Word: bins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...American intelligence community's single greatest failing is its lack of good "humint"--human intelligence, the dirty, diligent, shoe-leather penetration of terror networks. The humint void is behind the CIA's failure to pick up advance word of the Sept. 11 attacks, and it makes ferreting out bin Laden especially hard. "We don't have real spies anymore who go out and get dirt under their nails," admits an Administration official. The CIA rolled up most of its regional networks when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989. Its old sources dried up, and the Executive Order that...
...side the ISI is really on. The CIA and the Pentagon have long been split on ISI's reliability. Islamabad pleased the CIA by extraditing three key terrorists in recent years. But as TIME reported 18 months ago, a 1999 CIA plot to train 60 Pakistani commandos to snatch bin Laden went nowhere when the ISI dragged its feet. "They didn't do squat," says an American close to the operation, who suspects Pakistan never intended to get bin Laden. Pentagon officials complain that ISI has "led us down blind alleys" before in the hunt for bin Laden...
...against the Soviet Union, then turned away when the war ended. A sizable portion of ISI rank and file embraces Islamic fundamentalism, and even if the top brass promise help, spooks on the ground may thwart them by withholding information or spreading disinformation. "The ISI has excellent intelligence about bin Laden," says a former Defense specialist on the region. "I find it doubtful they will give...
...needs other silent partners for the search--like locals and rebels tied to the Northern Alliance. But exaggeration and contradictions color their tales, and their sources inhabit the north while bin Laden is more likely holed up in the Pashtun territory of the south and east. Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which resisted sharing intelligence when terrorists attacked U.S. targets in their countries, have now dumped their computer files in Washington's hands. President Vladimir Putin has promised to share Russia's file on bin Laden, and Moscow is providing useful stuff on terror camp locations and military installations from...
...corresponding one of betrayal, with loyalties that shift like the desert sands. That shift is beginning against the Taliban's leadership. Fissures are appearing in the Taliban ranks between hard-liners and so-called moderates, who privately believe that Mohammed Omar's refusal to hand over terrorist Osama bin Laden is akin to mass suicide. Says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and expert on the Taliban movement: "The U.S. threat is helping to divide the Taliban." Rashid says the Taliban's "fellow travelers," the tribal leaders who don't share the Taliban's extremism, will be the first to shear...