
3:30pm to 4:45pm |
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America's Response to 9/11: A CIA Retrospective in the Worlds of Those Who Led the Way
(Academic)
This panel will discuss aspects of the CIA's operations in Afghanistan from the perspective of the CIA officers who were there immediately after the al-Qaida attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
The panel will include the following speakers:
-The deputy of the CIA's Directorate of Operations
-Two officers who participated in the first teams to land in Afghanistan to execute the CIA's strategy to topple the Taliban regime in order to destroy al-Qaida
-The CIA's targeter who created the system used to identify, find, and fix Taliban and al-Qaida targets
-Perspectives from other officers presented by the author of "First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11," released Sept. 7, 2021.
The panelists will talk about their roles in this unprecedented counter terrorism action. Attendees will receive insights and understanding of how the U.S. responded to this attack.
Seven days after the attack, President George W. Bush visited Ground Zero and, in response to a person in attendance, stated, "I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
The first CIA team landed in Afghanistan the following week to take the fight to al-Qaida. Several other CIA, and later U.S. military special forces teams, followed.
By December, the Taliban had collapsed. By spring 2002, al-Qaida had been destroyed and driven from Afghanistan.
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