Posted by: Jon Henke on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 (via Outside the Beltway) The story about the CIA shutting down the unit devoted to hunting bin Laden has gotten a lot of attention, though for the life of me I can't understand why... 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.we're not prepared to invade Pakistan where it's generally believed Osama bin Laden is hiding The CIA says the realignment is due to a reevaluation of the structure of al Qaeda versus other terrorism dangers, though some people disagree about that conclusion. In any event, bin Laden is still being tracked — just not by a group with a special office and cool code names. Is that the best CIA orientation to stop terrorism and get bin Laden? I have no idea. Nor do the other people who criticized the realignment, though that didn't stop them from adding their expert opinions on the proper deployment of intelligence assets. I think there's a more important question here. Let's stipulate that killing Osama bin Laden would be beneficial — a very arguable proposition, I think — and that we should continue trying to 'get him'. Fine. How? Really, what was this unit supposed to do? The empty vagaries of the Democratic Party aside, we're not prepared to invade Pakistan where it's generally believed Osama bin Laden is hiding. So, what exactly would a CIA "bin Laden unit" do? As far as I can tell, Alec Station was just an anachronism of a time when bin Laden was "catchable". Today, the path to a "dead or alive" bin Laden lies through the State Department and the White House. |
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