Posted on 11/17/2004 10:59:58 AM PST by Howlin
One of the Central Intelligence Agency's foremost experts on Osama bin Laden has stepped out of the shadows and joined the public debate over past mistakes and future strategy in the war on terror.
Michael Scheuer is the senior intelligence analyst who created and advised a secret CIA unit for tracking and eliminating bin Laden since 1996. He's also been at the center of a battle between the CIA and the White House over Mideast policy and the war on terror.
What is new for Scheuer - who resigned from the intelligence agency on Friday after 22 years - is commenting by name. This summer, he authored a book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," under the pen name Anonymous.
The book, written with the CIA's blessing, is critical of the Bush administration's counterterrorism policy, and was viewed by some at the White House as a thinly veiled attempt by the CIA to undermine the president's reelection.
In his first television interview, Scheuer talked to Correspondent Steve Kroft about his frustrations in the war on terror and his assessment of bin Laden's plans - including the al Qaeda founder's interest in nuclear weapons.
Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer spoke to 60 Minutes in his first television interview out of the shadows.
After a 22-year career as a spy charged with keeping secrets, Scheuer decided it was more important to join the public debate on how to best attack Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
"His genius lies in his ability to isolate a few American policies that are widely hated across the Muslim world. And that growing hatred is going to yield growing violence," says Scheuer. "Our leaders continue to say that we're making strong headway against this problem. And I think we are not."
In 1996, at a time when little was known about the wealthy Saudi, other than he was suspected of financing terrorism, Scheuer was assigned to create a bin Laden desk at the CIA.
"The uniqueness of the unit was more or less that it was focused on a single individual. It was really the first time the agency had done that sort of effort," says Scheuer.
Did he try to figure out where bin Laden was? "Where he was, where his cells were, where his logistical channels were," says Scheuer. "How he communicated. Who his allies were. Who donated to them... I think it's fair to say the entire range of sources were brought to bear."
Codenamed "Alec," the unit was originally made up of about a dozen agents. And in less than a year, they discovered that bin Laden was more than some wealthy Saudi throwing his money around - and that his organization, known as al Qaeda, was not a Muslim charity.
"We had found that he and al Qaeda were involved in an extraordinarily sophisticated and professional effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In this case, nuclear material, so by the end of 1996, it was clear that this was an organization unlike any other one we had ever seen," says Scheuer.
Scheuer says his bosses at the CIA were initially skeptical of that information. And that was just the beginning of his frustrations.
In a letter to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees earlier this year, Scheuer says his agents provided the U.S. government with about ten opportunities to capture bin Laden before Sept. 11, and that all of them were rejected.
One of the last proposals, which he described to the 9/11 Commission in a closed-door session, involved a cruise missile attack against a remote hunting camp in the Afghan desert, where bin Laden was believed to be socializing with members of the royal family from the United Arab Emirates.
Scheuer wanted to level the entire camp. "The world is lousy with Arab princes," says Scheuer. "And if we could have got Osama bin Laden, and saved at some point down the road 3,000 American lives, a few less Arab princes would have been OK in my book."
"You couldn't have done this without killing an Arab prince," asks Kroft.
"Probably not. Sister Virginia used to say, 'You'll be known by the company you keep.' That if those princes were out there eating goat with Osama bin Laden, then maybe they were there for nefarious reasons. But nonetheless, they would have been the price of battle."
And that doesn't bother him? "Not a lick," says Scheuer.
"My understanding is you had a reputation within the CIA as being fairly obsessive about this subject," says Kroft. "I dislike obsessive," says Scheuer. "I think hard-headed about it."
Whatever you call it, in 1999, three years after he started the bin Laden unit, Scheuer's candor got him into trouble with his supervisors at the CIA. What were the circumstances under which he left the bin Laden unit?
"I think I became too insistent that we were not pursuing this target with enough vigor and with enough risk-taking - - an unwillingness to take risks," says Scheuer. "I got relieved of the position I was in. I had a lovely sojourn in the library and then had other sojourns since."
