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Searching for Bin Laden
Wednesday May 30
By ABCNEWS.com
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/abc/20010530/ts/binladen_010529_1.html
U.S. commandos have been inside Afghanistan (news - web sites), ready to seize Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), but were called off at the last moment.
The U.S. government set up several secret commando missions to capture Osama bin Laden, only to call them off at the last minute, U.S. military and intelligence sources have told ABCNEWS.
The commando missions were arranged by teams assembled by the CIA (news - web sites) and the Defense Department, but abandoned because people in charge were not comfortable with the risks, sources say.
Some of the commando team members have already been inside Afghanistan, where bin Laden has lived since 1996. Other teams are on several hours' notice to try again, the sources say.
A commando operation to capture bin Laden would entail much higher risks. American commandos could be killed or captured, and any botched raid would only add to bin Laden's mystique, U.S. officials say.
U.S. officials accuse the exiled Saudi dissident of masterminding the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and want him to stand trial. Four of his followers were convicted in the case Tuesday, but bin Laden and numerous other defendants are still at large. The bombings killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
The United States targeted bin Laden three years ago, soon after the bombings. U.S. warships in the Arabian Sea fired cruise missiles at a suspected bin Laden training camp in Afghanistan.
A Hard Man to Find
The U.S. government spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to learn every detail of bin Laden's life, using satellites and a network of informers. For years, the United States has been waiting for him to make a mistake.
"We have people that track him all the time and know him probably better than his wives know him," says Jeff Ellis, a former commando who participated in several secret missions to capture terrorists overseas.
"If there's an opportunity to grab this guy, the government, unless they've changed, will go after him," says Ellis, who now works for Research Planning Inc., a private sector company based in Falls Church, Va.
But bin Laden has proven to be an extremely difficult target, sources say.
He has stopped using easy-to-trace satellite phones. He disguises his travel by using beaten-up old trucks or cars, sleeps in a different place every night and often changes his plans at the last minute. He is heavily guarded.
"He'll have people that will sit down there and work him through where he gets his food, how he gets his food, where he sleeps that night, how they're going to move him. It's just like the Secret Service protecting our president," says Ellis.
"The kind of detailed knowledge we need about his immediate movements, his everyday activities and his current location at any given time are very difficult to come up with," says retired Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Without knowing where he is going to be, chances are you won't apprehend him."
In the 1998 airstrike, the cruise missiles hit the camp just two hours after bin Laden's departure, U.S. sources say.
"The problem is, if one is going to contemplate a strike on him ... one needs absolutely perfect information. Not only now but where he will be in the next hour or two," says Ken Katzman, a former CIA analyst who now works for the Congressional Research Service.
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U.S. Still Hopes to Nab bin Laden
New York Times
May 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Osama-bin-Laden.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration hasn't given up on capturing Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi accused of masterminding terrorism, now isolated in Afghanistan with a $5 million bounty on his head.
While hailing the convictions of four followers of bin Laden in New York, U.S. officials and private analysts acknowledge that a long and difficult road lies ahead before victory can be proclaimed over bin Laden.
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Wednesday the United States remains ``committed to seeing justice done.''
``Mr. bin Laden should be delivered to a country where he can be brought to justice,'' Reeker said. He said strict U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Taliban regime, which controls Afghanistan and considers bin Laden a persecuted holy warrior, demonstrates the global opposition to sheltering him.
U.S. officials acknowledged that Pakistan, a Cold War ally and Afghanistan's eastern neighbor, has been an obstacle to fulfilling of U.S. policy goals. They said Pakistan continues to supply weapons to the Taliban in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations, called Tuesday's convictions in a New York court a modest victory but said there are ``hundreds and hundreds more like them who will take their place.''
On Tuesday, a Manhattan federal court jury convicted the four allies of bin Laden for their roles in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed 228 people.
As for bin Laden, Cannistraro said, ``We don't have him on the run. He's still able to do about one major operation a year.''
A U.S. official who follows terrorism said the convictions marked a breakthrough but added the threat has not abated.
Hours after the convictions were announced, the State Department urged overseas Americans to maintain high vigilance and to increase their security awareness.
The statement was a reaffirmation of a warning issued three weeks ago, after the trial began.
The CIA would not comment on the verdict but said testimony on bin Laden last February by CIA Director George Tenet remains valid.
At the time, Tenet said bin Laden had declared all U.S. citizens legitimate targets of attack and demonstrated a capability to plan ``multiple attacks with little or no warning.''
The Bush administration is reviewing the policy for dealing with bin Laden that it inherited from the Clinton administration. The State Department is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to bin Laden's capture.
As evidence of international opposition to the Taliban, the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions twice over the past two years.
Nevertheless, the Taliban vowed Wednesday never to hand over bin Laden.
``He is a great holy warrior of Islam and a great benefactor of the Afghan people,'' said Abdul Anan Himat, a senior official at the Taliban information ministry.
The Afghan problem is one of the few issues on which the United States and Russia agree. Russia believes bin Laden is using Afghanistan as a base to foment Islamic fundamentalist uprisings in Chechnya as well as several of the former Soviet republics, including Uzbekistan.
U.S. and Russian officials have met several times on the issue, including last week at the State Department. The department said the two sides agreed ``to review specific steps to counter the threats from terrorism and narcotics production emanating from Afghan territory.''
Cannistraro said Russia, along with Iran and India, has been supporting an anti-Taliban resistance group in Northern Afghanistan, and he urged the Bush administration to adopt the same policy. It is not clear whether the administration is considering that option.
The most dramatic U.S. attempt to do away with bin Laden occurred in August 1998 when President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against bin Laden's suspected hide-out. The missiles landed wide of the mark.
Barnett Rubin, of New York University's Center for International Cooperation, recommended that the United States offer a large package of reconstruction aid to the Taliban in return for a change in behavior.
He said he was not confident the proposal would be accepted by the Afghans, but the mere offer could encourage Taliban moderates to challenge the rule of the hard-line faction now in charge.