The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
By Tim Weiner
Mariner, 464 pages, $28
On page 48 of his book, which is replete with admiration for the CIA, for many of its officers, and for each one of its directors except for Trump’s current appointee John Ratcliffe, Tim Weiner quotes Bob Gates, the former director of central intelligence and future secretary of defense: “The reality is that on 9/11 we didn’t know jack shit about al Qaeda … we’d just been attacked by a group we didn’t know anything about.” But Weiner does not ask why there was so much ignorance, given that the CIA’s dedicated “Alec Station” a.k.a. the “Bin Laden Issue station” was in its fifth year of operation.
When I met its head Michael F. Scheuer, I discovered the probable cause: Bin Laden’s particular talent was to recruit and direct his followers with his speeches delivered in a very fine classical Arabic in plaintive rather than fiery tones—speeches in which he made a point of dropping hints of forthcoming attacks. Thus, before the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden that killed 17 navy men, Bin Laden used Yemeni locutions, and wore a Yemeni recurved dagger in his belt.
But it was all lost on Scheuer, who knew no Arabic.