His exile ended shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, when he was brought back to the bin Laden unit as a special adviser. But by then, everything had changed.
His nemesis had gone underground, and the United States was on its way to invading Afghanistan and Iraq - creating, Scheuer says, the perception in the minds of 1.3 billion Muslims that America had gone to war against Islam.
"The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected," says Scheuer.
Right or wrong, he says Muslims are beginning to view the United States as a colonial power with Israel as its surrogate, and with a military presence in three of the holiest places in Islam: the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem. And he says it is time to review and debate American policy in the region, even our relationship with Israel.
"No one wants to abandon the Israelis. But I think the perception is, and I think it's probably an accurate perception, that the tail is leading the dog - that we are giving the Israelis carte blanche ability to exercise whatever they want to do in their area," says Scheuer. "And if that's what the American people want, then that's what the policy should be, of course. But the idea that anything in the United States is too sensitive to discuss or too dangerous to discuss is really, I think, absurd."
Is he talking about appeasement?
"I'm not talking about appeasement. There's no way out of this war at the moment," says Scheuer. "It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest."
Scheuer believes that al Qaeda is no longer just a terrorist organization that can be defeated by killing or capturing its leaders. Now, he says it's a global insurgency that's spreading revolutionary fervor throughout the Muslim world.
"Bin Laden's still at large. His most recent speech, I think, demonstrates that he's not running rock to rock, cave to cave. We are tangled in a very significant Islamic insurgency in Iraq," says Scheuer.
"Most dramatically, and perhaps least noticed, is the violence inside Saudi Arabia itself. Saudi Arabia was, until just a few years ago, probably one of the most safe countries on earth. And now the paper is daily full of activities and shootouts between Islamists who supported Osama bin Laden and the government there."
But if bin Laden is much stronger than he was, why haven't there been more attacks on the United States?
"One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community, and especially the counterterrorism community, is to assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's because he can't or because we've defeated him," says Scheuer. "Bin Laden has consistently shown himself to be immune to outside pressure. When he wants to do something, he does it on his own schedule."
"You've written no one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States," says Kroft. "You believe that's going to happen?"
"I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable," says Scheuer.
A nuclear weapon? "A nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device," says Scheuer. "Yes, I think it's probably a near thing."
What evidence is there that bin Laden's actually working to do this? "He's told us it. Bin Laden is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn't like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions," says Scheuer. "He's told us that, 'We are going to acquire a weapon of mass destruction, and if we acquire it, we will use it.'"
After Sept. 11, Scheuer says bin Laden was criticized by Muslim clerics for launching such a serious attack without sufficient warning. That has now been given. And he says bin Laden has even obtained a fatwa, or Islamic decree, justifying a nuclear attack against the United States on religious grounds.
"He secured from a Saudi sheik named Hamid bin Fahd a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans. Specifically, nuclear weapons," says Scheuer. "And the treatise found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans."
Scheuer says the fatwa was issued in May 2003, "and that's another thing that doesn't come to the attention of the American people."
Despite this threat, Scheuer insists the CIA doesn't have nearly enough trained analysts working on the Osama bin Laden unit today. At a time when Congress is considering revolutionary changes in the way the intelligence community is organized, Scheuer sees no major problems with the CIA or the product it produces.
He blames Sept. 11 on poor leadership from people like former CIA Director George Tenet, his chief deputy, Jim Pavitt, and former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who were invited, but declined, to appear on Sunday's 60 Minutes.
"Richard Clarke has said that you're really sort of a hothead, a middle manager who really didn't go to any of the cabinet meetings in which important things were discussed, and that basically you were just uninformed," says Kroft.
"I certainly agree with the fact that I didn't go to the cabinet meetings. But I'm certainly also aware that I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available again Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet," says Scheuer.
"I think Mr. Clarke had a tendency to interfere too much with the activities of the CIA, and our leadership at the senior level let him interfere too much," says Scheuer. "So criticism from him I kind of wear as a badge of honor."
