On a quiet Thursday in November, an AFP reporter in Bobigny, north Paris suburbs, receives a phone call from a flustered police officer, who dialed his number by mistake. «Hello, Jerome? Call back the fire brigade. We can’t find IT.” "IT, as we are about to find out, is the TIGER," writes Eve Szeftel, who spent two days in pursuit of the bloodthirsty beast -- under the amused eye of the world’s media.

"The fresh-faced staff members scurried back and forth among the rows of chairs. They were clearly nervous," writes AFP's Pentagon reporter Dan De Luce, after covering the first ever live news conference held inside CIA headquarters -- as the spy agency scrambled to respond to revelations its operatives tortured Al-Qaeda suspects after the September 11 attacks.