Fmr Head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit Interview

Brown Bomber

Interview: Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer

Published Date: 07 June 2011

Taken from The Scotsman: http://www.scotsman.com/features/Interview-Former-CIA-agent-Michael.6780114.jp

Some of the more important parts:

• In the third week of May, 1999, Michael Scheuer knew exactly where Osama bin Laden slept in Kandahar city, Afghanistan, for five consecutive nights. As head of the CIA's bin Laden intelligence unit, it was Scheuer's job to provide the necessary information to capture or kill the Al Qaeda leader. But President Bill Clinton did not act.

• Scheuer, on the other hand, took a risk....(he) was angry and frustrated at CIA agents risking their lives for information that went nowhere and put a note to senior management into the CIA system, warning that many Americans would be killed if bin Laden was not captured or killed....He was sacked. Two years later, the Twin Towers crumbled with the impact of Al Qaeda's planes, and buried somewhere in the dust was the idea that bin Laden was containable.

• He finally resigned completely from the CIA in 2004, unwilling to remain silent in the wake of what he saw as the whitewash report of the 9/11 commission.

• Clinton had no fewer than ten chances to kill or capture bin Laden between May 1998 and May 1999. George Bush subsequently had two.

• "The CIA had done its job. We had found him. We had identified what he was up to. But the politicians who ran the agency, the White House, that's where the problem was. If they ever release the archive that was given to the 9/11 commission, it will be clear to the American people that we didn't have an intelligence failure. We had a political failure."

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• But there is a far more dangerous aspect to the narrative that has grown up around bin Laden. "Our presidents and prime ministers continually tell us that we are being attacked because these people hate freedom, hate liberty, hate women in the workplace, and beer – as if this was a war against our culture. While they wouldn't have any of these things in their own country if they ran it, what I show in my book, in over 900 pages of primary sources of things bin Laden said himself in interviews, sermons and speeches, is that there is no ranting against the debauched, decadent west. They were attacking us, and are attacking us, for substantive reasons – foreign policy, our intervention in the world – and that hasn't changed."

• Firstly, there's America's support for the police state of Saudi Arabia – a support closely connected to their need for Saudi oil. Secondly, their unquestioning acceptance of the state of Israel, no matter how badly the Israelis treat Arabs. And thirdly, their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. "In some ways, they are very like Americans. They are very insular. And we are on their turf. Bin Laden and his generation were at least defensive fighters. They wanted us out so they could take care of their own problems. I am a little afraid that the next generation are going to be much more offensive-minded."
  

• And yet after bin Laden's death, it was claimed he had been living in luxury in Pakistan. Was that simply the American narrative to discredit him? "I think it was," says Scheuer. "When you look at the film, it's a very average house in that area." There was also a story about porn being found in his house. Was that a further attempt to discredit or evidence that, just as in the west, religious zeal can sometimes lead to secret excess? "I don't know if he was a porn addict but I doubt it.

• The rationale for sea burial was to prevent a shrine being created. That, says Scheuer, was nonsense. CIA agents and the military would have known that had a shrine been erected, bin Laden's own supporters would have torn it down. He was a devout Salafi Muslim and they disapprove of shrines.

LiamKM

Its absolute madness.....To start 9/11 was an inside job. Throughout the ten years since it happened hes been on record as saying he doesnt have a problem with the american people......its the us government who pi$$ him off.