STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

If Al Qaeda becomes a footnote in American history textbooks, the CIA will have done its job, says the counterterrorism analyst who first warned the nation that Osama bin Laden was becoming a menace.

“The worst day for Al Qaeda is when one CIA agent turns to another and says: ‘Have you ever heard of Al Qaeda?’ And the other CIA agent says, ‘No,’ ” Gina Bennett said Thursday.

Bennett was among several notable women who opened the Alturas Institute’s second annual Conversations with Exceptional Women conference at the Community Library in Ketchum.

Bennett started as a clerk typist for the State Department following graduation from Virginia University. It was in 1993, while working at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the State Department, she wrote the first CIA report warning about Osama bin Laden.

Since, the mother of five—the youngest of which is 11—has written the book “National Security Mom” about the world of terrorism. Bennett was featured in the “Spymasters” documentary that details the inner workings of the CIA and she’s prominently featured in this week’s “Newsweek” magazine article about The Woman of the CIA.

In a conversation with conference founder David Adler, Bennett disclosed that she loves Fruity Pebbles, she’s never watched the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden and that her favorite crime fighter is Elastigirl from “The Incredibles.”

“Leaving the saving of the world to men? I don’t think so!” exhorts Elastigirl.

Bennett told the sell out conference that she had started with the CIA just two years before she issued her warning. It helped that she knew nothing about terrorism and was looking at the information with fresh eyes compared with colleagues who had spent decades dealing with the Cold War and the dangers associated with a Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union.

"It was frustrating that no one listened to her warning," she said.

“But I don’t blame anyone,” she added, as she recounted how the world had just turned upside down with fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union. “If you get frustrated because people don’t believe you, you won’t last.”

“I wish to g-d I’d been wrong,” she added.

Bennett learned to juggle her spy games with motherhood.

She gave birth to her first child the day before the first attack on the World Trade Center. She spent the morning of 9-11 throwing up because she was pregnant again. She briefed Condoleezza Rice about global jihad while in labor. And she had to learn how to track Al Qaeda from 9 to 5, then go home and deal with her teen-age daughter’s angst.

One of the most trying times during her career was the millennium with the fear that the world’s computers would malfunction—in part, because analysts had no idea what they were dealing with.

When nothing happened, the public refused to believe new warnings, thinking they were just crying wolf.

Bennett recounted how everyone in her building was evacuated after the planes flew into the World Trade Center, with the exception of the counter terrorism department. That day became two years long as analysts sifted through thousands of megabytes and other data figuring out what was fiction and what was true.

"Part of national security is talking about resiliency—what drives people to behave the way they do," Bennett told the audience. "It’s about: How do we stand up the next day if we’re attacked."

"Securing a nation is similar to securing your home," she added. "You don’t just lock the doors. It’s deeper than that, and it involves things like telling the truth and standing up to bullies."

Bennett admitted that to being a little mad when Osama bin Laden was killed.

“It would have been an incredible thing if we could have ignored him, written him out of history books,” she said. “It would have been like dis-empowering a bully.”

Wood River High School student Emily Stone was one of a dozen students who attended the conference on Thursday. She doesn’t remember 9-11 as she was 2 when it happened. But, she said, it’s had a largest impact on her life, thanks to things like increased airport security.

“I was amazed that they didn’t listen to what Gina had to say,” she said. “But I liked what she had to say about resiliency.”