Si vous n'avez pas encore lu cet excellent article du vénérable Atlantic Monthly (traduit dans Le Monde) qui résume assez bien la situation pré-11 septembre: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/gerecht.htm

"The Counterterrorist Myth" (July/August 2001), Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former high-level CIA operative, argued that the CIA's efforts to infiltrate bin Ladin's anti-American terrorist organization in Peshawar have been ineffective and misguided. The article highlights the difficulty of obtaining good intelligence about any tightly organized fringe group that may be targeting the United States.
"No case officer stationed in Pakistan can penetrate either the Afghan communities in Peshawar or the Northwest Frontier's numerous religious schools, which feed manpower and ideas to bin Ladin and the Taliban, and seriously expect to gather useful information about radical Islamic terrorism—let alone recruit foreign agents.
Even a Muslim CIA officer with native-language abilities (and the Agency, according to several active-duty case officers, has very few operatives from Middle Eastern backgrounds) could do little more in this environment than a blond, blue-eyed all-American.... An officer who tries to go native, pretending to be a true-believing radical Muslim searching for brothers in the cause, will make a fool of himself quickly."