Scheuer:
“I happened to do the research on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.”

Matthews:
“And what did you come up with?”

Scheuer:
“Nothing.”

“Hardball with Chris Matthews,” November 16, 2004

Position: Chief of Alec Station, CIA’s Bin Laden Unit and Special Advisor to Chief of Alec Station
Tenure: 1996 to 1998 and 2001 to 2004

A 22-year CIA veteran, Michael Scheuer is now known to be the author of the New York Times bestseller, written anonymously, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, and the earlier anonymous work, Through our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America.

Claiming that senior intelligence officials have repeatedly let down the past several American presidents, Scheuer wrote, “Indeed I resigned from an agency I love in order to publicly damn the feckless 9/11 Commission, which failed to find any personal failure or negligence among intelligence community leaders even though dozens of serving officers provided the commissioners with clear documentary evidence of that failure.”

During the run-up to the war in Iraq, Director George Tenet asked Scheuer to lead the research into the previous 10 years of agency records to look for evidence of a link between Sadaam and al Qaeda. After examining about 20,000 documents, his team found no connection.

In Imperial Hubris Scheuer asserted that the United States was attacked on September 11 and will continue to be attacked because of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government’s support of Israel and indifference to the Palestinians, the presence of United States and Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula, the U.S. support of countries that oppress Muslims, U.S. pressure on Arabs to keep oil prices low, and U.S. support for tyrannical governments.