The bin Laden Hunting Team is No More.

This shouldn’t surprise too many people.

WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice “dead or alive.”

The article quotes the CIA as saying that al-Qaeda isn’t the strict hierarchy it has been and that there are viable threats coming from places other than the bin Laden/Zawahiri command hub.

That makes a lot of sense.

Me, I think there’s not much use in running a top-secret apprehension team when the likelihood of its activities getting out is high and Bill Keller is on the prowl for more national security stories to broadcast to the world. After all, didn’t Thomas Jefferson say, “Telling al-Qaeda all our most secret secrets is the highest form of patriotism”?

(That quote, by the way, was from the book Stuff Jefferson Said, Second Edition, Revised.)

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Category: Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media.