WASHINGTON, 28 June 2004 — A 22-year CIA veteran who headed an anti-terror task force focusing on capturing Osama Bin Laden said in an interview yesterday that “bureaucratic cowardice” impeded action against Al-Qaeda before and after Sept. 11.
“Since there had only been one man or entity on the earth that had declared war on (the United States) since 1996 and had attacked us seven or eight times between (1996) and the World Trade Center (attack on Sept. 11, 2001) I would’ve somehow hoped that the military would’ve been prepared to respond in some fashion,” the CIA official told ABC’s “This Week.”
The official has published a book entitled “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.”
He told ABC that the content of the book as well as its release had been approved by the Central Intelligence Agency. “I think there’s a great deal of moral or bureaucratic cowardice within the senior levels of the US intelligence community,” he told ABC.
However, he did not blame outgoing CIA director, George Tenet. “Mr. Tenet, to his great credit, was one of the individuals who identified this threat very early on,” the author said.
He also said that US officials had missed several chances to kill or capture bin Laden for lack of proper intelligence.
“What there was, I think, was a lack of moral courage or bureaucratic courage to say, ‘This isn’t the best intelligence in the world, but it’s the best we’re likely to get. And if we don’t take this action, we’re going to lose a lot of Americans’,” he said. Even after Sept. 11, he said, US forces moved too slowly into Afghanistan, almost one month later.
“By the time Oct. 7 rolled along, most of those forces had been dispersed into the countryside, into Pakistan, into Iran, overseas to other countries,” he told ABC.
He also said the US-led invasion of Iraq was the greatest diversion Bin Laden ever could have hoped for.
“It was the kind of a gift that a kid wants for Christmas but he never thinks his parents are going to give it to him, and then he’s just delighted when it finally shows up at the end of the day,” the official said.
He also asserted that the invasion of Iraq has placed US troops in harm’s way.
“What we’ve created is a Mujahedeen magnet in Iraq,” he said.
“We see people coming from all over the world to fight us, and it’s likely to continue.
