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By Wolf Blitzer
CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports
Over the years, I occasionally have driven over to the Central Intelligence Agency in nearby Langley, Virginia. Like other Washington-based reporters, I have been invited to briefings with some of the CIA's top analysts. My impression is that they almost always know their stuff. That should not be so surprising since they are privy not only to all the open information available to anyone but to some of the most sensitive classified information as well. Still, as we all know, the people at the CIA do not always get it right. The analysts and officers there, of course, failed to anticipate the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Dr. Jerrold Post, a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University here in Washington, spent 21 years at the CIA where he founded and directed the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. Among other things, he did psychological profiles of all sorts of international figures. In the late 1970s, for example, he profiled the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in advance of then-President Jimmy Carter's Camp David peace summit.
More recently, Dr. Post has done a psychological profile of Osama bin Laden. When I spoke with him this week after the start of the U.S. airstrikes against bin Laden's network in Afghanistan, I was surprised by some of what Dr. Post said. "In one sense," he said, "Osama bin Laden isÉ just where he wants to be. "That's because bin Laden -- as demonstrated in those taped Al Jazeera comments released after the start of the airstrikes on Sunday -- has now divided the world into two camps -- the believers and the unbelievers. In bin Laden's mind, Post says, he is now "the commander-in-chief of the Islamic world in its holy war against the West." The Al Qaeda leader believes that message will resonate throughout the Arab and Islamic world.
"It's scoring points with some," says Post. "And apparently, it is resonating positively with some of the already radical youth in that part of the world. "At this point," Post continues, bin Laden "is riding high in some ways. He expected the attack." He had the video tape ready for release. "And he's using this to mobilize support."
I asked Post what motivates bin Laden. He replied that the Saudi-born millionaire loved the ascetic lifestyle he developed in the 1980s when he went to Afghanistan to support the freedom fighters in their fight against the Soviet Union's forces. His men began to "adulate him, and he was seen almost as a messianic leader," according to Post. "And when, with significant American aid, the Soviets, in their own Vietnam, left the country, he was a man without an enemy, in some ways, which is very bad for a warrior king with his warriors ready to follow him."
What did bin Laden do? "Quite adroitly," Post says, "he switched gears. When he went back to Saudi Arabia and found American forces on Saudi Arabian Holy Land, America became the new enemy."
"I believe he is totally committed to his cause," he said. "Having said that, I think it is also the case that he has a rather enlarged psychology, quite grandioseÉ insofar as he almost identifies himself with Allah."
Post believes the $25 million bounty the U.S. government has put on bin Laden's head is a mistake. "In some ways," he says, "I wish the reward were only one dollar. I think it's very unfortunate to personalize this because it ends up increasing his stature, just as Saddam Hussein was the madman of the Middle East before. The issue for us, really, is not Osama bin Laden. It is radical Islam, and how can we inhibit an alienated youth from moving into the ranks of this really distorted version of Islam."
Those are the questions that Dr. Post's successors at the CIA and throughout the U.S. government are now pondering.
Wolf Blitzer
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