The Perfect Kill (31 page)

Let me start with the reader. I thank him for his indulgence in allowing me to alter the names of people whose identities are either unimportant or need to be protected. The Engineer's name was Yahya Ayyash, but I saw absolutely no purpose in cluttering up the text with foreign names. The same goes for my protagonist, Hajj Radwan. His real name is Imad Fayez Mughniyah. The same applies when I play around with some of the narrative. Again, it's in the name of protecting “sources and methods,” as well as telling a more coherent story. The book was vetted by the CIA not for opinion or storytelling but to ensure it exposes no secrets.

The list of references I drew on is long. But there are a couple of sources I cannot fail to thank. First of all, the Lebanese police. Without their superb work I would have no idea Hajj Radwan was behind Hariri's murder. And while the tribunal conducted a thorough and fair investigation, I did not draw on evidence collected for the trial. Nicholas Blanford's
Killing Mr. Lebanon
is a wonderful source on Hariri's assassination, as his
Warriors of God
is on Hezbollah. Joby Warrick's
The Triple Agent
is the main source for my retelling the Khost tragedy. Michael Newton's
Age
of Assassins
is the best book out there on modern assassination. A lot of
his
thinking bled into mine; I apologize for not citing him appropriately.

Special thanks go to my editor at Blue Rider, David Rosenthal, and my agent, Luke Janklow. If they hadn't encouraged me that there was something here—whatever this odd blend of memoir and political science is—this book would never have been
written.

An index for this book can be found at
Penguin.com/ThePerfectKillIndex
.

Robert B. Baer is one of the most accomplished agents in CIA history and a winner of the Career Intelligence Medal. He is the author of four
New York Times
bestsellers, including
See No Evil
—the basis for the acclaimed film
Syriana
, which earned George Clooney an Oscar for his portrayal of Baer. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East and frequently appears on all major news outlets. Baer writes regularly for Time.com and has contributed to
Vanity Fair
,
The Wall Street Journal
, and
The
Washington Post
. He is the current national security affairs analyst for CNN.