Is there anything about bin Laden that Americans don't know, but should? "Yeah, I think there is. I think our leaders over the last decade have done the American people a disservice in continuing to characterize Osama bin Laden as a thug, as a gangster, as a degenerate personality, as some kind of abhorrent individual," says Scheuer.
"He surely does reprehensible activities, and we should surely take care of that by killing him as soon as we can. But he's not an irrational man. He's a very worthy enemy. He's an enemy to worry about."
"You wrote in your book that he's a great man," says Kroft.
"Yes, certainly a man, without the connotation good or bad, he's a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history," says Scheuer.
Does he respect bin Laden? "Until we respect him, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary," says Scheuer.
He's lookking to make more $$$ by selling more books and speaking engagements. He failed in the CIA, so he is going to make $$$ off the ignorance of the far-left.
Howlin, I don't read Schuer as saying "dump Israel." I read him as saying that we have to accept that bin Laden and the other Islamists ARE motivated, in part, by our support for Israel.
That doesn't mean "throw Israel to the wolves."
I have no idea whether any of this hostility would be ameliorated if Israel could reach an accord with the Palestinians. Maybe, maybe not. If not, then it's up to the American people to decide whether supporting Israel is worth being attacked by terrorists.
I think it's worth it. Giving in to terrorism isn't acceptable in my book.
I should have said Schuerer not Kroft. duh.
WOW, my blood pressure dropped 15 pts. ;)
You better read David Frum's article I just linked in #15.
IMHO, Clinton didn't go after Ben Laden and the boys because of the price that most certainly have put on Bill's head.
Great article, Howlin!
It's Bush's fault, but by his OWN WORDS, he and his group offered up bin Laden TEN TIMES to Clinton.
And yet, in all the times he's been on TV since Friday, and he's been ALL over the place, he has YET to mention Bill Clinton's name.
Bush was barely getting his feet wet when 9-11 went down. UBL was hitting us for 8 years before that, and we didn't do anything. Hell, we even refused to take him when he was offered to us on a silver platter.
What's really going on here is they are laying the ground work to blame Bush for any future attack that may happen. Simple as that!
Israel?? Huh?
Last I checked..it didn't matter one iota if we supported them or not bc terrorists STILL would have attacked us. Israel can fight its own wars, and they will no doubt be bickering with arabs for the next 1000 years, just as they have the last 1000.
Thanks for the ping:
"It would seem that the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit would regard the actual capture of bin Laden as the most catastrophic possible defeat of all.'
It is amazing how many of these old Carterista era so called terrorist experts have made their names saying that we can win the WOT for decades. Of course we couldn't with them leading us down the wrong path.
Never once did he mention Clinton's name..I smell a RAT!
Matthews says "Suppose we were a good country, would bin Laden leave us alone?".
At least the CIA guy had the sense to say back to Matthews "WE ARE A GOOD COUNTRY".
Back during impeachment, I corresponded with him, and was very favorably impressed- if anyone is up to the job of purging the CIA, it's him.
MATTHEWS: After 22 years with the CIA, Michael Scheuer left the agency this past Friday. It is fair to say few people there knew more about Osama bin Laden than did he and does. Yet Scheuer says his warnings about the threat that bin Laden posed to this country fell on deaf ears. His complaints were made public in “Imperial Hubris,” a book critical of the CIA and the Bush administration.
Michael, you‘re a gutsy guy. When did you sense that bin Laden was going to be a danger to us?
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CHIEF OF CIA BIN LADEN UNIT: I think we found out shortly after we began chasing him in January of 1996 that he was much more than any kind of terrorist we had ever seen before.
MATTHEWS: What is his motive? Why does he want to kill us?
SCHEUER: His motive—his motive is to change our policies, sir. Notwithstanding what the president or Mr. Kerry said during the campaign, he really doesn‘t give a darn about our democracy or our society. He is after a change in policies which he views as lethal to Muslims.
