Toby Harnden

Toby Harnden (born 14 January 1966) is a British-American author and journalist who was awarded the Orwell Prize for Books in 2012.

He is the author of First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11, published by Little, Brown in September, 2021.

He spent almost 25 years working for British newspapers, mainly as a foreign correspondent.

He entered Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in January 1985 and passed out the following August.

While at the university, Harnden was Junior Common Room President of Corpus Christi in 1987, succeeding David Miliband and was president of the JCR Presidents' Committee.

After studying Modern History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he graduated from Oxford University with a First in July 1988, receiving a College Prize and the Miles Clauson Prize.

It led to the formation of the Smithwick Tribunal, which investigated whether, as Harnden had alleged in his book, there had been Garda (Irish police) collusion in the 1989 murders of senior RUC officers Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan.

Before becoming a journalist, Harnden was an officer in the Royal Navy, retiring in the rank of Lieutenant in 1994 after service ashore and at sea in the assault ships HMS Fearless (L10), and HMS Intrepid (L11), the minesweeper HMS Itchen (M1217), the destroyers HMS Manchester (D95) and HMS Edinburgh (D97) and the frigate HMS Cornwall (F99).

During his training, he was an exchange officer with the Royal Norwegian Navy, helping to transport reindeer on troop landing craft.

His final naval appointment was in the Ministry of Defence as Flag Lieutenant to the Second Sea Lord.

He began at The Daily Telegraph in 1994 as a home news reporter.

He is the author of two previous books: Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh (1999) and Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan (2011).

Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh, published by Hodder & Stoughton in November 1999, was critically acclaimed and sold more than 100,000 copies.

He has interviewed three U.S. presidents: George W. Bush (in 2000 and 2014 ).), Bill Clinton (in 2006 ) and Jimmy Carter (in 2015 ).

He started his career in journalism as a theatre reviewer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for The Scotsman

and a writer of obituaries for The Independent.

The book's title is a reference to paramilitary officer Johnny Micheal Spann, a member of the CIA's Team Alpha, whose eight members became the first Americans behind enemy lines in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

Toby Harnden's book is a compulsively fascinating tour of this alternative universe." BBC journalist and author Peter Taylor, a veteran of more than three decades of reporting in Ireland, had named "Bandit Country" in his top 10 Irish Troubles books in 2002, concluding: "Courageous journalism and compulsive reading as Harnden goes inside the most impenetrable and deadly of the IRA Brigades.

Good judgment; great sources." In 2003, it was reported that the British authorities had tried to use possession of a copy of "Bandit Country" as evidence against an alleged Irish republican dissident accused of terrorist offenses: "An attempt was also made to lodge the possession of Toby Handen's 'Bandit Country' as evidence against one of the accused."

He previously spent 17 years at The Daily Telegraph, based in London, Belfast, Washington, Jerusalem and Baghdad, finishing as US Editor from 2006 to 2011.

In August 2009, he became an American citizen.

He has two children.

Harnden has written three non-fiction books: First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA's Secret Mission to Avenge 9/11 (2021); Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan (2011); and Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh(1999).

Dead Men Risen was published by Quercus Books in March 2011.

Publication was delayed after the Ministry of Defence objected to certain passages on "security" grounds.

The book had already been cleared for publication by the MOD after a four-month review process that Harnden had agreed to as part of a contract that provided him with access to the Welsh Guards.

Following a legal dispute between the MOD and Quercus, the MOD agreed to purchase all 24,000 copies of the first print run of the book, at a cost to the UK taxpayer of £151,450, and oversee their pulping.

It was well-reviewed and reached number four on The Sunday Times bestseller list.

In May 2012, it was awarded the Orwell Prize for books.

Orwell prize judges Helena Kennedy, Miranda Carter and Sameer Rahim said: "It sometimes seems that we only care about the soldiers fighting in our names when they are killed. Once the platitudes are over we forget about them. Toby Harnden's remarkable book takes us into the hearts and minds of the Welsh Guards in a way that is both compelling and visceral. It challenges every citizen of this country to examine exactly what we're asking soldiers to do in Afghanistan."

Harnden spent 24 years with British newspapers, 19 of them as a foreign correspondent based in Washington D.C., the Middle East and London.

From 2013 until 2018, he was Washington bureau chief of The Sunday Times.

He was reporter and presenter of the BBC Panorama Special programme Broken by Battle about suicide and PTSD among British soldiers, broadcast in 2013.

The son of architect Keith Anthony Harnden and Valerie Anne Steadman Harnden (nee Dixon), he was born in Portsmouth and grew up in Marple and Rusholme, Manchester.

He attended Harrytown Comprehensive School in Bredbury, Cheshire and St Bede's College, Manchester.

In December 2013, the tribunal confirmed the allegations, concluding that there had been Garda collusion in the murders.

The Irish government apologized to the families of the dead officers.

The author Ed Moloney, one of the foremost experts on the modern IRA, supported Harnden's account: "The other thing I know is that the IRA did have an agent inside the Dundalk Garda station. The Smithwick Tribunal was established largely because of allegations from Toby Harnden in his book Bandit Country – The IRA and South Armagh that a Dundalk-based Garda helped the IRA kill the two RUC men. Harnden got his information from security force sources on both sides of the Border and although he refused to give evidence to Smithwick – presumably on the laudable grounds that he would not compromise his sources – I believed him. I believed him not just because I know him to be a reputable and ethical journalist but also because I was told the same, that a well-known Dundalk Garda was in the back pocket of the IRA in South Armagh. My source was a well-placed member of the IRA whose position in the organization was such that he was in a position to know all about the Garda agent.

The details about the agent that I was given dovetail exactly with Harnden's information." In 2016, Abebooks listed "Bandit Country" as the 14th most-searched-for out-of-print book in the English language. In 2019, novelist David Keenan named "Bandit Country" as one of the top 10 books written about the Irish Troubles, stating: "One of my fascinations with Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s is how it became a place where different rules applied, where reality itself seemed up for grabs.

Nowhere was this more the case than the "Provisional Republic" of South Armagh, AKA Bandit Country, with its handmade 'sniper at work' signs and its community militias all surveyed by the watchtowers and helicopters of the British army.