The Library
This is a place where I share what I’ve learned, what I’m still learning, and the questions I think are worth asking. Take what is useful. Leave with more than you arrived with.
01Investigations, reports, maps, timelines, letters, and original source material.
02Follow a subject through connected research and practical resources.
03Practical guides, briefing notes, and tools meant to be shared and put to work.
04Forthcoming books and new releases I’m looking forward to reading.
05Threat assessments, intelligence analysis, and the complete briefing archive in one place.
Published Articles
Magazine, journal, and outside publication work is kept together at the Newsstand.
CNN via Getty ImagesThe Daily Wire · Analysis
Newly declassified 9/11 files show that warnings about Osama bin Laden and attacks inside the U.S. were reaching the highest levels of government years…
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Hasib Panjshiri · Wikimedia Commons / CC0Afghanistan International · Investigation
A reconstruction of the Taliban intelligence operation that penetrated resistance contacts, tracked Hasib Panjshiri’s movement, and led to the August 20 ambush in Salang.
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SOFREP / Telegram channel ASTRA via Kyiv PostSOFREP · Analysis
A shootout between Ukraine’s SBU and military intelligence exposed something more dangerous than bureaucratic rivalry: a breakdown in operational deconfliction during an active intelligence…
Read articleFrom the Shelves
Al-Qaeda held footage of Hamza bin Laden recorded as Afghanistan was falling in August 2021 and waited more than five years to release it. The timing tells us…
Read briefAQIS is using the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to explain to a younger audience why it believes America should remain the priority and to connect September 11, Gaza,…
Read briefISIS’s global spokesman reportedly surfaced in a mud-brick house in Yemen. The bigger intelligence question may be what was recovered inside and what it reveals about connections across…
Read briefTwenty-five years after 9/11, the House Intelligence Committee reviewed what the U.S. fixed, what remains unfinished, and where new intelligence gaps may be forming. These are ten findings…
Read briefThe Commons
Preparedness for families, responders, and communities — from a simple household plan to advanced recognition briefs and community tabletop exercises.
Step into The CommonsMy Book
The investigation in book form, bringing together the attack, the network behind it, and the unfinished lessons that still matter.
Book · Sarah Adams & Dave Benton
Sarah Adams and Dave “Boon” Benton reconstruct the Benghazi attacks, the network behind them, and the lessons that remain unfinished.
View bookContributed work
The goal was never command and control. It was connection: bringing the right people, knowledge, and purpose together around work that mattered.
BLINX News / YouTubeDocumentary collaboration · BLINX News
Two days before September 11, al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud. Sarah joins Ahmad Massoud to examine why his father posed such a threat to…
Watch on YouTube
Television collaboration
Sarah contributed to the National Geographic series and its episode examining the hunt for Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah Lang.
View the episode
Special Collection
Conflict, memory, resilience, and the people who live through war.
Enter Art of WarA writer in the family
My ancestor Hannah Adams was the first woman in the United States known to support herself through writing. Her place here connects family history, independent scholarship, and the long work of making knowledge accessible.
Enter her collection“A life built around books, questions, and the courage to keep writing.”
Footsteps
A special Library journey through resistance, tradecraft, adaptation, and the quiet determination to find another way forward.
Follow the footstepsA nod to my last life
Memoirs and histories by and about the people who lived the intelligence profession.
Michael Idov · 2026 Spy Fiction
Michael Idov’s espionage novel follows a renegade CIA officer pulled into an infiltration mission involving extremist networks and political intrigue across Europe.
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David Goodman · 2026 Spy Fiction
David Goodman follows MI5 and MI6 trainees through a covert exercise that becomes something much more dangerous.
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Henry A. Crumpton
Henry A. Crumpton reflects on clandestine service, counterterrorism, and the responsibilities of intelligence work.
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Gary Schroen
Gary Schroen’s first-person account of the CIA team sent into Afghanistan after September 11.
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Nada Bakos
Nada Bakos recounts the analytical and targeting work behind the campaign against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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Liza Mundy
Liza Mundy’s history of the women who transformed CIA operations, analysis, and modern targeting.
View bookSocial Writing
Longer social posts are collected in one place instead of appearing inside the briefing archive.
LinkedIn Article
How the Taliban is exploiting imprisonment, poverty, and vulnerability to manufacture images of Afghan women supporting its rule.
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Analysis · Intelligence Tradecraft
A challenge to the assumptions surrounding Hamza bin Laden, the evidence used to support them, and the strategic risk of analytical lock-in.
Read on the site
Analysis · Terrorist Campaigns
What the July 7 London bombings reveal about operational campaigns, follow-on attacks, institutional memory, and the danger of treating terrorism as a single event.
Read on the siteChoose Your Path
“Not all those who wander are lost.”J.R.R. Tolkien