MATTHEWS: Does he think, for example—let me try this—and I don‘t want to sound like an apologist. But suppose we had truly an even-handed policy in the Middle East. Suppose there was a Palestinian entity of some kind and it had reasonable borders and it was contiguous enough to be a working state, and we didn‘t back dictators like the Saudi royal family, people like that who are simply selling the oil to keep their fingers filled with rings and girlfriends in London, all right?
Suppose we were a good country and an even-handed country, all right?
Would that make him any less hostile to us?
SCHEUER: We are a good country, sir, to start with.
MATTHEWS: In other words, in his eyes.
SCHEUER: Yes, in bin Laden‘s...
MATTHEWS: What are the problems besides Middle East and the oil kingdoms?
SCHEUER: With bin Laden, his opposition is based on support for Israel, support for the tyrannies.
MATTHEWS: Yes. Does he want to eliminate Israel?
SCHEUER: I think he does. I think that‘s...
MATTHEWS: OK, well, that makes it simple. You can‘t do that.
SCHEUER: That‘s clearly his goal.
MATTHEWS: So there‘s no policy negotiation we could ever have with this guy.
SCHEUER: It has to be a changes in policies and a more assertive use of military force.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No. What I‘m saying, there‘s no way not to be at war with this guy, from our perspective, is what I‘m asking you.
SCHEUER: Yes.
Right now, the choice isn‘t between war and peace. It is between war and endless war.
MATTHEWS: Was there any time that we could have avoided war against him?
SCHEUER: No.
MATTHEWS: So, basically, he started a war against us. We just got to beat him.
SCHEUER: Yes. That‘s exactly right.
MATTHEWS: OK. That‘s what I want to know.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, where is he?
SCHEUER: He is somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, sir, along the border.
MATTHEWS: Somewhere up there in the northwest—the old northwest Malaccan territories of India, which is now Pakistan.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: Yes, sir. Some are.
MATTHEWS: Why is he protected there? What happened to Musharraf, our ally?
SCHEUER: Musharraf has bent over backwards, sir. Quite frankly, I would have bet my pension that Musharraf would not have done half of what he‘s done. He‘s done a tremendous amount for us.
MATTHEWS: But is he hiding him?
SCHEUER: I don‘t think he‘s hiding him.
MATTHEWS: Is he among those uncharted areas of the northwest?
SCHEUER: Yes. That‘s clearly the case, sir. He‘s lost in the largest mountains on Earth.
MATTHEWS: And has he got any political protection?
SCHEUER: Not political protection.
MATTHEWS: He has got a TV studio.
SCHEUER: Yes, sir, he does.
MATTHEWS: Where did he find that?
SCHEUER: When you have money, you can do most anything, sir.
MATTHEWS: Do you think he‘s been taken to Islamabad or places like that where they have modern facilities and allowed to appear in these videos we keep seeing?
SCHEUER: No. I suspect he is doing that in the field.
MATTHEWS: Last time we saw him, he was on a burro and he had dialysis problems, right?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: How the hell did a guy on dialysis riding a burro escape from the strongest military force in the world, us?
SCHEUER: Well, first, I think a great deal of the dialysis problem is disinformation from al Qaeda. Second, aside from our special forces in Afghanistan, the military doesn‘t do an awful lot in Afghanistan.
MATTHEWS: Did we let him go in Tora Bora?
SCHEUER: Sure.
MATTHEWS: Was that our fault?
SCHEUER: It was our fault we didn‘t use our own troops, sir. We picked...
MATTHEWS: So we chose the better part of valor. We chose not to expose our troops to go in and hunting through caves.
SCHEUER: That‘s certainly what it looked like to me, sir, from my perspective, yes. And we hired as our surrogates people who were longtime friends of Osama bin Laden.
MATTHEWS: Is he like the tough kid who takes on the big shot, and, therefore, he is popular in it is own community? Is he the kid—is he a hero in the Islamic world?
SCHEUER: Absolutely a hero. You know...
MATTHEWS: OK. Why?
SCHEUER: First of all, there‘s no other leaders. You don‘t see many “I Love Mubarak” T-shirts around.
