A Secret Hunt Unravels in Afghanistan (Ghost Wars : The CIA and Osama bin Laden, 1997-1999)

Washington Post ^ | 02/22/04 | Steve Coll

[Pokey78]

Mission to Capture or Kill al Qaeda Leader Frustrated by Near Misses, Political Disputes

First of two articles.

The seeds of the CIA's first formal plan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden were contained in another urgent manhunt -- for Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani migrant who murdered two CIA employees while spraying rounds from an assault rifle at cars idling before the entrance to the CIA's Langley headquarters in 1993.

For several years after the shooting, Kasi remained a fugitive in the border areas straddling Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. From its Langley offices, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center asked the Islamabad station for help recruiting agents who might be able to track Kasi down. Case officers signed up a group of Afghan tribal fighters who had worked for the CIA during the 1980s guerrilla war against Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan.

The family-based team of paid agents, given the cryptonym FD/TRODPINT, set up residences around the city of Kandahar. They were rugged, bearded fighters -- often in teams of a dozen or so -- who rolled around southern Afghanistan in four-wheel-drive vehicles, blending comfortably into the region's militarized tribal society.

In the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the CIA carried out a secret but ultimately unsuccessful manhunt for bin Laden. It was based at first on the band of Afghan tribal agents, and later expanded to include other agents and allies, especially the legendary guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. But the search became mired in mutual frustrations, near misses and increasingly bitter policy disputes in Washington between the Clinton White House and the CIA.

[VOA]

bump

[js1138]

This is, after all, a matter that should be handled by the police.

[csvset]

CIA Director George J. Tenet

Why is this guy still employed by the CIA?

[FairOpinion]

"On the front lines in Pakistan and Central Asia, working-level CIA officers felt they had a rare, urgent sense of the menace bin Laden posed before Sept. 11. Yet a number of controversial proposals to attack bin Laden were turned down by superiors at Langley or the White House, who feared the plans were poorly developed, wouldn't work or would embroil the United States in Afghanistan's then-obscure civil war. At other times, plans to track or attack bin Laden were delayed or watered down after stalemated debates inside Clinton's national security cabinet."

[section9]

Jesus, this was in the Post?!!!

I'll be damned.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[FairOpinion]

"One of the bin Laden unit's analysts confronted Tenet. (after the embassy bombings in 1998) "You are responsible for those deaths," she said, "because you didn't act on the information we had, when we could have gotten him" through the Tarnak raid, one official involved recalled her saying.'

[FairOpinion]

People who spent their time researching Bin Laden recognized the grave threat he posed, and nobody listenend to them!

===

"When Black took over, the bin Laden unit had about 25 professionals. Most of them were women, and two-thirds had backgrounds as analysts. They called themselves "the Manson Family," after the crazed convicted murderer Charles Manson, because they had acquired a reputation within the CIA for wild alarmism about the rising al Qaeda threat.

Their reports described over and over bin Laden's specific, open threats to inflict mass casualties against Americans. They could not understand why no one else seemed to take the threat as seriously as they did. They pleaded with colleagues that bin Laden was not like the old leftist, theatrical terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s who wanted, in terrorism expert Brian Jenkins's famous maxim, "a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead." Bin Laden wanted many American civilians to die, they warned. They could be dismissive of colleagues who did not share their sense of urgency. "

[Capt. Tom]

CIA Director George J. Tenet
Why is this guy still employed by the CIA

Tenet, who succeeded John Deutch as director of central intelligence in 1997, must bear much of the responsibility for what Carney describes as "worse than a crime." He came to the CIA from the Clinton White House. Prior to that he had served as a majority staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He is famous at the CIA for having introduced the sewing of "diversity quilts" and celebrating "Gay Pride Day." But what probably gives him his lock on his job is his role in naming the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Va., after the president's father

[FairOpinion]

Related article:

Policy Disputes Over Hunt Paralyzed Clinton's Aides
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1082945/posts

[FairOpinion]

The 2nd article of this 2 article series is posted at:

Flawed Ally Was Hunt's Best Hope (Bin Laden hunt in Afghanistan during Clinton)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1083521/posts

[piasa]

blast from the past ping