Nickname for CIA’s Bin Laden Team: ‘The Manson Family’
June 3rd, 2011Via: Telegraph:
Terrorist hunter Michael Scheuer tells Duncan Gardham and Iain Hollingshead how he was repeatedly ordered not to stop the al-Qaeda chief.
There are not many sane people who can say with confidence that, had a president of America only listened to them, they could have saved $1.3 trillion and many hundreds of thousands of lives. Michael Scheuer can.
During his 22 years in the CIA – three and a half as head of a 18-man Osama bin Laden unit – he told his bosses at Langley on 10 occasions that he had a clear opportunity to kill or capture the terrorist chief. On all 10 he was told to hold his fire.
To look at Scheuer, 59, bespectacled, bearded and apparently every inch the academic and author he has become, you would not guess at his espionage past. The unit he led between 1995 and 1999 was codenamed Alec station, after his son, but it was nicknamed the “Manson family”, after the criminal Charles Manson, for the zeal with which it approached its task.
“There are not many sane people who can say with confidence that, had a president of America only listened to them, they could have saved $1.3 trillion and many hundreds of thousands of lives. Michael Scheuer can.”
The real insanity: had a president of America listened to them, they would have missed the opportunity to spend $1.3 trillion — an excellent ROI for a mere hundreds of thousands of lives.
Made me think back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helter_Skelter_(Manson_scenario)