The CIA has closed down a secret unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, US intelligence officials said on Monday.
The terrorist tracking unit, known inside the spy agency as "Alec Station," was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned to other offices within the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.
The decision is a milestone of sorts for the agency, which created the unit before Bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when US President George W. Bush pledged to bring Bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that al-Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, as well as growing concern about al-Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
CIA officials said that tracking Bin Laden and his deputies remains a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit is not a sign that the effort has slackened. Instead, the officials said, the realignment reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.
"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever," said Jennifer Dyck, a CIA spokeswoman. "This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus" for counterterrorism efforts.
Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA official who was the first head of the Bin Laden unit, said he believed the move reflected a view within the agency that Bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was. Scheuer said he believed that view was mistaken.
"This will clearly denigrate our operations against al-Qaeda," Scheuer said. "These days at the agency, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."
In his book Ghost Wars, which chronicles the CIA's efforts to hunt Bin Laden in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the author and journalist Steve Coll wrote, "The Bin Laden unit's analysts were so intense about their work that they made some of their CIA colleagues uncomfortable."
Officials said Alec Station was disbanded late last year.
FOUR DESIGNATED AREAS: Notices were issued for live-fire exercises in waters south and northwest of Penghu, northeast of Keelung and west of Kaohsiung, they said The military is planning three major annual exercises across the army, navy and air force this month, with the navy’s “Hai Chiang” (海強, “Sea Strong”) drills running from today through Friday, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. The Hai Chiang exercise, which is to take place in waters surrounding Taiwan, would feature P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft and S-70C anti-submarine helicopters, the ministry said, adding that the drills aim to bolster the nation’s offshore defensive capabilities. China has intensified military and psychological pressure against Taiwan, repeatedly sending warplanes and vessels into areas near the nation’s air defense identification zone and across
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
SENATE RECOMMENDATION: The National Defense Authorization Act encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s navy to participate in the exercises in Hawaii The US Senate on Thursday last week passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, which strongly encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s naval forces to participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, as well as allocating military aid of US$1 billion for Taiwan. The bill, which authorizes appropriations for the military activities of the US Department of Defense, military construction and other purposes, passed with 77 votes in support and 20 against. While the NDAA authorizes about US$925 billion of defense spending, the Central News Agency yesterday reported that an aide of US
RSS