The Washington Post has a fascinating series of articles on the secret war between an obscure sub-group of the CIA and al-Qa'ida before the 11th September attacks, when counter-terrorism wasn't fashionable.
"The rest of the CIA and the intelligence community looked on our efforts as eccentric and at times fanatic," recalled a former chief of the bin Laden unit. "It was a cult," agreed a U.S. official who dealt with them. "Jonestown," said another person involved, asked to sum up the unit's atmosphere. "I outlawed Kool-Aid."
Wasn't that clever? Not, of course, that it did any good, but with that kind of support from above they didn't have that much chance. Some of their schemes were a little wild, too, like the one involving imprisoning him in a cave, or sending a party of Ahmed Shah Massoud's army on mules to plaster his camp with katyushas. I suppose they were probably seen as cowboys attached to The Company's heroic myth of the Afghan wars, years after the medals had been handed out and everyone had gone home.
No comments:
Post a Comment