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The Counterterrorist Myth A former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has little to fear from American intelligence The United States has spent billions of dollars on counterterrorism since the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, in August of 1998. Tens of millions have been spent on covert operations specifically targeting Usama bin Ladin and his terrorist organization, al-Qa'ida. Senior U.S. officials boldly claim—even after the suicide attack last October on the USS Cole, in the port of Aden—that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are clandestinely "picking apart" bin Ladin's organization...

For nearly 20 years during the height of the Cold War, Boris Aleksandrovich Solomatin, oversaw most of the KGB's anti-American spy operations. The now-retired major general played a key role in the "handling" of John Walker Jr., the Navy officer who headed the most damaging spy ring ever to operate against the United States. Solomatin also recruited Glenn Michael Souther, a lesser-known Navy officer, who provided the KGB with some of America's nuclear war plans before eluding the FBI and fleeing to Moscow where he committed suicide in 1989. The Souther case is worth noting because he is considered to...

WASHINGTON -- Just days ago, FBI agent Coleen Rowley swam, biked and ran through a triathlon in less than 90 minutes, good preparation for a different kind of endurance event: her appearance Thursday at a Senate hearing. All the pressure lately seemed to take no toll on her athletic performance. Rowley, 47, beat all other women in her age group. The career FBI agent, who rocked official Washington with a memo to the boss alleging bureau bungling before the Sept. 11 attacks, was privately interviewed Wednesday by staff for the House-Senate committee holding hearings on the attacks. Rowley came to...

With Senate and House intelligence committees finally demanding answers for pre-9-11 blunders, the bottom line should be whether even the most skillful attempts at damage control can keep FBI director Robert Mueller or CIA chief George Tenet from losing their jobs. Attorney General John Ashcroft is doing his best to bail a leaking boat dry, but in the end he could sink right along with those he's now trying to save. "We're at war," Ashcroft said on Fox last Sunday, ham-handedly repeating his fear-inducing mantra. "We have 550 million people crossing our borders back and forth every year in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Faced with tens of thousands of documents and more coming in every day, leaders of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks say they are dealing with much more information than they anticipated. But they said they didn't want that to delay their inquiry. "We're going to get to the bottom of what happened on Sept. 11, but what we're dealing with right now is still the threat of future terrorist acts," Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said Wednesday on NBC's "Today." Graham proposed on "The Early Show" on CBS that...

WASHINGTON - Former CIA director James Woolsey, one of the leading voices urging swift regime change in Iraq, said yesterday for the US to win the war on terrorism, it first needs to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and weigh creating a domestic intelligence agency similar to the UK's MI5. "We will have terrorist attacks here in the United States and people will be killed. What we have to do is figure out how to keep them from being catastrophic," Woolsey said at a luncheon hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "I think that we...

No matter what their politics, many will agree that on Sept. 11, it was still essentially Louis Freeh’s FBI. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Freeh has been almost an anonymous figure, as far as the media are concerned. Still, Freeh, a former bureau agent, prosecutor and federal judge, has been the most influential FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover. And it was Freeh who had been at the helm of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency for more than eight years, compared to the mere days of tenure for newcomer Robert Mueller. But what kind of FBI was Louis...

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy Thursday will take the FBI to task for missing terror warnings before Sept. 11. But it was Leahy, Hill sources say, who in 2000 blocked FBI and other reforms that might have prevented the attacks. Sen. Patrick Leahy The amazingly prescient reforms were first proposed in a 64-page counterterrorism report delivered June 5, 2000, to Congress. Hill leaders, in the wake of the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, commissioned the nearly $2 million study, which called for much of the same FBI intelligence-sharing and -gathering reforms announced last week. "The guidelines the...

ASHINGTON, June 4 — The House and Senate intelligence committees announced today that they would investigate the government's overall response to international terrorism dating back to 1986, adopting an extremely broad charter for the review of the Sept. 11 attacks.The joint committees said they would examine the performance of Republican and Democratic administrations beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when the C.I.A. created its counterterrorism center. The committees said they would examine everything the government knew or should have known, from all sources of information, about the threat of international terror over the past 16 years.In a preamble...

<p>Congress held its first hearing yesterday on the intelligence failures surrounding the September 11 attacks amid finger-pointing by the CIA and FBI over what was known in advance of the terrorist strikes.</p> <p>"We are off and running with momentum, and I think that our mission is very clear on behalf of the American people, and I think everybody in the room understands it," Rep. Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters after the first meeting of a joint congressional committee.</p>

FBI agents last week were given new freedoms when it comes to detecting and preventing terrorism. The rules free agents to monitor everything from internet sites to mosques for signs of a terrorist plot. Civil liberties groups are raising questions about the powers and whether they infringe on our basic rights. Are new powers granted to the FBI an infringement on Americans' civil liberties? Link to Poll

< snip > A national anti-gun group is targeting Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. for defeat in the Maryland governor's race, beginning today with a drive-time radio spot that paints Ehrlich as having an "extremist record" on guns. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the nation's premier gun-control advocate, chose Ehrlich as one of its prime targets of the 2002 campaign, partly because Maryland has enacted strong gun-control laws, a spokesman said, and Ehrlich's election would be "a step backward." < snip > Amy Stilwell, communications director for the Brady Campaign, said the group expects to spend up to...

<p>WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence overheard al-Qaeda operatives discussing a major pending terrorist attack in the weeks prior to Sept. 11 and had agents inside the terror group, but the intercepts and field reports didn't specify where or when a strike might occur, according to U.S. officials.</p>

WASHINGTON, Jun 04, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Both the CIA and FBI knew as early as January 2000 that one of the eventual Sept. 11 hijackers would be attending a meeting of suspected al-Qaida members, a CIA official said in the latest revelation amid growing evidence of intelligence failures. Word that the agencies had reason to be suspicious of Khalid Almihdhar emerged as the Senate and House intelligence committees vowed to dig into what went wrong before the terrorist attacks. Meeting in soundproofed, secure rooms at the Capitol, lawmakers will take stock of an intelligence community that...

June 4, 2002 Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins on TuesdayBy JAMES RISEN ASHINGTON, June 3 — Early on Sept. 11, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter J. Goss were having a quiet breakfast meeting in the Capitol with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss, the chairmen of the two Congressional intelligence committees, were quizzing their guest about Osama bin Laden and other issues when an aide to Mr. Goss rushed in with a note. A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Goss furiously scribbled a reply, asking his...

<p>Absolutes kill; informed line drawing giveth life. To forget nothing, but to learn nothing is a formula for shipwreck.</p> <p>By those counts, Attorney General John Ashcroft's guidelines issued last Thursday that loosen restrictions on FBI terrorism investigations are troublesome.</p> <p>The new guidelines authorize agents to surf online sites and forums on the same conditions as the public generally for the purpose of thwarting terrorist crimes.</p>

<p>The latest debacle at the CIA — Newsweek's report that the agency was tracking two of the September 11 hijackers for nearly two years while failing to inform either the FBI or the INS that the pair had entered the United States — is just the latest evidence that the agency desperately needs new leadership. In early January 2000, the CIA learned that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization was holding a summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where members planned future attacks against the United States. At the request of the CIA, Malaysian security agents agreed to follow and photograph nearly a dozen al Qaeda operatives, among them Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, who would later be aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11.</p>

<p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — President Bush said yesterday that comprehensive intelligence collection is the best way to prevent another attack against America but the federal government has "got some work to do" to get there.</p> <p>As Congress prepared to open hearings today to investigate whether intelligence agencies missed clues before September 11 that signaled a terrorist attack was imminent, the president said knowing the plans of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network was the only way "to make sure we're ready for whatever happens."</p>

WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - The CIA said on Monday it had notified the FBI in January 2000 about Khalid Almihdhar, one of the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers, in the latest revelation of possible missed clues before the devastating attacks on America. Congressional hearings start this week to investigate the failure of intelligence agencies to uncover the plot in which four planes were hijacked. Two crashed into New York's World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one in rural Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people. One of the main criticisms of U.S. security agencies has been that they had...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The CIA has created a paramilitary unit to deal specifically with terrorists overseas, U.S. officials said Monday. The unit ``is taking the fight to terrorists in sanctuaries such as Afghanistan,'' one official said, declining to identify what other countries it is operating in. The official said the unit is drawing personnel from the CIA's existing paramilitary force, which is a part of the agency's Special Activities Division, which conducts covert operations. Johnny ``Mike'' Spann, the CIA officer killed in November in Afghanistan, was a member of that force. The size of the new unit is classified. The...