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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (42531)	9/8/2002 12:16:04 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Long Piece in the NYT on Bin Ladin. Mainly a History of his success and the failure of our Government. Some excerpts and a URL are below. I watched a Book Review on C-SPAN Sat that featured a speech by Miller. He is the coanchor of ABC TV's 20/20, and had an interview in 1998 with bin Laden. He was talking about his new book, "The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, And Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It." I intend to get a copy ASAP. >>> The C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, established in 1986 and staffed with C.I.A. and F.B.I. analysts, had no agents of its own in the field. Its requests for action, surveillance and agent recruitment were routinely turned down by C.I.A. station chiefs abroad, according to a former C.I.A. officer assigned to it. The center, until Sept. 11, was disconnected from the fabric of F.B.I. counterintelligence work in the United States.<<< >>>>Bernard Lewis, the Princeton University specialist on Middle Eastern studies, said last month that Mr. bin Laden was taking on the aura of a latter-day "Middle Eastern Robin Hood." His goal, Mr. Lewis said, is to "defy the strong and to protect, and ultimately avenge, the weak." He "remains an enormously popular figure not only with the extremists and radicals who form his main support group, but in much wider circles in the Muslim and more particularly in the Arab world," Mr. Lewis said.<<<<< >>>>> Some intelligence veterans say that the reorganization of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. are not as important as getting back to the basics of espionage and counterespionage: recruiting valuable agents in Middle Eastern countries to penetrate terrorist organizations. To run those agents and build the networks, the United States needs better trained intelligence officers, experts in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures who are fluent in the languages of the region. And the C.I.A.'s top management, as well as Congress, must support and protect these secret efforts in order for them to succeed, the veterans say.<<<<< nytimes.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (42531)	9/8/2002 9:59:31 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

This may be a personal view, but it is also a fairly accurate expression of the media zeitgeist. Not all the media, but a lot of it. There is what appears to me to be a concerted effort to portray Bush as a most grotesque caricature. I have to keep pinching myself to ask whether I am dreaming. Can people really see him this way, or is it just mean-spiritedness? I have come to the conclusion that we must live in parallel worlds, perhaps never to meet.