A CIA Epitaph on 9/11
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A CIA Epitaph on 9/11
This week's podcast features former CIA Al Qaeda expert Cindy Storer
Cindy Storer was a valiant, even heroic, in my book, former CIA expert on Al Qaeda. All the frantic warnings of Cindy and her workmates, most of them women, that Bin Laden was coming for us went up in smoke and fire on September 11, 2001. And she’s here to talk about it with me this week.
“We don't really talk about how we feel at the anniversary, and I have kinda mixed emotions about it,” she says. “I think of the people still working and still still in the fight, so to speak. I think of my friends who were actually in New York and Washington, D.C. and experienced both attacks. And for them, these anniversaries are more visceral because they were physically present and they saw things…
“For me and my colleagues from back in that time, so many of us still have some trauma left over from our time working counter-terrorism. So, you know, it brings up a lot of stuff.”
Cindy also relives the months and weeks leading up to the 9/11 attacks. In the summer of 2001, there was “almost panic,” among analysts tracking Al Qaeda as they grew certain that something big was coming, she says. ”It was very tense”.
Cindy teaches intelligence now at Johns Hopkins and the University of Texas at El Paso. A number of her students ask her about making a career at the CIA.
“I tell 'em it's the greatest job you'll ever have, but it's also really hard,” she says.
“It's a hard thing to navigate any bureaucracy. And then at CIA, you've got moral issues and you've got, in my case, working on a subject that people didn't care about [for years]. So when I was assigned a mentor, my mentor wasn't very helpful, 'cause she'd never done anything like this before. So I can't emphasize enough how important it is to find people outside of your chain of command who can help you when things get hard—because they will.”
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A CIA Epitaph on 9/11
Great interview, Jeff
Good interview. I hadn't previously heard from Agency analysts on what the events of 9/11 meant to them. Brought back memories of the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968. My tour there was nearly over, but I had an R&R trip left to take, so I dragged my housemate, Mark, to Bangkok for a few days, telling him that nothing ever happened over Tet. I knew from ample personal experience. Hah! We had no warning as to what was coming. The Communist Vietnamese were roaming the streets of Saigon before the alarm was sounded. Talk about intelligence failures. I was in no hurry to return to Vietnam--my tour was to end in six weeks--but Mark was still fairly new and felt compelled to hurry back. On the second night of the enemy offensive we boarded a USAF C-130 bound for Saigon. Two MPs and a jeep met us at the airport and whisked us to our house. The power was off. No street lights, house lights or traffic lights. Streets empty.. Stop signs ignored. Non-stop. Probably the scariest ten minutes of my time in Vietnam. Our cook and maid were happy to see us, though. As were their relatives who had sought safety in our home.
The next morning, sunny and pleasant though it was, I felt a chill when I saw a USAID officer walking to his office, certainly in his fifties, paunch obvious, cigarette in hand, rifle slung over his shoulder. That's not the way it was supposed to be. We had been caught off guard, as we would be again in 2001, and the landscape had been altered.