Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer (born 1952) is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, author, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. In his 22-year career, he served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka "Alec Station"), from 1996 to 1999, the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004. Scheuer became a public figure after being outed as the anonymous author of the 2004 book Imperial Hubris, in which he criticized many of the United States' assumptions about Islamist insurgencies and particularly Osama bin Laden. Later in 2004, shortly after the 'outing' of Scheuer's harsh criticism of America's close alliance with Israel, Scheuer resigned from his position at the CIA. In his book Scheuer depicted bin Laden as a rational actor who was fighting to weaken the United States by weakening its economy, rather than merely combating and killing Americans. Scheuer challenges the common assumption that terrorism is the threat that the United States is facing in the modern era, arguing rather that Islamist insurgency (and not "terrorism") is the core of the conflict between the U.S. and Islamist forces, who in places such as Kashmir, Xinjiang, and Chechnya are "struggling not just for independence but against institutionalized barbarism." Osama bin Laden acknowledged the book in a 2007 statement, suggesting that it revealed "the reasons for your losing the war against us". In February 2009, shortly after his pronouncement that America's relationship with Israel was a total foreign policy liability to the United States, Scheuer was terminated from his position as a senior fellow of The Jamestown Foundation.[citation needed] In December 2013 and January 2014, Scheuer was criticized for seeming to advise American citizens to seriously consider assassinating US President Barack Obama. In September 2014 in addition to earlier "praise" received from Al Qaeda, the Da-ish, or self-proclaimed Islamic State, also issued a press release specifically praising Scheuer's ideology.