C.I.A. Shuts Down Bin Laden Hunting Unit

Posted on July 4, 2006

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.”

Reactions….

Tom MacGuire:

I have no idea why the Times failed to mention that Michael Scheur was the author of “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror”, which was viewed as a bit of a Bush-basher. I also don’t know why they failed to mention that Scheur was originally dropped from the Alec Station Bin Laden team in 1999 - had the CIA already predicted the outcome of the Florida recount?

AJ Strata:

Got that? It was not that it was a failure (according to intelligence leakers), it was because Bin Laden is not a threat. Does anyone think this is an accurate report given how the NY Times has been duped by partisan hacks inside the government so many times already? Is this a CYA move to have liberal media sources cover up their failures?

The Sundries Shack:

Me, I think there’s not much use in running a top-secret apprehension team when the likelihood of its activities getting out is high and Bill Keller is on the prowl for more national security stories to broadcast to the world. After all, didn’t Thomas Jefferson say, “Telling al-Qaeda all our most secret secrets is the highest form of patriotism”?

The Captain says this is the result of bureaucratic expansion.

When people insisted on the kind of bureaucratic expansion and analytical centralization on which the 9/11 Commission insisted, this result became unavoidable. Robert Grenier ended Alec Station in his capacity as the CTC director — because he wanted the assets in the CTC. Who knows how many other programs and special task forces the CTC has closed down for the same reasons?

The Heretik brings things into focus.

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One Response to “C.I.A. Shuts Down Bin Laden Hunting Unit”

gfactor on July 4th, 2006 12:29 pm

“Me, I think there’s not much use in running a top-secret apprehension team when the likelihood of its activities getting out is high and Bill Keller is on the prowl for more national security stories to broadcast to the world.”

Ya. There’s a chance they might say “bin laden captured.”