This from Barton Gellman's review of Suskind's book is also stunning:

Suskind titles one chapter "Zawahiri's Head," a reference to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, whom Suskind cheekily dubs "bin Laden's Cheney, the older man who made sure that ideas were carried to action." At least four times in 2001-02, reports reached Washington that Zawahiri had died. One set of Afghan tribal chiefs said they could prove it. In June, they delivered a mud-caked head, and an intelligence officer flew it in a metal box to Dulles airport for DNA analysis. Coleman, the FBI analyst, held the jawless skull "as Hamlet did with Yorick's." It felt, he tells Suskind, "like a boccie ball." Bush, who was tracking the transaction, reportedly told a briefer -- "half in jest," Suskind writes -- that "if it turns out to be Zawahiri's head, I hope you'll bring it here." It turned out to be someone else's.

Reviled for failure to develop human spies inside al-Qaeda, the CIA in fact has done so at least twice, Suskind reports. One source warned in detail of a planned 2003 cyanide gas attack on New York subways -- then said Zawahiri himself had inexplicably called it off. The other informant was a "walk-in" who led the CIA directly to the most significant al-Qaeda operative captured to date -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 plot's mastermind, known to "the invisibles" as KSM. Suskind reports that the al-Qaeda turncoat who turned KSM in collected the $25 million U.S. reward for information leading to his capture and is now living under a new name in this country.

Posted by Laura at June 21, 2006 12:06 AM