For this hour of River to River, host Ben Kieffer is joined for the hour by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll. His latest book is Directorate S. The book examines the CIAs role and America’s secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Coll's account offers a fifteen-year narrative which opens on the eve of September 11, and it takes the story up to the present.
Publishers Weekly calls Directorate S "perhaps the most comprehensive work to date on the U.S. War in Afghanistan."
Coll says the U.S. is fighting two wars in Afghanistan. We're fighting one against the Islamic State in direct combat with them from the air mostly but some special forces. And then we are also fighting an advise and assist war as it's called to help the Afgan forces defeat the Taliban, that war is a stale mate and has been for a decade," Coll says.
