In mid-September 1998, in the aftermath of the August 7, 1998, African embassy bombings in Africa, “The bin Laden unit’s leader, an analyst known to his colleagues as Mike, argued with rising emotion that the CIA and the White House had become prisoners of their alliances with Saudi Arabia and Pakistani intelligence. America was in a war against a dangerous terrorist network. As it waged that war, it was placing far too much faith in unreliable allies. The CIA needed to break out of its lazy dependence on liaisons with corrupt, Islamist-riddled intelligence services such as the ISI [Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence] and the Saudi General Intelligence Department, he argued. If it did not, he insisted, the CIA and the United States would pay a price.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 415