Showing posts with label Greg Miller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greg Miller. Show all posts

Thursday, March 26, 2015

CIA Official Who Directed Hunt For Bin Laden Is Being Removed From Post

By Greg Miller, Mar. 25, 2015, WashingtonPost.com

The head of the CIA’s Counter­terrorism Center, who presided over the agency’s drone campaign and directed the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is being removed from his post, officials said, a watershed moment as the CIA turns its focus to a new generation of extremist threats.

The move, part of a major reorganization under CIA Director John Brennan, ends a nine-year tenure during which the center was transformed into a paramilitary force that employed armed drones to kill thousands of suspected terrorists and militants but also killed an unknown number of civilians.

As the architect of that campaign, the CTC chief came to be regarded as an Ahab-like figure known for dark suits and a darker demeanor. He could be merciless toward subordinates but was also revered for his knowledge of terrorist networks and his ability to run an organization that became almost an agency unto itself. He embodied a killing-centric approach to counter­terrorism that enraged many Muslims, even though he is a convert to Islam.


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Friday, September 26, 2014

WaPo: U.S. Takes On ISIS, Al-Qaeda Remains Degraded But Not Defeated

By Greg Miller and Kevin Sieff, Sept. 36, 2014, Washingtonpost.com



As the United States mobilized against new Islamist enemies this month, the voice of an aging adversary echoed in the distance.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of al-Qaeda’s founders and its leader for the past three years, released a video announcing the formation of a new affiliate in India and lamenting the turmoil being caused by the rival Islamic State in Syria.

“Oh mujahideen, unite and reject differences and discord,” he said in a pleading tone that seemed to underscore the declining relevance of al-Qaeda’s core, the
Pakistan-based group that orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Zawahiri was silent on a far more sensitive project — the creation of a cell in Syria dedicated to plots against the United States — that once again made predictions of the demise of al-Qaeda’s core seem premature.

The Khorasan group, which was struck but not destroyed by a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles this week, came into public view like the contents of an al-Qaeda time capsule. It is led by all-but-forgotten operatives who knew Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks and, according to U.S. officials, was assembled under the instruction of an al-Qaeda leader approaching retirement age.


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