Agent Who Got '96 Bin-Laden File Says We're Not Much If We Don't Get Him

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Sep. 9, 2006. 07:55 AM

Pulling bin Laden from the shadows
In 1996, FBI agent Daniel Coleman opened a file on the `Saudi prince' and would later identify his terrorist group

by, Rosie Dimanno


"We're not much of a superpower if we let someone like that blow up the biggest buildings in our biggest city and get away with it.''

In the beginning, before 9/11, before the "war on terror," before the global pandemic of diabolical jihad and the international posse of counter-terrorism toughs that it spawned, there was just one rather dishevelled middle-aged man sitting at a cubicle inside a nondescript government building in Virginia.

That man was Daniel Coleman, an agent from the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and in March of 1996 he opened a file on a shadowy individual — regarded then as little more than a nuisance, hardly an urgent threat to American security — Osama bin Laden.

"I thought of him as a money broker,'' Coleman told the Star in an interview last week. "I didn't know he had a group.''

In time, it would be Coleman who first identified an organization called Al Qaeda, although neither he nor the emerging cadre of bin Laden zealots in law enforcement and intelligence circles could convince their masters — and the top echelon in government, through two administrations — about the looming danger it represented, not only halfway around the world but on American soil.


more (excellent account) . . . http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1157753409895&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

[librechik]

1. Exactly--and now he is safe with our ally Pakistan

is Bush incompetent? Or is Osama his favored tool?

a moron could catch Osama. Bush is stupider than a moron, apparently.

[bigtree]

2. did you catch the narrative? It gives a sidecar view of the history

of events. Riveting. The indifference of the superiors really comes through. The account of John O'Neill, ex-chief of the FBI's counterterrorism section, his former boss. Very revealing article.

[KansDem]

3. We could "get" OBL if we wanted to...

IF we wanted to...

This tells me different

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4. it's not hard to understand why many take that view

It's incomprehensible why so many apparent opportunities to capture bin-Laden were squandered or bungled. The incompetence is so stunning that we stretch for other explanations. Leadership should have taken care of that. The 'will' to get him is a very important element in all of this.

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5. neither he nor the emerging cadre of bin Laden zealots in law enforcement

and intelligence circles could convince their masters — and the top echelon in government, through two administrations — about the looming danger it represented . . ."