This Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) is one of the most controversial intelligence documents surrounding the 9/11 attacks, showing that intelligence warnings were issued to political leadership in advance. Authored primarily by analyst Barbara Sude, the document synthesized years of reporting on al-Qaeda’s explicit intent to attack the United States. It noted the group’s operational capability, cited discussions of potential hijackings as a tactic, and pointed to dozens of active FBI field investigations into related activities within the country. In the context of The Sisterhood, the memo is representative of the ways on which women’s analysis was marginalized within the CIA and political administration. It is presented as a significant missed opportunity, highlighting the consequences of structural sexism in the intelligence community.

The Counterterrorist Center (CTC) was the CIA’s innovative fusion hub, created in 1986 under the leadership of Dewey Clarridge to combat global terrorist networks. Its primary innovation was to mix operations officers and analysts in the same location, a structure designed to overcome the agency’s regional silos for a more agile response to transnational threats. Initially a small, low-status unit focused on disrupting terrorist plots, the CTC was transformed by the 9/11 attacks into the CIA’s operational command post for the global war on terror. It became the institutional home of the daily Threat Matrix and coordinated a worldwide campaign of manhunting, renditions, and lethal strikes.

As The Sisterhood documents, this evolution elevated the status and influence of the women who largely staffed its key analytic and targeting units, like Alec Station. The center’s expanded power also placed it at the heart of the era’s defining ethical and legal controversies, including the Enhanced Interrogation Program, and sparked intense interagency conflicts with partners like the FBI.

Targeting, also known as manhunting, is the CIA discipline that fuses intelligence from multiple sources to map terrorist networks and direct operations against them. Mundy explains that this craft involves methods such as creating link charts to visualize relationships, using geolocation and pattern-of-life analysis to track individuals, and identifying key figures for collection, arrest, or lethal action. This work proved decisive in numerous post-9/11 operations, including identifying Osama bin Laden’s courier, dismantling the al-Qaeda in Iraq leadership, and supporting partner-led captures. The rise of targeting represented a significant cultural realignment within the agency, shifting prestige and power toward the analyst-targeters who mastered it. As The Sisterhood demonstrates, this new field became a domain where women excelled, providing a pathway for them to move from support roles into the center of CIA operations.

The Threat Matrix was the daily, prioritized ledger of all incoming threat reports established by the Counterterrorist Center in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. This document was finalized in overnight sessions and presented to senior government leaders, including the president, to structure the government-wide response to both credible and spurious threats. In The Sisterhood, the Threat Matrix functions to explain the operational tempo of the post-9/11 CTC, as a process that institutionalized the CTC’s central role in national security. Mundy also shows that this pace imposed an immense psychological burden on the analysts and officers responsible for compiling and interpreting its contents, particularly the women of the analytic units who worked under extreme and sustained pressure.