Tracking the Jackal: The Search for Carlos, the World's Most Wanted Man

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Random House, 1993 - Biography & Autobiography - 629 pages
"David Yallop spent ten years on the trail of the mysterious Carlos the Jackal, a man accused of some of the most heinous acts in the annals of international terrorism: the attack on the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the kidnapping of the OPEC oil ministers, the massacre at Lod airport in Tel Aviv, and scores of bombings, murders, and hijackings. He found his man. But it was what he discovered along the way that shocks and surprises most." "Yallop's intrepid search led him into dangerous territory. He was in Beirut at a time when Westerners were being kidnapped and murdered in alarming numbers, and his guide was killed mysteriously. He continued his investigations in Tripoli, Tunis, Caracas, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Vienna, London, and Paris, moving through the murky worlds of terrorists and counterterrorists, intelligence and counterintelligence, spies and double agents. He drank orange juice with Colonel Qadaffi in his tent, talked until dawn with Yasser Arafat in a basement in Tunisia, and visited Carlos's old school chums in Venezuela and in quiet London neighborhoods. Tracking the Jackal is a real-life story about the world that Frederick Forsyth, John le Carre, and Tom Clancy turn into fiction - a world that runs on intrigue and deception, with governments and security forces operating outside their own laws when they see fit. Carlos himself turns out to be almost a mythical creation of that world, employed by various sinister forces for their own purposes. Tracking the Jackal reads like a thriller, but it is a major work of investigative reporting that reveals a complex web of political corruption and betrayal."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Contents

Pass the Parcel
3
His Story
13
Black September
33
Copyright

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About the author (1993)

David Anthony Yallop was born in London, England on January 27, 1937. He left high school at the age of 15 and worked a low-level job at a newspaper before two years of compulsory military service in the Royal Air Force. After his service was complete, he worked a series of odd jobs before landing at a television station, where he became a floor manager and studio director before he started writing. He wrote numerous scripts for television shows including the BBC soap opera EastEnders. He wrote several books about true crime and conspiracy including Deliver Us from Evil; Tracking the Jackal: The Search for Carlos, the World's Most Wanted Man; The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II's Vatican; and Beyond Belief: The Catholic Church and the Child Abuse Scandal. In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I received the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger award for nonfiction in 1984. He died from complications of pneumonia on August 23, 2018 at the age of 81.

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