Bin Laden Issue Station

The Bin Laden Issue Station (1996–2005) was a unit of the Central Intelligence Agency dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden and his associates.

Soon after its creation, the Station developed a new, deadlier vision of bin Laden's activities. The CIA inaugurated a grand plan against al-Qaeda in 1999, but struggled to find the resources to implement it. Nevertheless, by 9/11 the Agency achieved almost complete reporting on the militants in Afghanistan, excluding bin Laden's inner circle itself.

In 2000, a joint CIA-USAF project using Predator reconnaissance drones and following a program drawn up by the Bin Laden Station, produced probable sightings of the al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan. Resumption of flights in 2001 was delayed by arguments over a missile-armed version of the aircraft. Only on September 4, 2001 was the go-ahead given for weapons-capable drones.

The idea was born from discussions within the CIA's senior management, and that of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC). David Cohen, head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, and others, wanted to try out a virtual station, modeled on the Agency's overseas stations, but based near Washington DC and dedicated to a particular issue. The unit "would fuse intelligence disciplines into one office—operations, analysis, signals intercepts, overhead photography and so on". Cohen had trouble getting any Directorate of Operations officer to run the unit. He finally recruited Michael Scheuer, an analyst then running the CTC's Islamic Extremist Branch; Scheuer "was especially knowledgeable about Afghanistan". Scheuer, who "had noticed a recent stream of reports about Bin Ladin and something called al Qaeda", suggested that the new unit "focus on this one individual" Cohen agreed.

The Station opened in January 1996, as a unit under the CTC. Scheuer set it up and headed it from that time until spring 1999. The Station was an interdisciplinary group, drawing on personnel from the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA and elsewhere in the intelligence community. Formally known as the Bin Ladin Issue Station, it was codenamed Alec Station, after Michael Scheuer's son's name, as referred to by DIA's Able Danger liaison Anthony Shaffer. By 1999 the unit's staff had nicknamed themselves the "Manson Family", "because they had acquired a reputation for crazed alarmism about the rising al Qaeda threat".

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