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‘Anonymous’ resigns from CIA

* Says will now serve the national interest by talking publicly about Bin Laden and 9/11-Commission Report

WASHINGTON: A CIA analyst who wrote a book criticising the US war on terror resigned from the spy agency after it banned him from publicly discussing his views, his publicist said on Thursday.

Michael Scheuer wrote the book “Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror” under the pen name “anonymous” and formally resigned from the intelligence agency on Friday, after 22 years of service.

In a statement to the press, Scheuer said that he blamed senior US leadership for allowing intelligence officers working against Osama Bin Laden to be made scapegoats for pre-Sept intelligence failures. He went on to say that while the CIA did not force his resignation, he concluded that there had been no national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Bin Laden and his supporters and that the intelligence agency needed reforming to address that threat.

Scheuer was chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Centre unit which focused on Bin Laden from 1996 to 1999 and remained a CIA analyst after that.

The December issue of The Atlantic Monthly published an open letter by Scheuer to US congressional intelligence committees in which he said that the key pre-Sept 11 intelligence failures were mainly the result of bad decisions by senior officials.

He said that while the 9/11 attacks were probably unpreventable, decisions made by senior officials showing “arrogance, bad judgment, disdain for expertise, and bureaucratic cowardice” had meant that the intelligence community did not operate optimally to defend America.

In June, prior to his book’s publication, Scheuer appeared in a series of media interviews, appearing on TV in silhouette and identified in print as “Mike.”

In the first week of August, CIA officials told him that he had to ask for advance permission before engaging in interviews as well as providing them with summaries of what would be discussed, Scheuer’s editor and publicist Christina Davidson said. She added that the CIA rejected every request, effectively banning him from speaking on the subject.

Scheuer’s book claimed that the United States was losing the war against terrorism and that current policies would strengthen its enemies in the Islamic world. would only make its enemies in the Islamic world grow stronger.

A statement released by his publicist said that following a cordial meeting with senior CIA officials on Tuesday, Scheuer decided that it his resignation would serve the interest of the intelligence community and the nation by allowing him to continue speaking publicly about Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the 9/11-Commission Report.

The CIA made no comment. Scheuer is scheduled to appear on the CBS show “60 Minutes” on Sunday. reuters

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