Missed Chances in a Long Hunt for bin Laden

[Eye and Monkey]

By DAVID JOHNSTON and TODD S. PURDUM
Published: March 25, 2004

WASHINGTON, March 24 — In 1996, the C.I.A. secretly created a special operational unit devoted to tracking a single man, a Saudi-born exile named Osama bin Laden, then living in Sudan and considered a major terrorist financier. By early 1997, the office, known as the bin Laden station, had concluded that he was also a terrorist organizer, based in Afghanistan, with a military committee planning operations against American interests worldwide.

"Although this information was disseminated in many reports, the unit's sense of alarm about bin Laden was not widely shared or understood within the intelligence and policy communities," the commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reported on Wednesday. "Employees in the unit told us they felt their zeal attracted ridicule from their peers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25HUNT.html?hp