Talking to Terrorists: A Personal Journey from the IRA to Al Qaeda

A controversial and timely book by BBC reporter and terrorism expert Peter Taylor In the course of a distinguished career spanning nearly 40 years, multi-award-winning BBC reporter and documentary-maker Peter Taylor has frequently come face-to-face with terrorists and their victims in his attempt to explain the actions of the individuals behind some of the world's most notorious terror attacks. As a green young journalist he was sent to Northern Ireland to report on 'Bloody Sunday' in 1972, and he devoted the next 30 years to investigating the Troubles, becoming one of the foremost experts on the subject. In the decade following 9/11, he switched his focus to the far more deadly threat posed by Al Qaeda, breaking news stories about intelligence-gathering in the period up to the 7/7 bombings and the plot to blow up a series of passenger planes mid-Atlantic. What are terrorists really like? What motivates them? Should governments do the unthinkable and talk to them? How do the intelligence agencies elicit information from them? When does interrogation become torture? In Talking to Terrorists, Taylor wrestles with these complex questions in a fascinating personal journey that has taken him from the Bogside in Northern Ireland to the notorious US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In the process he sheds much-needed light on a phenomenon that has become part of the fabric of all our lives.