CIA Officer in Charge of Al Qaeda:
White House Repeatedly Refused to Eliminate bin Laden
Los Angeles Times
Between January 1996 and June 1999, I was in charge of running operations against Al Qaeda from Washington. I speak with firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA officers) when I state categorically that during this time senior White House officials repeatedly refused to act on sound intelligence that provided multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden – either by capture or by U.S. military attack.
-- Michael Sheuer, 22-year veteran of the CIA who recently resigned
Dear friends,
The numerous resignations from the CIA are starting to bear fruit. Mr. Sheuer is a brave man for resigning from the CIA for reasons of conscience and now speaking his truth. And thank you to the Los Angeles Times for being willing to report this most important story. For more on this most important topic, I highly recommend reading our two-page or ten-page summaries of the 9/11 timeline accessible from our home page at https://www.WantToKnow.info. Please help to educate your friends and colleagues by spreading this valuable information.
With best wishes,
Fred Burks for WantToKnow.info
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scheuer5dec05,1,4713210.story
Why I Resigned From the CIA
The agency did its job, but higher-ups endangered the nation
By Michael Scheuer
The
Central Intelligence Agency is the best place to work in the United States.
No federal agency has a smarter, more dedicated or harder-working set of
individuals than the CIA's women and men. I had intended to work at the CIA
for the duration of my career, and I left it with deep regret and a great
sense of personal loss. I was neither forced out nor pressed to resign.
Resigning was my decision alone.
I cannot state these facts more clearly, and I fiercely deny the accusations
that I am a disgruntled former employee. I am, however, a disgruntled
American – one who decided that being a good citizen was no longer compatible
with being a good member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service.
I do not profess a broad expertise in international affairs, but between
January 1996 and June 1999 I was in charge of running operations against Al
Qaeda from Washington. When it comes to this small slice of the large U.S.
national security pie, I speak with firsthand experience (and for several
score of CIA officers) when I state categorically that during this time
senior White House officials repeatedly refused to act on sound intelligence
that provided multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden – either by
capture or by U.S. military attack. I witnessed and documented, along with
dozens of other CIA officers, instances where life-risking
intelligence-gathering work of the agency's men and women in the field was
wasted.
Because of classification issues, I argued this point only obliquely in my
book "Imperial Hubris," but it is a fact – and fortunately, no
American has to depend on my word alone. The 9/11 commission report documents
most of the occasions on which senior U.S. bureaucrats and policymakers had
the chance to attack Bin Laden in 1998-1999. It is mystifying that the American
public has not been outraged over these missed opportunities.
In the most memorable and cloying moment of the 9/11 commission's public
hearings, former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke apologized to
the American people for the failure of the U.S. intelligence community to
protect them. This statement has become, like the 9/11 report, American
scripture – carved in stone, literally true and unquestionable.
Clearly, Clarke had the duty to apologize for the government's
ineffectiveness as regards terrorism, but I reject his intimation that the
clandestine service failed the nation.
Now, I must add that I was never charged with deciding whether to act against
Bin Laden. That decision properly belongs solely to senior White House
officials. However, as a now-private American citizen, it is my right
to question their judgment; I am entitled to know why the protection of
Americans – most selfishly, my own children and grandchildren – was not the
top priority of the senior officials who refused to act on the opportunities
to attack Bin Laden provided by the clandestine service.
Each of these officials have publicly argued that the intelligence
was not "good enough" to act, but they almost always neglect to say
that they were repeatedly advised that the intelligence was not going to get
better and that Bin Laden was going to kill thousands of Americans if he was
not stopped.
At each opportunity provided by the clandestine service, senior bureaucrats
and policymakers decided not to act. The 9/11 report documents the fact that
the chances to capture or attack Bin Laden were passed by because there were
worries that shrapnel might hit a mosque and offend Muslim opinion; that a
United Arab Emirates prince meeting Bin Laden clandestinely in the Afghan
desert might be killed; and that the CIA might be accused of assassination if
Bin Laden was killed in an effort to capture him.
Of course, it is not my opinion but that of the American people that counts.
Perhaps a starting point is for Americans to ask why no member of Congress'
Graham-Goss investigation or the Kean-Hamilton commissioners ever directly
asked Clarke, former national security advisor Samuel R. "Sandy"
Berger, CIA Director George J. Tenet, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, former
Secretary of State William S. Cohen or any of the rest of the witnesses why
they never erred on the side of protecting Americans; why international
opinion was ultimately more important than the Americans who leaped from the
World Trade Center; and why the intelligence was "good enough" to
save the life of an Arab prince dining with bin Laden, but not "good
enough" to cause the government to act on behalf of Americans.
At day's end, it may be worth pausing the intelligence reform process long
enough to determine what role personal failure, bureaucratic warfare – which
the Department of Defense continues waging today – and a lack of moral
courage played in getting the United States to 9/11. Lacking this accounting,
the debate over intelligence reform will, I believe, simply lock into place a
bureaucratic mind-set that believes intelligence is never "good
enough" to take a risk to protect the lives of Americans.
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