Inside al Qaeda

Strategy Page:

Getting agents into Islamic terrorist organizations has proved very difficult. There are several reasons for this. First of all, most terrorists come from cultures where the language spoken (Arabic, for example) is difficult to learn, and there are not many speakers of these languages that could otherwise qualify for a job in the CIA or FBI. Then there are the problems with background checks. Islamic terrorists are big on background checks. Not only do they know how to use Google, but they will also, eventually, send someone to your "hometown" to ask questions. The CIA has discovered that, Google alone has made it much more difficult to create "legends" (the fake background information agents require). But the discovery that al Qaeda will even send people out to check legends, was really scary. With all that, al Qaeda is also very patient, and is willing to wait years, before giving a new guy more access to top people, and more important information.

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The post goes on to say that it turns out that some in the organization can be bought. This is probably true on some levels, but it has resulted in any of them claiming the reward for turning in Zawahiri or bin Laden.

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