The scene is almost cinematographic – A
middle-aged CIA analyst begins to inform the gathered crowd that the
Agency is almost certain that in one complex in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, Osama Bin Laden,
leader of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, is hiding.
When he finished with his presentation,
President Obama asks him how sure is he that Bin Laden is still there.
About eighty percent - says
John, pointing out that they never managed to capture him with satellite surveillance, but, nevertheless, he was never so sure about Bin Laden’s location like he was now.
The rest is history.
Obama accepts his opinion and
asks Admiral Mullen whether the army is prepared to complete this mission. Mullen answers affirmatively and sends a command to the commander of a special unit, known as SEAL Team Six, which finished the job.
If mentioned names were different,
this little story would look like some scene from a spy novel – and our
John is matching perfectly to some main character of such novel. The news agency Associated Press has recently published a great story about him – he is a
CIA veteran who has for the
last ten years searched for Bin Laden everywhere around the world. And he was undoubtedly confident that he would find him.
His name is fictional, but he is a man who proved himself while working in the CIA’s departments for the Balkans and Russia.
After the terrorist attack on America, on 11 September 2001,
John was transferred to the anti-terrorist department. From that point, his analytical hunt for Osama Bin Laden began. In those ten years, John
had several offers for promotion, but he decided to stay in that department until they achieve their goal and found the most wanted terrorist. It was he who played a
key role in all significant arrests of terrorists (Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi bin Alshib, Hambali and Faraj al-Libi). But the main target was still at large.
He and his team were reading and analyzing thousands of documents in order to find any type of clue - the last one they had was a hideout in Tora Bora, the mountainous part of Afghanistan. Besides that,
John dealt with all aspects of Bin Laden’s life in order to find an answer to his key question:
what kind of shelter would a man like Bin Laden seek? He constantly repeated to his team members to check any information on all family members and associates who might be in contact with Bin Laden.
“
He's there somewhere. We'll get there.” –
was his favorite line.
His reputation in the Agency's grew with each year. And then, finally,
a breakthrough. In 2007, one female agent whose identity is not revealed, tracked Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Osama’s trusted courier. This made everyone in the team absolutely convinced that they will reach their goal.
In August 2010, they finally located Bin Laden in Abbottabad. The CIA sent a team to a house near Bin Laden’s complex and waited for the final confirmation.
But the confirmation didn’t arrive until Obama was completely convinced in their story. Meanwhile,
John was warning the members of his team: “
Right up to the last hour, if we get any piece of information that suggests it's not him, somebody has to raise their hand before we risk American lives.”
No one got such information.
Two days after the operation, John appeared in front of Senate Intelligence Committee. He was calm and restrained like always. But then he finally gave in - when he began to present details of the operation, he suddenly choked, paused and started crying.
John's identity came out in the open the way it shouldn’t have. At least when it comes to “top secret” operations. It was, in essence, very simple: the editor of “NY Observer”, the weekly edition of reputable daily "Guardian", has managed, thanks to certain blogger John Young, to find out the name of this agent, and then all that he needed to do was to google John’s name and his name appeared in Northern Virginia Division.
Then other details emerged. The guy
played basketball in college and had an unusual shooting style, for which he was remembered by his coaches. He also had
a respectable college G.P.A. Recently his wife launched a charity campaign to help the school in which their children are attending. The reporters also discovered and that
his son is a good athlete.
The journalists were able to learn all that, and the U.S. officials could only scratch their heads and wonder - how?
Spied on KGB – Created Putin’s profile
This CIA’s analyst has gained fame when he
made a profile of then new Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In fact, at the beginning, many perceived this former KGB agent as just another interim solution when Yeltsin's rule ended. But
John conducted a thorough analytical work and concluded that Putin is a person who will firmly take control and manage Russia for many years. At that point, John proved his greatest quality - the ability to perceive important from something that might look unimportant.