But the second point is, he speaks—for Muslims, he speaks the truth. They believe that our policies are indefensible.
MATTHEWS: OK. When you go to the Middle East, you see this quiet looking guy sitting around playing chess or smoking those pipes.
SCHEUER: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Hookah pipes, or watching “The Flintstones” on television or whatever they‘re watching, “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They‘re relaxing all day. Are they thinking about bin Laden and why they like him?
SCHEUER: I think that‘s right. I think he‘s the most popular figure in the Muslim world at the moment.
MATTHEWS: Because he spits in our face. And he also kills us by the thousands.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Do they like that?
SCHEUER: Well, they like that because they believe their religion is under attack by the United States.
Bin Laden could not be as popular as he was or as he is if it wasn‘t for our policies. We are his main ally.
MATTHEWS: Were you shocked by the killings of that filmmaker in Holland recently?
SCHEUER: I was shocked, yes, not surprised.
MATTHEWS: By the Islamic community there. They—you cannot speak against Islam. You just can‘t do it. If you speak against Islam, you‘re killed.
SCHEUER: Well, it‘s very much in vogue with what bin Laden wants.
Bin Laden has sought always to incite individual attacks on...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Does he want Sharia, absolute Muslim rule, where no one has freedom of speech?
SCHEUER: He wants—certainly wants the Sharia law. I‘m not sure if I would say that that means no freedom of speech.
The Afghans, for example, are among the most democratic people on Earth in term of a small-d democrat. There‘s a lot of talk that goes on. But religious principles, yes.
MATTHEWS: Well, they don‘t believe you‘re allowed to criticize Islam.
SCHEUER: No. Well, no Muslim does. So that‘s not a question of free speech.
MATTHEWS: Well, not like it, as opposed to encouraging fatwas, etcetera.
SCHEUER: Yes. I‘m sorry. I missed that question.
MATTHEWS: I mean, does he believe you should be able to be killed just because you speak ill against Islam?
SCHEUER: I don‘t think so.
I think the 9/11 Commission, report, for example is wrong. The 9/11 Commission report identifies bin Laden and his followers as takfiris, who kill Muslims if they don‘t agree with them. They‘re not takfiris. They‘re just very devout, severe Salafists and Wahhabis.
MATTHEWS: Does he have the money to do it again?
SCHEUER: Sure.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Nine eleven.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: ... 9/11, yes, it wasn‘t that expensive, first of all. The recent spate of oil increases, $50-a-barrel oil means a lot more money flowing to Osama bin Laden from donators around the world.
MATTHEWS: If you had to place your bets on the most ruthless, most heartless gamble of your life, would you bet he will hit us with nuclear?
SCHEUER: If he has got it, he‘ll use it. It will be a first strike weapon.
He doesn‘t want it for a deterrent.
MATTHEWS: He doesn‘t want a blackmail us.
SCHEUER: No, sir, he doesn‘t. He wants this war—he doesn‘t want to fight this war forever. A lot of people mistake him as someone who can‘t get along without fighting. But that‘s not clearly the case.
MATTHEWS: You mean he would like to lob one horrible bomb at us, kill tens of thousands and then say he won and slip into the night?
SCHEUER: Well, not slip into the night, but then begin to take over the governments in the Middle East, sir, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Egyptians.
MATTHEWS: Well, how would that happen?
SCHEUER: With us out of way, his...
MATTHEWS: Oh, we would pull out of the Middle East.
SCHEUER: Yes, his operating belief.
MATTHEWS: So, his operating goal is to get us out of the Middle East, out of supporting Israel, back over here, not using the oil from over there.
SCHEUER: No. He‘s already said publicly that you can have all the oil you want. I can‘t drink it. We‘re going to sell it to you at a marketplace.
MATTHEWS: OK. We‘re coming back with Michael Scheuer to talk about the shakeup at the CIA, where he‘s been for 22 years.
