http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofer_Black Black transferred from London, England to Khartoum, Sudan in 1993. There he was the CIA's station chief in a hostile country, that the United States had imposed economic sanctions upon due to their sponsorship of terrorism until 1995. This was a dangerous posting, where the main mission was collection of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) on terrorist cells and support structure. Near the end of his posting Osama bin Laden's men planned to assassinate him near the US embassy. Apparently, Osama bin Laden's group detected the CIA surveillance and traced it back to Black. In 1994, Black was responsible for the collection of intelligence that led directly to the capture of the terrorist known as Carlos (the Jackal).
Black helped carry out Bush's hard-line anti-terror policy and was often the public face of the war the president declared on terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In September 2004, Black drew criticism from Democrats for suggesting that the mastermind of those attacks, Osama bin Laden, could be captured soon. That followed a botched State Department report Black oversaw on terrorism around the world in 2003 that was used to argue the United States was winning the war on terrorism. In June 2004, the administration had to correct the report to more than double the count of people killed and injured by international terrorism.
In 1995, Black was named the Task Force Chief in the Near East and South Asia Division. From June 1998 through June 1999 he served as the Deputy Chief of the Latin America Division.
In addition to numerous exceptional performance awards and meritorious citations, Black received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the George H. Bush Medal for Excellence, and the Exceptional Collector Award for 1994.
Most recently, Black and his Blackwater USA company have provided private security as well as training and personnel for stability operations worldwide.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59775-2004Feb21?language=printerThe Hunt Begins
At CIA headquarters, the unit set up to track Kasi was located in the Counterterrorist Center. A few partitions away was another small cluster of analysts and operators who made up what the CIA officially called the "bin Laden issue unit."
The unit had been created early in 1996 to watch bin Laden, who was then living in Sudan. By that point, the United States had decided for security reasons to close the embassy and CIA station in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, where officers had previously been collecting intelligence about bin Laden's financial support for Islamic radicals in North Africa and elsewhere. In the spring of 1996, Sudan yielded to international pressure to expel bin Laden. The Saudi found sanctuary in Afghanistan in May.
The CIA had no station or base in Afghanistan, however, and it had no paid agents in the country at the time, other than those hunting for Kasi near Kandahar and a few loose contacts working on drug trafficking and recovering Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, according to Tom Simons, then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, whose account is supported by several other U.S. officials familiar with the CIA's Afghan agent roster.
Back at Langley, the bin Laden unit, using classified channels, regularly transmitted reports to policymakers about threats issued by bin Laden against American targets -- via faxed leaflets, television interviews and underground pamphlets. The CIA's analysts described bin Laden at this time as an active, dangerous financier of Islamic extremism, but they saw him as more a money source than a terrorist operator.
To senior career officers in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, the TRODPINT tribal team now beckoned as a way to watch bin Laden in Afghanistan. The paid Afghan agents could monitor or harass the Saudi up close, under CIA control -- and perhaps capture him for trial, if the White House approved such an operation. Operators and analysts in the bin Laden unit argued passionately for more active measures against him. Jeff O'Connell, then director of the Counterterrorist Center, and his deputy, Paul Pillar, agreed in the summer of 1997 to hand them control of the TRODPINT agent team, complete with its weapons and spy gear.
As bin Laden's bloodcurdling televised threats against Americans increased in number and menace during 1997, the CIA -- with approval from Clinton's White House -- turned from just watching bin Laden toward making plans to capture him.
Working with lawyers at Langley in late 1997 and early 1998, the TRODPINT agents' CIA controllers modified the original Kasi capture plan -- with its secret airstrip for extraction flights -- so it could be used to seize bin Laden and prosecute him, or kill him if he violently resisted arrest.
A long and frustrating hunt for bin Laden had formally begun.
During the three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the hunt would eventually involve several dozen local paid CIA agents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a secret commando team drawn from Uzbek special forces, another drawn from retired Pakistani special forces and a deepening intelligence alliance with Massoud, the northern Afghan guerrilla leader. Despite these varied efforts, bin Laden continually eluded their grasp.
Years later, those involved in the secret campaign against bin Laden still disagree about why it failed -- and who is to blame.
SNIP
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000243.htm By 1998, in fact, the FBI and CIA had known about Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden for quite some time. In January 1996, they had set up "Station Alex," a virtual intelligence station that was apparently an information clearinghouse. This belies the notion that interagency cooperation was nonexistent, though it may not have been perfect. 18 months later they had found Al-Qaeda cells in 56 countries according to Richard Clarke. Cofer Black, CIA counterterrorism director, testified --
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092602black.html -- that they had been following Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden since 1991.
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