A former CIA analyst took off his disguise to say on Sunday that the United States must respect Osama bin Laden for the enemy he is, or many more will die. "Until we respect him, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary,' former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer told CBS's '60 Minutes' program.

Scheuer spoke for the first time without a disguise, as the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror,' which a few months ago shook up Washington.

Scheuer wrote the book anonymously with permission from the Central Intelligence Agency. He quit on Friday and revealed his identity.

Bin Laden is "a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history,' Scheuer said.

"I think our leaders over the last decade have done the American people a disservice ... continuing to characterize Osama bin Laden as a thug, as a gangster,' he said, calling bin Laden a rational, formidable enemy.

Scheuer had been tracking bin Laden since the mid-1980s, and from 1996 to 1999 headed the CIA's bin Laden desk, which he said was the only such desk dedicated to a single person at the CIA.

But Scheuer was removed from the desk, he told CBS, because he became too strident in demanding that something be done about him.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, which bin Laden led, Scheuer was brought on as a special adviser to the head of the bin Laden unit.

He told the network that bin Laden is more dangerous than ever, because now he may use a nuclear weapon, if he has it, with religious authority.

"(Bin Laden) secured from a Saudi shaikh ... a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans,' Scheuer told CBS.

The fatwa "found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans,' Scheuer said.

Commentary: