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Published: July 4, 2006

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.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever," said Jennifer Millerwise ******, a C.I.A. spokeswoman. "This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus."

The decision to close the unit was first reported Monday by National Public Radio.

Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was.

Mr. Scheuer said that view was mistaken.

"This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda," he said. "These days at the agency, bin Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."

In recent years, the war in Iraq has stretched the resources of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, generating new priorities for American officials. For instance, much of the military's counterterrorism units, like the Army's Delta Force, had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.

An intelligence official who was granted anonymity to discuss classified information said the closing of the bin Laden unit reflected a greater grasp of the organization. "Our understanding of Al Qaeda has greatly evolved from where it was in the late 1990's," the official said, but added, "There are still people who wake up every day with the job of trying to find bin Laden."

Established in 1996, when Mr. bin Laden's calls for global jihad were a source of increasing concern for officials in Washington, Alec Station operated in a similar fashion to that of other agency stations around the globe.

The two dozen staff members who worked at the station, which was named after Mr. Scheuer's son and was housed in leased offices near agency headquarters in northern Virginia, issued regular cables to the agency about Mr. bin Laden's growing abilities and his desire to strike American targets throughout the world.

In his book "Ghost Wars," which chronicles the agency's efforts to hunt Mr. bin Laden in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Steve Coll wrote that some inside the agency likened Alec Station to a cult that became obsessed with Al Qaeda.

"The bin Laden unit's analysts were so intense about their work that they made some of their C.I.A. colleagues uncomfortable," Mr. Coll wrote. Members of Alec Station "called themselves 'the Manson Family' because they had acquired a reputation for crazed alarmism about the rising Al Qaeda threat."

Intelligence officials said Alec Station was disbanded after Robert Grenier, who until February was in charge of the Counterterrorist Center, decided the agency needed to reorganize to better address constant changes in terrorist organizations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html

Oops, started under Clinton before 9/11, ended under Bush, restarted the search under Obama.

This particular unit? No, but he did increase the focus, attention and resources as he said he would while campaigning.

Well, what do you know. It seems the post I was going to refer you to where I posted exactly what Obama said during the campaign has magically disappeared. Strange things happening.

Um, that didn't happen. Right wing lie and you fell for it.

Had you googled it you would have known that it was not true, so shenanigans.

So, you reported this post?

So the part about "restarted the search under Obama" was a lie. OK

One out of how many??

Truth-o-meter!!!!
Im gonna google that....

As to be expected on the third day after the attack, the US is now being put to blame for assassinating him. Pakistan and its people are pissed at the US for not including or letting them handle it. Again we are expected to put forth Muslim sympathy and political correctness while they stand there with their hand-out waiting for more US money.

Story will continue through the rest of this week...

I wrote what I meant to say: 'started under Clinton before 9/11, ended under Bush, restarted the search under Obama.'

The unit was started under Clinton in 06. It was closed under Bush 10 years later, the search restarted in earnest under Obama.

"I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. I — I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." GW Bush

Low priority for the President.

Obama's statement at a 2008 debate with McCain for which he was much maligned by the right:

And we have a difficult situation in Pakistan. I believe that part of the reason we have a difficult situation is because we made a bad judgment going into Iraq in the first place when we hadn't finished the job of hunting down bin Laden and crushing al-Qaida.

So what happened was we got distracted, we diverted resources, and ultimately bin Laden escaped, set up base camps in the mountains of Pakistan in the northwest provinces there.

They are now raiding our troops in Afghanistan, destabilizing the situation. They're stronger now than at any time since 2001. And that's why I think it's so important for us to reverse course because that's the central front on terrorism. They are plotting to kill Americans right now. As Secretary Gates, the Defense secretary, said, the war against terrorism began in that region, and that's where it will end.

So part of the reason I think it's so important for us to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan, put more pressure on the Afghan government to do what it needs to do, eliminate some of the drug trafficking that's funding terrorism.

But I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars, and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants. What I have said is we're going encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our non-military aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out.

We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

---

High priority for the President.

So once again, I meant to write exactly what I wrote.

Then you simply are wrong once again and are trying to overstate/understate something to fit your political agenda.

In other news, the sun rose in the east again today.

You interpreted a politician's statements about priorities and translated it into "stopped" and "restarted" to fit your agenda.

In other news, Osama Bin Laden is still dead.

So Obama actually did not restart anything.



I don't mind made-up facts. Actually, they're the best kind if repeated enough. You're just fighting a 7+ front war to gain Obama his props and rip the previous administration with revisionist history.

Meanwhile the reality is Bush = Obama and we globalists control everything. The game is rigged.

So GWB terminated the "aggressive search" and Obama restarted the "aggressive search".

That a pretty broad statement that can't be substantiated but it does fit your needs.

In other news, gasoline costs more than $3 per gallon.

Yes. Backed by Presidential words, actions and results.

Perhaps you are not seeing the difference in priorities, in each President's own words and actions, because of your world view? Or maybe because it is me pointing it out?

Perhaps it is because you are completely exaggerating "actions" to fit your agenda.

In other news, it has been determined that California is prone to earthquakes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965.html

Friday, June 4, 2010

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

More at link

That's that McDonald's burger where the hot stays hot and the cool stays cool, right?!?!?!

Naw, I'm pretty sure you are not up to date or just ignoring the facts, like the ones printed in the article above. Been common knowledge for years now for those who follow these sorts of things. As a matter of fact, Obama has been getting all sorts of flack from the left for the drone and special forces attacks, though most are in agreement with the OBL raid, not all. There are still some lefties who think it was not very nice, but f them.

Again and Again, yes. Backed up by words, actions and results.

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A


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Go back up and edit your post..where you said Clinton started it in 06 and Bush ended it 10 years later... I know it must be a typo


That is all...

All this aside I think we should have skinned OBL and created a skin suit ala buffalo bill. The suit should have been presented to GWB as a gift. He then could go trick or treating as OBL. The one thing Bush did right was go after these bastards and all the idiots trying to make it look like he somehow backed off or was inept (at this) should have their ball sacks slapped (if they have one).

Bush sucked, but not at everything. Obama sucks, but not at everything.

How was going into Iraq going after 'these bastards'?

Iraq was a mistake and it is when I turned against Bush. But you put WAY too much emphasis on how it distracted from going after terrorism. IMHO when folks apply mutually excliusive logic to things it is either out of convienience to their argument or stupidity.

Bush wanted to kill the bad guys as much or more than anyone else. To suggest otherwise is stupid to me. I see both sides projecting this stupidity in some form or another.



So how about bush went into Iraq under false pretenses and it was a bad move (I know some will argue that but its ok). Bush really wanted to get OBL and more importantly disrupt al queda and protect this country.

If both statements can not be true in your mind then that is your issue. Watching folks trying to paint Bush as somehow not putting every effort into getting this done is disgusting. If anything the man was obsessed by it, and I am glad he was.