You‘re watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Coming up, the shakeup at the CIA. Will the new round of resignations make the agency stronger? We‘re coming back with retiring CIA officer Michael Scheuer when HARDBALL returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We‘re back with Michael Scheuer, who left the CIA on Friday, after 22 years working there. Two of the top people in the CIA‘s directorate of operations resigned. It‘s no secret this is an agency in turmoil.
Is the CIA in a meltdown mode?
SCHEUER: I don‘t think so, sir.
I think there‘s a lot of consternation with the new management team. It comes with any change of management. But the resignations were very I think painful for the clandestine service. For the first time, in Mr. Kappes, we had a deputy director of operations who had, forgive the trite phrase, but who had walked the walk and talked the talk.
He was an operator who had done hard things in hard places. And for the first time in a decade, we had a very, very serious operations officer as our DDO.
MATTHEWS: But there‘s no problem with the neocons, the ideologues in this administration, watching the CIA come apart. They‘ve been at war with you guys over there, haven‘t they, with Langley?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I read the papers every day. I want to tell you, whether you agree with me or not, publicly or not, I see a war that is going on constantly. The CIA leaks stuff detrimental to the administration, detrimental to the Defense Department. It goes back and forth. It‘s about leaking. It‘s new leaking.
It‘s constantly a war between the CIA, who seems to be skeptical of this war with Iraq, and the ideologues in the Defense Department and the vice president‘s office, primarily, that are at war with you guys over there. Isn‘t that true?
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: To some extent, I guess it is true.
But the truth of the matter is, they probably don‘t like the idea of the war—of some of our opinions about the war in Iraq. If anything, cinched bin Laden transmitting from bin Laden to bin Ladenism in a worldwide movement, it was the war in Iraq. It doesn‘t make any difference really what the threat was from Saddam. There‘s a whole another issue of Iraq.
MATTHEWS: Sure. The going to war with Iraq, for whatever reason we had to go, whether it‘s geopolitical, ideological or this sort of lame argument for WMD, did it encourage the bin Ladenism in the world?
SCHEUER: Absolutely. You created it...
MATTHEWS: So, Mubarak, who you just disparaged a minute ago, was right when he said going to war with Iraq has created 100 new bin Ladens out there.
SCHEUER: More than that, sir. It has created an Afghanistan in the middle of the Islamic world. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, it was a backwater.
MATTHEWS: So all the political underpinnings of bin Ladenism, they‘ve the horror that hit us 9/11, have been enhanced and strengthened by our decision to go to Iraq.
SCHEUER: Absolutely. And most of this...
MATTHEWS: Well, the CIA knows this, right?
SCHEUER: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Why don‘t they tell it to the president?
SCHEUER: Well, I‘m sure Mr. Tenet must have told them.
MATTHEWS: He never did.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Tenet is only now for a half million dollars out there telling people on the lecture circuit he suspected their arguments for the war in Iraq. He never went public.
SCHEUER: I wasn‘t—sir, I wasn‘t in the room with the president and Mr. Tenet. But I can tell that you that the people who were working against Osama bin Laden were assured from the first day that much of the work we had done in the last decade would be undone by that war.
MATTHEWS: I can‘t wait to read all the books of all the guys who secretly opposed the war with Iraq, but didn‘t tell anybody during the war buildup.
We‘re going to hear it from Tenet. We‘re going to hear it from Powell. All these guys are going to hand-wring and say, oh, that was a bad war. But why didn‘t they speak out or quit as we were going into that war?
SCHEUER: I don‘t have the answer to that, sir.
MATTHEWS: Why did Tenet stay on if he disagreed with the war?
SCHEUER: I don‘t know if he disagreed with it or not, sir. He was the...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Why is he saying so now on the speaking tour?
SCHEUER: I...
MATTHEWS: You guys are secret keepers.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: You really are.
Let me ask you, without naming names. Did most of the top people in the CIA believe that it was a mistake to go to Iraq?
SCHEUER: I would think that that is a shared view in terms of trying to finish off the bin Laden problem, sir, yes.
MATTHEWS: Did they believe that when Secretary Powell, who has just resign, that he had the true facts when he went to the U.N. and made the case for war or didn‘t he? Was that a sales pitch, rather than a fact-based argument?
