Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian-born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist,he participated in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and supported the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Bin Laden is considered to have been the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks in the United States.
George John Tenet is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency,as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
Operation Infinite Reach was the codename for American cruise missile strikes on al-Qaeda bases that were launched concurrently across two continents on 20 August 1998. Launched by the U.S. Navy,the strikes hit the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum,Sudan,and a camp in Khost Province,Afghanistan,in retaliation for al-Qaeda's August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,which killed 224 people and injured over 4,000 others. Operation Infinite Reach was the first time the United States acknowledged a preemptive strike against a violent non-state actor.
The Saddam–al-Qaeda conspiracy theory was based on false claims by the United States government alleging that a secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. U.S. president George W. Bush used it as a main reason for invading Iraq in 2003.
Gary Berntsen is an American former Central Intelligence Agency career officer. During his time at the CIA,he served as a Station Chief on three occasions and led several counterterrorism deployments including the United States’response to the East Africa Embassy bombings and the 9/11 attacks. He was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal in 2000 and the Intelligence Star in 2004.
Gary Charles Schroen was an American intelligence officer who spent 32 years with the Central Intelligence Agency,most notably as a field officer in charge of the initial CIA incursion into Afghanistan in September 2001 to topple the Taliban and destroy Al-Qaeda. He retired as the most decorated CIA officer in history.
Paul R. Pillar is an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),serving from 1977 to 2005. He is now a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies,as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. He was a visiting professor at Georgetown University from 2005 to 2012. He is a contributor to The National Interest.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks,the United States declared the war on terror and subsequently led a multinational military operation against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The stated goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda,which had executed the attacks under the leadership of Osama bin Laden,and to deny Islamist militants a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by toppling the Taliban government. The United Kingdom was a key ally of the United States,offering support for military action from the start of the invasion preparations. The American military presence in Afghanistan greatly bolstered the Northern Alliance,which had been locked in a losing fight with the Taliban during the Afghan Civil War. Prior to the beginning of the United States' war effort,the Taliban had seized around 85% of Afghanistan's territory as well as the capital city of Kabul,effectively confining the Northern Alliance to Badakhshan Province and smaller surrounding areas. The American-led invasion on 7 October 2001,marked the first phase of what would become the 20-year-long War in Afghanistan.
The September 11 attacks,commonly known as 9/11,were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. On that morning,19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington,D.C.,in an attack on the nation's capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon,the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County,Virginia,while the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people,making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. In response to the attacks,the United States waged the multi-decade global war on terror to eliminate hostile groups deemed terrorist organizations,as well as the foreign governments purported to support them,in Afghanistan,Iraq,Syria,and several other countries.
The Bin Laden Issue Station,also known as Alec Station,was a standalone unit of the Central Intelligence Agency in operation from 1996 to 2005 dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden and his associates,both before and after the 9/11 attacks. It was headed initially by CIA analyst Michael Scheuer and later by Richard Blee and others.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Mission Center forCounterterrorism is a division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations,established in 1986. It was renamed during an agency restructuring in 2015 and is distinct from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),which is a separate entity. The most recent publicly known Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Mission Center was Chris Wood who led the organization from 2015 to 2017.
Several sources have alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties with Osama bin Laden's faction of "Afghan Arab" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War.
After the Central Intelligence Agency lost its role as the coordinator of the entire United States Intelligence Community (IC),special coordinating structures were created by each president to fit his administrative style and the perceived level of threat from terrorists during his term.
The Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first operation,code-named Operation Cyclone,began in mid-1979,during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed and eventually supplied weapons to the anti-communist mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan following an April 1978 coup by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and throughout the nearly ten-year military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor,Ronald Reagan,supported an expansion of the Reagan Doctrine,which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.
This is a list of activities ostensibly carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) within Pakistan. It has been alleged by such authors as Ahmed Rashid that the CIA and ISI have been waging a clandestine war. The Afghan Taliban—with whom the United States was officially in conflict—was headquartered in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas during the war and according to some reports is largely funded by the ISI. The Pakistani government denies this.
At around 9:30 pm on September 11,2001,George Tenet,director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),told President George W. Bush and U.S. senior officials that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center had determined that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks on September 11,2001,the Federal Bureau of Investigation connected the hijackers to al-Qaeda,a militant Salafist Islamist multi-national organization. In a number of video,audio,interview and printed statements,senior members of al-Qaeda have also asserted responsibility for organizing the September 11 attacks.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington,D.C.,by the al-Qaeda terrorist group,a number of investigations were conducted to determine what intelligence may have existed before the attacks and whether this information was ignored by authorities.
Michael D'Andrea is a retired Central Intelligence Agency officer who played an instrumental role in American counterterrorism efforts during the War on Terror. He served nine years as director of Counterterrorism Center (CTC),and held a major role in the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. His 42-year career has been described as among the most consequential in the recent history of the CIA,and he has been called the most lethal leader in the U.S. government for his tenure. He is widely credited with revolutionizing the CIA's terrorist-hunting efforts,and vastly expanding the program of targeted killings by drone strike used heavily against Al-Qaeda. "If he was a combatant commander,he would have been sitting in the gallery for the State of the Union,he would have had all the accolades,and then some,that David Petraeus ever had," said one former senior CIA official. "He ran that war."
Henry "Hank" A. Crumpton is a retired Central Intelligence Agency operations officer,who served as deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center and as head of the CIA's National Resources Division,which focuses on operations in the United States. In the early days of the invasion of Afghanistan,Crumpton led CTC Special Operations paramilitary forces in pursuit of the Taliban and al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks. Crumpton also planned a larger incursion alongside others like Greg Vogle and Chris Wood. He was later appointed by President George W. Bush as Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State with the rank of Ambassador-at-large on August 2,2005. He is an author and co-founder,chairman,and CEO of the business intelligence and political risk firm Crumpton Global LLC.
John Christopher Wood is a retired operations officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. After the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001,he was part of the initial team of seven CIA officers that entered Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban just 15 days after the attacks. Later he held prominent positions,including Kabul station chief and director of the Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC).
