James Risen NYT Thursday, September 16th, 2004
WASHINGTON Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the CIA has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior CIA officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.
The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to do meaningful work, according to a letter the CIA officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. "There has been no systematic effort to groom Al Qaeda expertise" among CIA officers since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the letter, written by Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the agency's bin Laden unit and the author of a best-selling book that criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror.
Excerpts from Scheuer's letter were read publicly by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, on Tuesday at a Senate hearing on the confirmation of Porter Goss as director of central intelligence. Congressional officials provided a copy of the letter to The New York Times. A senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified, strenuously disputed Scheuer's criticism about the resources assigned to fight Al Qaeda. "The assertions are off the mark," the official said. "There are far more DO officers working against the Al Qaeda target, both at CIA headquarters and overseas, than there were before Sept. 11," the official said, using an abbreviation for the Directorate of Operations, the CIA's clandestine arm. |