CIA Terror Center Head Talked Tenet Out of Snatch Plan for bin Laden, Former Official Says

The CIA official who now runs the unit responsible for analyzing

terrorist intelligence should share blame for mistakes that opened the

door to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, says Michael Scheuer, the agency

Osama bin Laden expert who resigned last week.



According to Scheuer, John O. Brennan, the CIA official in charge of the

new interagency Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), played a key

role in the United States’ failure to capture bin Laden before the 2001

attacks.



In a telephone interview, Scheuer said, “I know for a fact that the

director of the TTIC was one of the people that dissuaded [former CIA

Director George J.] Tenet and others from trying to capture bin Laden in

May 1998.”



In a letter to Congress last fall Scheuer called it “our best chance to

capture Bin Laden — an operation which showed no U.S. hand, risked no

U.S. lives, and was endorsed by senior commanders of the Joint Special

Operations Command at Fort Bragg.” He said it “was cancelled because

senior officials from the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Executive

Branch, and other Intelligence community components decided to accept

assurances from an Islamic country that it could acquire bin Laden from

the Taliban. . . . ”



In the interview Tuesday, Scheuer disclosed that the unnamed “Islamic

country” was Saudi Arabia. In May 1998, Brennan was serving as chief of

station in “a major Middle East capital,” according to a CIA press release.



“The makers of this decision ignored the extensive documentary record

that showed nothing but uncooperativeness from this Islamic country,”

Scheuer said in his letter to Congress.



Although he would not expound further because the details are still

classified, he said, Scheuer insisted that Brennan “was pivotal in

persuading the government not to go ahead with the operation.”



A CIA spokesperson declined to make Brennan available or comment for

this story.



*Names Other Officials*



Others were also to blame for failing to stop the attacks, Scheuer said,

going beyond a September 2004 letter to the Senate and House

Intelligence committees that cited “failures in leadership and

management,” particularly by “certain senior civil servants” who

exhibited “arrogance, bad judgment, disdain for expertise, and

bureaucratic cowardice” in making decisions that allowed al Qaeda to

prosper and attack the United States.



On November 16, Scheuer — who on Nov. 10 resigned his post as a senior

analyst in the Usama bin Laden unit of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center

— singled out Tenet, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, National

Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former Defense

Secretary William S. Cohen, and current Defense Secretary Donald H.

Rumsfeld, among others, saying they failed to take the actions he felt

were necessary to kill bin Laden and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.



The 9/11 commission thoroughly investigated the U.S. government’s

repeated attempts to capture or kill bin Laden before the 2001 attacks,

but did not affix blame to any specific officials for the 9/11

intelligence failures.



Scheuer has been critical of some of the commission’s conclusions in the

past. The 9/11 commission declined to comment on his allegations through

its current entity, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project.



Perhaps Scheuer’s most urgent criticism of the CIA is its transfer of

experts out of its Usama bin Laden unit and into TTIC and elsewhere,

without replacing them or doing enough to develop new expertise.



“On 9/11, we had no more than 100 experienced officers,” said Scheuer of

the unit, which provides support for covert actions and intelligence

gathering against Osama bin Laden and his network.



“I think Tenet sent 25 [analysts] to the FBI right after 9/11. And now

they’re sending another bunch over to TTIC. At the end of the day, what

happens is [that] the group of officers which support operations ...

against bin Laden has been starved, to send people to TTIC,” he said.



Offense vs. Defense



TTIC keeps an eye out for terror threats to U.S. interests by analyzing

and reporting on daily threat information, but it does not task

collection or run covert operations, leading Scheuer to dismiss it as

“kind of the voyeur of terrorist threats.”



Instead, Scheuer says, the CIA should be putting knowledgeable people in

the bin Laden unit, where they can run offense against bin Laden, rather

than at TTIC, where they take a defensive posture against impending attacks.



“I think a better investment is to attack the people who are threatening

you, rather than to worry about documenting threats.”



Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, headed the agency’s bin Laden

unit from 1996 to 1999. He has written two books under the pseudonym

Anonymous, the more recent being “Imperial Hubris,” a broadside against

the Bush administration’s war on terror.



The CIA barred Scheuer from talking to reporters earlier this year.



On Nov. 11, Scheuer broke his silence to announce his retirement. And on

Nov. 14, he gave his first in-depth interview as a named former CIA

official to CBS’ “60 Minutes” program.



Since then, Scheuer has held interviews with a large number of news

outlets to promote his criticisms of the CIA.



/Justin Rood can be reached via jrood@cq.com/



Source: *CQ Homeland Security*

© 2004 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved

Nov. 18, 2004  By Justin Rood, CQ Staff



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