Summary: The Dark Side

But Bin Laden, the object of the military campaign in Afghanistan, remained at large.” Many promises were made by the government that this terrorist would be found in no time. However, instead of finding their enemy, the government ended up killing several civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq just to make it look like as if they were working hard on their mission. What is even harder to believe is the fact that nearly seven years after the World Trade Center attacks, millions of civilians have been killed, but Osama has yet to be found.

Among other functions, the group specializes in surreptitiously installing spyware and tracking devices on targeted computers and mobile-phone networks. The new details about the raid fill out an already rich public account of how the U.S. government employed virtually every tool in its enormous surveillance apparatus to locate bin Laden. For more than a decade, bin Laden had stymied all efforts to find him by making certain he did not leave a direct electronic trail. He steadfastly avoided phones and e-mail, relying on face-to-face communications with a few couriers and

wasn’t captured until Bush was out of office. With the goal of protecting the U.S. from

On September 11, 2001, there was a terrorist attack against the United States. Hijackers flew a jetliner into each of New York’s World Trade Center towers. Simultaneously, a third jetliner crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia. Due to these horrific events, thousands of people were killed. In response to the attacks, the United States declared a “War on Terror.” However, the actions of the U.S. did not come without criticisms from the people of the nation.

Beginning in 2001 Intelligence about the impending nature of an attack was increasing, not only from US Intelligence sources but also from 11 other countries such as Britain, Israel, India, Egypt, Morocco and even a top Taliban commander from Afghanistan (Thompson.) Beginning in August warnings become coming in from everywhere, foreign governments, CIA and FBI sources and so on however, next to none of this information was shared between the many intelligence agencies. In April, NORAD launched a training scenario in which the pentagon was to be incapacitated by a hijacked airliner however the Joint Chiefs of Staff disregarded the scenario as “too unrealistic” (September 11 attacks advance-knowledge debate.) On august 19th the Israeli’s gave US intelligence personnel credible information including, the list of 19 suspected terrorist’s names and the fact that a large aircraft would be the primary weapon involved. The names were not shared by the CIA with other intelligence agencies (Robinson.)

In accordance with the National Commission which was concerned about inadequate information sharing following 9/11. (Cordner, Scarborough 2010) I believe it's worth noting that across the board the internalized intelligence and lack of transfer of information has led to a lot of pointed fingers from agencies as to whom could have had a better potential of preventing the attacks of 9/11.

2001-Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan are targeted by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and the CIA’s

The last case that will prove of the corruption in the Central Intelligence Agency through an indepth explain from the case CIA v. Ben Soud. A federal court was held for hearing for a lawsuit between three former CIA black site detainees and the two psychologists that were hired by the CIA agency to help in develop an enhanced interrogation program, which involved the systematic use of torture. Two of the three, Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, survived their captivity, while one, Gul Rahman, died in a CIA prison in 2002. Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud a plantiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit, was born in Libya, but fled the country in 1991 out of fear of persecution from Muammar Gadaffi’s government. After moving to Pakistan in April 2003

In July of 2002, Omar Khadr was detained at Bagram Airfield, a large US controlled base in Afghanistan. He was sent by his father to a nearby desert compound. It is here where local satellite phone signals are picked up by the US military, and sends a team to investigate. One of the men in that team was Sergeant Christopher Speer. Upon arriving at the compound. An Afghan soldier was sent to order the occupants to surrender. The response was gunfire, and he fled. After the occupants started throwing grenades at the US and Afghan forces, the compound was bombed, one of the only survivors being fifteen year old Omar Khadr. A team of US soldiers entered the destroyed compound, and Khadr lobbed a grenade that would injure Sgt Speer. Khadr was then detained, and transported to Bagram. Speer died in August of 2002. Omar was sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he would spend the next ten years, charged of five war

The 9/11 attacks opened the avenue for a scrutiny of the performance and ability of the intelligence community to detect any threats to the safety of the United States. The media, politicians, reformists and other interested parties would not comprehend how such an attack would happen without the knowledge of the intelligence community. However, it is important to consider the fact that the attack was one of its kind and could not be approached with the resources and expertise used in other initiative such as the cold war. Therefore, the need to restructure the intelligence community arose from the view that it was still operating in the mindset and spirit of the cold war even in the modern era that had seen a revolutionary change of warfare

Van Bergen (2002) website states “Many people do not know the US Patriot Act was already written and ready to go long before the September 11th” (p. 1). Critics of the Bush Administration claim the government had information that could have helped prevent the attacks of September 11th. Sharing information and investigations between the agencies, FBI and CIA, was allowed to break the obstacles that once separated investigations that involving criminal and intelligence ones. Information obtained by the United States Justice Department showed the CIA had previous

On May 2nd, 2011, the people of the United States awoke to some of the best news they would hear for many years to come; Osama bin Laden had been killed. President Barack Obama delivered the message at 7:30AM and the country was buzzing about it for weeks after. Osama bin Laden was a name that every American man, woman, and child knew. On 9-11-01, four planes were hijacked by terrorists and crashed into strategic locations to sow chaos, confusion, death, and destruction into the American people. 2,977 innocent Americans died on that fateful day, and the man who decided they should die and be subject to terror was Osama bin Laden. Since that fateful day, America has donated massive amounts of time and money to find Osama, and bring him to justice. However, time and time again he evaded capture and kept us chasing him.

Ursula K Le Guin once stated that “I am a man. Now you may think I’ve made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I’m trying to fool you, because my first name ends in a, and I own three bras, and I’ve been pregnant five times, and other things like that that you might have noticed, little details” (The Wave In the Mind pg 3) discloses that no matter what “role” is placed on a gender, it is paramount to preserve equality and acceptance. In most cases, the male gender is considered to be the more dominant and superior sex when compared to the female gender, which is speculated to be a less powerful and more sensitive sex. Le Guin uses gender to immensely contribute to this entire novel as she endeavors to display to readers that a world could indeed thrive when free from gender roles. In the science- fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin brilliantly represents gender equality and a genderless society that exists on planet Gethen.

The attack on the World Trade Center was not the first attack and was not the first time the US Intelligence Community had heard of Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. The role of counterintelligence from both sides the US and Al-Qaeda, lent to the information flow not only form the attackers but also to the ones who would ultimately respond. The FBI, the CIA, the DIA, have integral parts in these series of events from the information collection to the information flow. In a time where it was realized that Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism have a similar need, as well as information sharing across agencies, have led to the CI and IC we see today.

The Intelligence Community has had successes and failures, many of which have made history. One of the most prominent failures in U.S history was the attacks on September 11, 2011. Now most people would start to read this essay and think they know everything about what happened that day because it has been so publicized. However, for me it was different. Yes, I was alive when it happened, but I was too young to understand. The September 11th attacks have been of particular interest to me due to the fact that they happened right in my backyard. One of them even occurred in the same state in which I live. For this reason I wanted to know why an event of this magnitude occured in the U.S. The safety of Americans has changed since then leaving many people affected. The collection and analysis of intelligence in our nation changed dramtically after the 9/11 attacks.