intelligence officials were stymied by Osama bin Laden. The hunt for Osama bin Laden: For almost a decade, U.S. Although CIA officials often have their cover identities removed when they join the agency’s senior ranks, Roger has maintained his.
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The Post agreed to withhold some details, including Roger’s real name, his full cover identity and his age, at the request of agency officials, who cited concerns for his safety. Roger declined repeated requests for an interview. The CIA declined to comment on Roger’s status or provide any information on him for this article. There have been rumors in recent weeks that Roger will soon depart as well, perhaps to retire, although similar speculation has surfaced nearly every year since he took the job. Most of Roger’s predecessors, including Cofer Black and Robert Grenier, lasted less than three years. It involves managing thousands of employees, monitoring dozens of operations abroad and making decisions on who the agency should target in lethal strikes - all while knowing that the CTC director will be among the first to face blame if there is another attack on U.S. Roger’s longevity is all the more remarkable, current and former CIA officials said, because the CTC job is one of the agency’s most stressful and grueling. In the top echelons of national security, only Robert S. Mueller III, who became FBI director shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has been in place longer. Since becoming chief, Roger has worked for two presidents, four CIA directors and four directors of national intelligence. Regardless of Roger’s management style, there is consensus on at least two adjectives that apply to his tenure: eventful and long. Instead, they emphasize his operational talents, encyclopedic understanding of the enemy and tireless work ethic. His defenders don’t even try to make him sound likable. He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of Islamist militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts.Ĭolleagues describe Roger as a collection of contradictions. Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington - the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. As chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center for the past six years, he has functioned in a funereal capacity for al-Qaeda. The man with the nicotine habit is in his late 50s, with stubble on his face and the dark-suited wardrobe of an undertaker. For every cloud of smoke that follows a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, dozens of smaller plumes can be traced to a gaunt figure standing in a courtyard near the center of the agency’s Langley campus in Virginia.