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July 4th, 2006 - CIA closes its Bin Laden Unit
News article by the New York Times
C.I.A.
Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden
New York Times
By Mark Mazzetti
July 4, 2006
Washington, July 3 - The Central Intelligence
Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin
Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.
The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded
late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist
Center, the officials said.
The decision is a milestone for the agency,
which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and
bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to
bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda
is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a
growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out
attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin
Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to
disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the
officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with
high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific
organizations or individuals.
"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are
as strong as ever," said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A. spokeswoman.
"This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater
reach and focus."
The decision to close the unit was first
reported Monday by National Public Radio.
Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A.
official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view
within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was.
Mr. Scheuer said that view was mistaken.
"This will clearly denigrate our
operations against Al Qaeda," he said. "These days at the agency, bin
Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."
In recent years, the war in Iraq has stretched
the resources of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, generating new
priorities for American officials. For instance, much of the military's
counterterrorism units, like the Army's Delta Force, had been redirected from
the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was
killed last month in Iraq.
An intelligence official who was granted
anonymity to discuss classified information said the closing of the bin Laden
unit reflected a greater grasp of the organization. "Our understanding of
Al Qaeda has greatly evolved from where it was in the late 1990's," the
official said, but added, "There are still people who wake up every day
with the job of trying to find bin Laden."
Established in 1996, when Mr. bin Laden's calls
for global jihad were a source of increasing concern for officials in
Washington, Alec Station operated in a similar fashion to that of other agency
stations around the globe.
The two dozen staff members who worked at the
station, which was named after Mr. Scheuer's son and was housed in leased
offices near agency headquarters in northern Virginia, issued regular cables to
the agency about Mr. bin Laden's growing abilities and his desire to strike
American targets throughout the world.
In his book "Ghost Wars," which
chronicles the agency's efforts to hunt Mr. bin Laden in the years before the
Sept. 11 attacks, Steve Coll wrote that some inside the agency likened Alec
Station to a cult that became obsessed with Al Qaeda.
"The bin Laden unit's analysts were so
intense about their work that they made some of their C.I.A. colleagues
uncomfortable," Mr. Coll wrote. Members of Alec Station "called
themselves 'the Manson Family' because they had acquired a reputation for crazed
alarmism about the rising Al Qaeda threat."
Intelligence officials said Alec Station was
disbanded after Robert Grenier, who until February was in charge of the
Counterterrorist Center, decided the agency needed to reorganize to better
address constant changes in terrorist organizations.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html?_r=5&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=login
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