Around February 2003: 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Appoints Current CIA Officer to Lead Investigation of CIA

9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow appoints a current CIA officer, Michael Hurley, to lead the commission’s investigation of counterterrorism policy. This team will be responsible for reviewing the performance of the CIA and NSC (see Around February 2003). Author Philip Shenon will describe Hurley, merely loaned to the commission from the CIA, as a “battle-hardened spy.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 86-87] As well as holding a number of management positions at CIA headquarters over his career, Hurley served three tours in Afghanistan after 9/11, leading CIA employees and Special Forces in the country’s southeast. He was one of the Agency’s lead coordinators on the ground of Operation Anaconda, the largest battle against al-Qaeda in the campaign in Afghanistan. The station chief Hurley presumably served under in Afghanistan was Rich B (see December 9, 2001), whose performance as the manager responsible for the CIA’s bin Laden unit (see June 1999) Hurley is now supposed to review. From 1998-1999, and again in 2000, Hurley was detailed to the National Security Council, where he was director for the Balkans, and advised the national security adviser and the president on Balkans policy. He has also led US interventions in troubled areas: Kosovo (1999-2000); Bosnia (1995-1996); and Haiti (1994-1995). [9/11 Public Discourse Project, 8/8/2008] Besides Hurley, the staffers on the counterterrorism review team include Warren Bass, a terrorism researcher on the Council for Foreign Relations who will focus on the NSC, and Alexis Albion, a doctoral candidate in intelligence studies at Harvard who will look into the CIA. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 87]