R
Roger
Guest
July 8, 2007
U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in '05
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, July 7 - A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture
senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas was aborted at the
last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky
and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and
military officials.
The target was a meeting of Al Qaeda's leaders that intelligence officials
thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy and the man
believed to run the terrorist group's operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense
secretary, rejected the 11th-hour appeal of Porter J. Goss, then the
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a
Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in
Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence
official involved in the planning.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small
number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was
cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former
officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with
Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from
operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.
The decision to halt the planned "snatch and grab" operation frustrated some
top intelligence officials and members of the military's secret Special
Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity
to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.
Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al
Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new
training compounds in Pakistan's tribal areas, which have become virtual
havens for the terrorist network.
In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing
threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were
interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the
planned 2005 mission remained classified.
Spokesmen for the Pentagon, C.I.A. and White House declined to comment. It
is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.
The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri
attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just
miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had
communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that
intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was
there.
Months later, in early May 2005, the C.I.A. launched a missile from a
remotely piloted Predator drone, killing Haitham al-Yemeni, a senior Qaeda
figure whom the C.I.A. had tracked since the meeting.
It has long been known that C.I.A. operatives conduct counterterrorism
missions in Pakistan's tribal areas. Details of the aborted 2005 operation
provide a glimpse into the Bush administration's internal negotiations over
whether to take unilateral military action in Pakistan, where General
Musharraf's fragile government is under pressure from dissidents who object
to any cooperation with the United States.
Pentagon officials familiar with covert operations said that planners had to
consider the political and human risks of launching a military campaign in a
sovereign country, even in an area like Pakistan's tribal lands where the
government has only tenuous control. Even with its shortcomings, Pakistan
has been a vital American ally since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the
militaries of the two countries have close ties.
The Pentagon officials noted that tension was inherent in any decision to
approve such a mission: a smaller military footprint allows a better chance
of a mission going undetected, but it also exposes the units to greater risk
of being killed or captured.
Officials said that one reason Mr. Rumsfeld called off the 2005 operation
was the number of troops involved in the mission had grown to several
hundred, including Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A.
operatives, and he determined that the United States could no longer carry
out the mission without General Musharraf's permission. It is unlikely that
the Pakistani president would have approved an operation of that size,
officials said.
Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been
hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf's shaky government.
"The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with
Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11
we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground," said Bruce
Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.
These political considerations have created resentment among some members of
the military's Special Operations forces.
"The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest
levels," said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those
troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of
top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have
sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures.
"There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are
looking at targets on a daily basis and can't move against them," he said.
In early 2005, after learning about the Qaeda meeting, the military
developed a plan for a small Navy Seals unit to parachute into Pakistan to
carry out a quick operation, former officials said.
But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said,
various planners bulked up the force's size to provide security for the
Special Operations forces.
"The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan," said the former
senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he
thought the mission was worth the risk. "We were frustrated because we
wanted to take a shot," he said.
Several former officials interviewed said the operation was not the only
occasion since the Sept. 11 attacks that plans were developed to use a large
American military force in Pakistan. It is unclear whether any of those
missions have been executed.
Some of the military and intelligence officials familiar with the 2005
events say it showed a rift between operators in the field and a military
bureaucracy that has still not effectively adapted to hunt for global
terrorists, moving too cautiously to use Special Operations troops against
terrorist targets.
That criticism has echoes of the risk aversion that the officials said
pervaded efforts against Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, when
missions to use American troops to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden in
Afghanistan were never executed because they were considered too perilous,
risked killing civilians or were based on inadequate intelligence. Rather
than sending in ground troops, the Clinton White House instead chose to fire
cruise missiles in what became failed attempts to kill Mr. bin Laden and his
deputies - a tactic Mr. Bush criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Since then, the C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the
tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence
officials say they believe that in January 2006, an airstrike narrowly
missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who hours earlier had attended a dinner in
Damadola, a Pakistani village.
General Musharraf cast his lot with the Bush administration in the hunt for
Al Qaeda after the 2001 attacks, and he has periodically ordered Pakistan's
military to conduct counterterrorism missions in the tribal areas, provoking
fierce resistance there. But in recent months he has pulled back, prompting
Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to issue stern warnings in private
that he risked losing American aid if he did not step up efforts against Al
Qaeda, senior administration officials have said.
Officials said that mid-2005 was a period when they were gathering good
intelligence about Al Qaeda's leaders in Pakistan's tribal areas. By the
next year, however, the White House had become frustrated by the lack of
progress in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri.
In early 2006, President Bush ordered a "surge" of dozens of C.I.A. agents
to Pakistan, hoping that an influx of intelligence operatives would lead to
better information, officials said. But that has brought the United States
no closer to locating Al Qaeda's top two leaders. The latest message from
them came this week, in a new tape in which Mr. Zawahri urged Iraqis and
Muslims around the world to show more support for Islamist insurgents in
Iraq.
In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A.
director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts during the
Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the
"50-60% confidence level," he wrote, not sufficient to justify American
military action.
