CIA: Bin Laden Not a Factor in Al Qaeda, But We'd Still Like to Kill Him
| Fri Nov. 14, 2008 12:12 PM PST
CIA Director Michael Hayden, speaking last night at an event organized by the Atlantic Council, said that Osama Bin Laden is increasingly "isolated" and on the run. "He's putting a lot of energy into his own survival, a lot of energy into his own security," said Hayden. "In fact, he appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally leads." All that said, he's still an attractive target, largely for the propaganda value of putting him out of business. "Because of his iconic stature, his death or capture clealry would have a significant impact on the confidence of his followers, both core Al Qaeda and these unaffiliated extremists," Hayden continued. "I can assure you, although there has been press speculation to the contrary, I can assure you that the hunt for Bin Laden is very much at the top of the CIA's priority list."
It's also at the top of the incoming Obama administration's list. The president-elect believes that his predecessor has not done enough to capture or kill the Al Qaeda leader. But turning things around will not be easy. As former CIA Pakistan station chief Robert Grenier told CNN, "If you think of this as sort of a combination of [the hunt for] Eric Rudolph, who was the Olympic bomber, and the movie 'Deliverance,' multiplied by a factor of 10, that's really what you're focusing on in trying to find bin Laden... What you literally need to have is an army of individual informants, hopefully focused on the areas that you think bin Laden is most likely to be hiding in. But again, you need to have a whole lot of them, because one individual who may have access to the families and the clans in a particular valley, if he goes to the valley next door and starts asking questions, he's probably gonna end up dead pretty quickly."
Photo by flickr user Toots Fontaine used under a Creative Commons license.
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Comments
How is it that Hayden seems to be so well-informed on Bin Laden's activities but we still can't seem to find him?
This is a sure sign that the intelligence leaders are talking complete rubbish.
We can be sure that whatever the CIA know or think they know about Bin Laden they won't be talking about openly. This is pure political posturing by the administration.
I hope the new administration can avoid this kind of faux candor.
Submitted by Dr. Lumplevin (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 8:15 PM PST.
I say give it up on chasing Osama. He probably can be rehabilitated. Who knows? Maybe he could end up teaching a few classes at Harvard or Columbia or become a pundit on MSNBC.
We aren't trying hard enough.
Submitted by AlexW (not verified) on Fri Jul. 10, 2009 8:28 AM PDT.
We aren't trying hard enough. We waited 2 months after 9/11 before going to the region where Bin Laden was. If we wanted, we'd be chasing him into Pakistan. How can a dictator like Musharraf not being able to capture a single person within his own country if he had support of American army?
But our primary objective there isn't to combat terrorism, we are there to secure oil pipeline in order to tap oil reserves in central Asia, this will ensure that the oil in Central Asia does not fall into the hands of China or Russia. That's why, an oil executive, Karzai, is in charge of the nation.
Seriously, we didn't put enough troops to finish the job, 11,000 is hardly enough for hunting someone in a place that big when Russian had hundreds of thousands of troops just to keep the place during their occupation. We will be there fighting terrorism until the oil runs out. Same for Iraq.
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