Michael Scheuer

Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004.

He was chief of the Osama bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.

He worked as Special Adviser to the Chief of the bin Laden Unit from September 2001 to November 2004.

He is now known to have been the anonymous author of both the 2004 book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and the earlier anonymous work, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.

Scheuer wrote about a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in his 2002 book. Yet when interviewed in 2004 he stated that he had found no evidence of a Saddam/al-Qaeda connection.

On June 30, 2009, Scheuer allegedly said on the Glenn Beck Show:

"The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary."