It’s not every day that we get a pitch for a book with a foreword by Pope Francis and an introduction by former CIA Director David Petraeus. In fact, our producer didn’t believe it at first. But this is a story about a scholar who became a spy without a spy service. That is exactly what Omar Mohammed did after he watched ISIS overrun his beloved city of Mosul in 2014. Day after day, he would risk his life to gather information on the ground and share his findings on social media. Under the name Mosul Eye, he documented torture, executions and the sale of women and girls into sexual slavery. He highlighted key parts of ISIS infrastructure, shared photos and videos, and disclosed the names and locations of victims and perpetrators. Omar’s memoir, Mosul Eye: A Scholar’s Clandestine War Against ISIS, is out now. And for the first time, Omar reveals new personas and internal intelligence documents he stole from ISIS, risky work that helped coalition forces drive the terrorists out of Mosul. This is the first of a two-part series.
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This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Podville Media, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and edited by the team at Podville Media. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Nastya Bykova is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.
