Beirut Rules ─ The Murder of a CIA Station Chief and Hezbollah's War Against America

From the New York Times bestselling coauthors of Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi comes the riveting true story of the kidnapping and murder of CIA station chief William Buckley, and the bloody beginning of the CIA’s endless war against Islamic radicalism

On April 18th, 1983, a van rigged with 2,000 pounds of heavy explosives broke through the security perimeter of the American embassy in Lebanon and exploded, killing sixty-three people and decimating intelligence operations throughout the Middle East.

Only one man inside the CIA possessed the courage and skills to rebuild the networks destroyed in the blast: William Buckley. Assigned as the new Beirut station chief, Buckley arrived to a war-torn city and a CIA station in tatters. A field operative at heart, he delved into Beirut's darkest corners, developing new sources and handling assets. 

Then, on October 23rd, a US Marine Corps barracks was destroyed in a plot masterminded by a young terrorist named Imad Mughniyeh. But even as President Reagan vowed revenge, Mughniyeh eyed a new target: Buckley. 

Beirut Rules is the pulse-by-pulse account of Buckley’s abduction, torture, and murder at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists. Drawing on never seen before U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with Buckley’s former coworkers, friends and family, Burton and Katz reveal how the pursuit to find Buckley in the wake of his kidnapping ignited a war against terror that continues to shape the Middle East to this day.

Fred Burton is Vice President of Intelligence and Counterterrorism at Stratfor, a leading geopolitical intelligence firm, and is one of the world's foremost experts on security, terrorists and terrorist organizations. He is a former State Department counter-terrorism deputy chief and DSS Agent. He is the author of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent and coauthor with Samuel M. Katz of the New York Times bestseller Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi.

Samuel M. Katz is the author of more than twenty books and one hundred articles on Middle East security issues, terrorism, and police and military special operations. The founder of Special Operations Report, he has appeared as an expert on networks ranging from BBC World News to Fox News to Al Jazeera. Coauthor with Fred Burton of the New York Times bestseller Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi, he is also the author of The Ghost Warriors: Inside Israel's Undercover War Against Suicide Terrorism; Relentless Pursuit: The DSS and the Manhunt for the Al-Qaeda Terrorists; The Hunt for the Engineer: How Israeli Agents Tracked the Hamas Master Bomber; and many other books on the Arab-Israeli conflict and international counterterrorism.