Icing bin Laden: Former CIA officer Gary Schroen told NPR yesterday that, before shipping off to Afghanistan after September 11, former CIA counterterrorism director Cofer Black gave him explicit instructions: "[L]ink up with the Northern Alliance and get their cooperation militarily and they will take on the Taliban. When we break the Taliban, your job is to capture bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box full of dry ice." Schroen also says he was told to kill other al-Qaeda leaders—the first time in 30 years CIA agents have been ordered to kill, rather than capture, their targets—and display their heads on pikes. "Sir, those are the clearest orders I have ever received," he says he told Black. "I can certainly make pikes out in the field but I don't know what I'll do about dry ice to bring the head back but we will manage something."