"As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower
requires information, discipline, and time," Mr. Tenet wrote. "We rarely had
the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on
it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in '05
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, July 7 - A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture
senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas was aborted at the
last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky
and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and
military officials.
The target was a meeting of Al Qaeda's leaders that intelligence officials
thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy and the man
believed to run the terrorist group's operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense
secretary, rejected the 11th-hour appeal of Porter J. Goss, then the
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a
Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in
Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence
official involved in the planning.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small
number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was
cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former
officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with
Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from
operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.
The decision to halt the planned "snatch and grab" operation frustrated some
top intelligence officials and members of the military's secret Special
Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity
to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.
Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al
Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new
training compounds in Pakistan's tribal areas, which have become virtual
havens for the terrorist network.
In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing
threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were
interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the
planned 2005 mission remained classified.
Spokesmen for the Pentagon, C.I.A. and White House declined to comment. It
is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.
The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri
attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just
miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had
communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that
intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was
there.
Months later, in early May 2005, the C.I.A. launched a missile from a
remotely piloted Predator drone, killing Haitham al-Yemeni, a senior Qaeda
figure whom the C.I.A. had tracked since the meeting.
It has long been known that C.I.A. operatives conduct counterterrorism
missions in Pakistan's tribal areas. Details of the aborted 2005 operation
provide a glimpse into the Bush administration's internal negotiations over
whether to take unilateral military action in Pakistan, where General
Musharraf's fragile government is under pressure from dissidents who object
to any cooperation with the United States.
Pentagon officials familiar with covert operations said that planners had to
consider the political and human risks of launching a military campaign in a
sovereign country, even in an area like Pakistan's tribal lands where the
government has only tenuous control. Even with its shortcomings, Pakistan
has been a vital American ally since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the
militaries of the two countries have close ties.
The Pentagon officials noted that tension was inherent in any decision to
approve such a mission: a smaller military footprint allows a better chance
of a mission going undetected, but it also exposes the units to greater risk
of being killed or captured.
Officials said that one reason Mr. Rumsfeld called off the 2005 operation
was the number of troops involved in the mission had grown to several
hundred, including Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A.
operatives, and he determined that the United States could no longer carry
out the mission without General Musharraf's permission. It is unlikely that
the Pakistani president would have approved an operation of that size,
officials said.
Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been
hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf's shaky government.
"The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with
Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11
we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground," said Bruce
Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.
These political considerations have created resentment among some members of
the military's Special Operations forces.
"The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest
levels," said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those
troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of
top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have
sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures.
"There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are
looking at targets on a daily basis and can't move against them," he said.
In early 2005, after learning about the Qaeda meeting, the military
developed a plan for a small Navy Seals unit to parachute into Pakistan to
carry out a quick operation, former officials said.
But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said,
various planners bulked up the force's size to provide security for the
Special Operations forces.
"The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan," said the former
senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he
thought the mission was worth the risk. "We were frustrated because we
wanted to take a shot," he said.
Several former officials interviewed said the operation was not the only
occasion since the Sept. 11 attacks that plans were developed to use a large
American military force in Pakistan. It is unclear whether any of those
missions have been executed.
Some of the military and intelligence officials familiar with the 2005
events say it showed a rift between operators in the field and a military
bureaucracy that has still not effectively adapted to hunt for global
terrorists, moving too cautiously to use Special Operations troops against
terrorist targets.
That criticism has echoes of the risk aversion that the officials said
pervaded efforts against Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, when
missions to use American troops to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden in
Afghanistan were never executed because they were considered too perilous,
risked killing civilians or were based on inadequate intelligence. Rather
than sending in ground troops, the Clinton White House instead chose to fire
cruise missiles in what became failed attempts to kill Mr. bin Laden and his
deputies - a tactic Mr. Bush criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Since then, the C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the
tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence
officials say they believe that in January 2006, an airstrike narrowly
missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who hours earlier had attended a dinner in
Damadola, a Pakistani village.
General Musharraf cast his lot with the Bush administration in the hunt for
Al Qaeda after the 2001 attacks, and he has periodically ordered Pakistan's
military to conduct counterterrorism missions in the tribal areas, provoking
fierce resistance there. But in recent months he has pulled back, prompting
Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to issue stern warnings in private
that he risked losing American aid if he did not step up efforts against Al
Qaeda, senior administration officials have said.
Officials said that mid-2005 was a period when they were gathering good
intelligence about Al Qaeda's leaders in Pakistan's tribal areas. By the
next year, however, the White House had become frustrated by the lack of
progress in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri.
In early 2006, President Bush ordered a "surge" of dozens of C.I.A. agents
to Pakistan, hoping that an influx of intelligence operatives would lead to
better information, officials said. But that has brought the United States
no closer to locating Al Qaeda's top two leaders. The latest message from
them came this week, in a new tape in which Mr. Zawahri urged Iraqis and
Muslims around the world to show more support for Islamist insurgents in
Iraq.
In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A.
director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts during the
Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the
"50-60% confidence level," he wrote, not sufficient to justify American
military action.
"As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower
requires information, discipline, and time," Mr. Tenet wrote. "We rarely had
the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on
it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
