Honour Bound

Book excerpt: Chances are, you've never heard of Anthony Malone. Yet the chances are also good that you're a little safer because of him.He also soon found himself at the heart of a story so incredible that it seems borrowed from the likes of the TV series Homeland or the novels of John Le Carr�: incarcerated in Afghanistan's most notorious prison on false charges, Anthony Malone became the only known Western intelligence agent to ever infiltrate the inner circles of a major terrorist network with close links to both al-Qa'ida and the Pakistani Taliban. Before he was extracted from Afghanistan in 2010, Malone personally intervened - at huge risk to his own life - to prevent a staggering number of terrorist acts in the US and UK. The intelligence he collected from within the fearsome Islamist Haqqani Network was, in fact, a contributing factor to the assassination of Usama bin Laden in 2011.Malone was able to acquire much of this information directly, having gradually won the trust of the inner circle of the Haqqani Network and of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and the Pakistan Taliban. He gathered a great deal after hours, covertly and at mind-boggling risk. (In one daring act of sabotage, Malone short-circuited the electric mains supply in his prison block as terrorist operatives were charging their mobile phones, satcoms and laptops in preparation for coordinating an attack on Kandahar International Airport. There, fresh from a secret visit to Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, British Prime Minister David Cameron was aboard a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft 400 metres from the intended blast site.)All told, Malone's record of high-quality, high-risk intelligence operations during his incarceration in Afghanistan's worst prison - lasting three years - is without precedent. It is a story known within the higher echelons of the international intelligence community, but which has not been possible to reveal in detail - until now.**Anthony Malone's story is unique in the annals of intelligence operations. Since his return to the UK, he has been lauded privately by very senior figures in US and British military, law enforcement and political circles, many of whom are prepared to go on record in praise of Malone's outstanding service - it is revelatory, in the tradition of Spycatcher, but substantiated, unlike the majority of such works.**