SCHEUER: The only part of that I know about, sir, is that the—I happened to do the research on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
MATTHEWS: And what did you come up with?
SCHEUER: Nothing.
MATTHEWS: Well, why didn‘t somebody say that to the president?
SCHEUER: We did. Well, I don‘t know. Again, there‘s a difference...
MATTHEWS: Dick Cheney never stops talking about that connection. He is still talking about Prague. He doesn‘t quit.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: He‘s in the Laurie Mylroie tradition over there, which is to believe any connection to justify the war.
SCHEUER: When you talk about CIA analysis, sir, it‘s one thing when it is produced. It is another thing when it is delivered. Mr. Tenet made himself the briefer in chief to the president.
MATTHEWS: Did he make the case for war when it wasn‘t there in the facts?
SCHEUER: I don‘t know that, sir. I have no idea.
MATTHEWS: Who wrote the brief for the secretary of state when he went to the U.N.?
SCHEUER: I suppose part of it was written by the agency and part by the State Department.
MATTHEWS: Six trips over there by the vice president, Scooter, his chief of staff, what was that about? Why did the vice president go to the CIA to get a case for war when you guys say there wasn‘t a case for war? He came back with one.
SCHEUER: Sir, I‘m not—again, my knowledge of Iraq is very limited and limited to the al Qaeda aspect of it.
MATTHEWS: Is it possible that the case for war made outside the CIA based upon illusory information?
SCHEUER: I don‘t know. I know our consistent process of reevaluating ties by Iraq, between Iraq and al Qaeda, was driven by the analysis done at DOD.
MATTHEWS: I hate to think what history is going to say about this war. They‘re going to say there was WMD, because we know that. They‘re going to say there was no connection to al Qaeda, because we know that now.
And all the arguments we put forth to the world will be found bogus if you‘re right, because, if it wasn‘t for the CIA, where did we get the information justifying the war? Is there some other agency I should know about?
SCHEUER: Not that I know of, sir.
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you. You‘re great. Gutsy guy. I know you‘re careful. And I‘m breaking you here, because this is HARDBALL.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: And don‘t call me sir anymore.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: Michael Scheuer, what a gutsy guy. By the way, that‘s him down here, Michael Scheuer. Change the jackets. Michael Scheuer wrote this book, “Imperial Hubris.” He‘s a tough nut to crack.
Thank you, sir.
SCHEUER: Pleasure.
Yes, an abject failure who jumped before he was fired for just cause.
Ping
In Scheuer's case, Option C turns out to be a policy of averting terrorism by figuring out what the terrorists want, and then giving it to them. Such a policy of — shall we call it "conciliation"? — is feasible in Scheuer's opinion because Osama bin Laden and his Islamists are guided by defined and indeed "limited" goals:
First, the end of all U.S. aid to Israel, the elimination of the Jewish state, and in its stead the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state. Second, the withdrawal of all U.S. and Western military forces from the Arabian peninsula — a shift of most units from Saudi Arabia to Qatar fools no Muslims and will not cut the mustard — and all Muslim territory. Third, the end of all U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fourth, the end of U.S. support for, and acquiescence in, the oppression of Muslims by the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments. Fifth, restoration of full Muslim control over the Islamic world's energy resources and a return to market prices [sic], ending the impoverishment of Muslims caused by oil prices set by Arab regimes to placate the West. Sixth, the replacement of U.S.-protected Muslim regimes that do not govern according to Islam by regimes that do. For bin Laden, only Mullah Omar's Afghanistan met these criteria; other Muslim regimes are candidates for annihilation.
It's time to start dealing with traitors to the fullest extent of the law. In more rational times, Schewer's own words, would convict and sentence him to death before a firing squad.
Enemies from without- Bin Laden and others, are not half the threat to our survival that Sewer boy Schewer and other bottom feeders within our Security agencies are.
They shouldn't be fired-they should be fired "at" by expert marksmen, as the target of firing squads.
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