An AP report on the man who hunted Osama bin Laden through eight years and three CIA directors:
(The) agency was on its third director since Sept. 11, 2001. John had outlasted many of his direct supervisors who retired or went on to other jobs. The CIA doesn’t like to keep its people in one spot for too long. They become jaded. They start missing things.
John didn’t want to leave. He’d always been persistent. In college, he walked on to a Division I basketball team and hustled his way into a rotation full of scholarship players.
The CIA offered to promote him and move him somewhere else. John wanted to keep the bin Laden file.
He examined and re-examined every aspect of bin Laden’s life. How did he live while hiding in Sudan? With whom did he surround himself while living in Kandahar, Afghanistan? What would a bin Laden hideout look like today?
The CIA had a list of potential leads, associates and family members who might have access to bin Laden.
“Just keep working that list bit by bit,” one senior intelligence official recalls John telling his team. “He’s there somewhere. We’ll get there.”
Intelligence drives operations. Hat’s off to you, bubba.
Persistence pays off.
We owe that man huge.
We all need to buy JOHN a few beers…..Bravo Zulu.
Back in the day, Robert Redford made a great movie called ” Three days of the Condor ”
” John ” could be the modern equivalent of this guy….
From the moive – Redford’d charactre describes what he does….
Joe Turner: Listen. I work for the CIA. I am not a spy. I just read books! We read everything that’s published in the world. And we… we feed the plots – dirty tricks, codes – into a computer, and the computer checks against actual CIA plans and operations. I look for leaks, I look for new ideas… We read adventures and novels and journals…
The only way you’ll know this man is a new Intelligence Star in the lobby of the CIA…and no, it won’t have his name on it.
“The CIA will not permit him to speak with reporters” says the journo`
Oh? REALLY? Just who do these CIA-types think they’re dealing with?
Reminds me of the occasional knob I’d occasionally encounter in my prior life. When they weren’t getting their way I’d here, “Do you KNOW who I am”? At this point I’d reach for my radio and say, ” Seven one to control, I’ve got a guy here who doesn’t know who he is, over”.
ROTFLMAO! Brilliant!
There was an old story of an airline ticket agent dealing with a hotshot businessman who tried to butt to the front of a long line. When she replied over the public address system as Hogday notes, the guy walked off and muttered “screw you,” to which the agent replied, “you’ll have to wait in line for that too, sir.”
My roomie from grad school has a son smarter than 99% of the Wall Streeters. The kid is working for “the company” tracking finances of terrorists. We were out in the boat fishing Memorial Day weekend and I asked him why he wasn’t on Wall Street making millions. he replied “anybody can do that, not every body can track _____’s payroll or cell phone bills that lead to ____. I get to work with some of the brightest most dedicated people and use cutting edge technology in tracking down and eliminating bad people. What’s not to like?”. I told my roomie he did good raising the kid. The funny thing is neither father nor son has told Mom what he really does – at son’s request. he tells her he works for a “collection agency” in DC.
G-man,
Yes, your roomie raised him right. We need more like him and less lawyers, community organizers and hamburger flippers. It appears that today’s educational system is better at preparing students for those two professions than for the professions we really need.
G-man. Speaking of covers, my Mother’s first roommate out of college in the late 30s ended up with first the OSS in NYC during WW II in counter-intelligence and later with the NSA as a crypto code-breaker. Her cover story? (remember, this was the 50s when most women were secretaries) she worked as a “clerk typist” at the CIA! Perfect–no elaborate front business, false phone-numbers, etc. She just very publicly drove to Langley every day and made no bones about where she worked (supposedly, lol) –clean & simple–KISS–but reality was, she parked at CIA & took the shuttle to the NSA each day, etc. Throughout my childhood she used to come back to visit every Christmas & bring me exotic presents and Mom and I always thinking she had a low-level job at the CIA (which she wouldn’t talk about either, so perfectly feigned cover for what “everybody knew” was a low-level job, right?) Only years later when on active in the 70s did I learn thru
a CIA source friend of a friend of mine that left the USAF for the CIA about her NSA exploits–turns out she was rather famous in-house in the NSA/spook community, lol.
This cannot be right. Obama tracked down Osama and killed him.
TR said it best: “Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
As compared to publishing your withdrawal date in mid campaign, for example.
Hrmph.