Nada Bakos, Author at Pacific Standard

News in Brief

The Changing War on Terror

The Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed by Congress after 9/11 to give the president authority to hunt and fight those responsible. But al Qaeda is a completely different kind of organization now, according to this former CIA operative who spearheaded the Zarqawi Operations team from 2004-2006 as a targeting officer, and we need to rethink the tools we've created.

Nada Bakos

Social Justice

How True is Zero Dark Thirty? A Former Operative Weighs In

Despite debates over its depiction of torture, Zero Dark Thirty became the most-watched movie in America this week, and looks to be heading for another strong weekend. How reliable the film’s portrait? Does it give an accurate picture of how the CIA anti-terrorism efforts really work? Nada Bakos, who spearheaded the CIA’s Zarqawi Operations team from 2004-2006 as a targeting officer, weighs in. Prior to the operations position, Bakos served as an analyst for the agency primarily in the Counterterrorism Center, and was a member of the team charged with defining the relationship between Iraq, al Qaeda, and 9/11.

Nada Bakos