon—how it got started, who the stars were, and of course, the program’s successes and failures. The authors deserve credit for such a detailed historical account. Some of it I found interesting, but other parts seemed pretty dry to me. The huge amount of historical detail would probably appeal to an historian, but probably not so much to the average reader.


Advance Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.