Word: network
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...President Clinton signed a top-secret order, approved by the congressional intelligence committees, that authorized the CIA to begin covert operations to break up bin Laden's terror network. The agency's counterterrorism center--200 operatives housed in a windowless warren of cubicles in the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters--had set up a special bin Laden task force. Analysts were assigned to read every word the Saudi had spoken or written. Computers with sophisticated "link analysis" programs were busy printing out diagrams of bin Laden's loose-knit network, which included thousands of Muslim fighters with varying degrees...
With bin Laden out of reach, the CIA launched a secret program to harass his network. Using its own informants plus the counterterrorism center's computers, which tracks passports worldwide, the CIA would spot bin Laden operatives in foreign countries, then quietly enlist the local security service to arrest or deport them and allow the agency to sift through materials left in their apartments. In many cases, the CIA didn't know "exactly what each person was doing," says an intelligence official, "just that he was doing something with a terror organization, so we should disrupt...
...conclusion hardened within days. The FBI took Odeh and al-'Owhali into custody in Nairobi, and they began spilling secrets. The security protecting bin Laden's network was porous, and other informants began talking, revealing that bin Laden planned assaults on other U.S. embassies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East...
Though the U.S. soon flexed its military muscle with the cruise-missile strike against bin Laden, and his network has been quiet for four months, Washington still sees him as a major threat. The White House has ordered stepped-up efforts to disrupt the terror network, but with mixed results. Treasury Department officials have made no headway dismantling bin Laden's financial empire. Most of his investments are in European or African companies that are unaffected by U.S. economic sanctions and don't deal in dollars, which Treasury could track. The State Department, likewise, has not convinced Afghanistan's ruling...
...COLD WAR (CNN) Any commercial network that aired a 24-part documentary on the cold war, no matter how dull, would deserve praise, but cnn created dramatic TV. Mixing rare footage and interviews with figures high and low, the series deftly told its grave story while maintaining scholarly integrity...