Posted on 04/12/2004 8:58:32 PM PDT by rocklobster11
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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.
Bin Laden Rides Again: Myth vs. Reality
A 'plot' to assassinate President Bush and a second to attack the U.S. military in the Gulf -all in the same week.
TIME.com
BY TONY KARON
Wednesday, Jun. 20, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,131866,00.html
That It Boy of international terror, Osama Bin Laden, is back in the news. Headlines from just the past week: "Russians Reveal Bin Laden Plot to Kill Bush at G8 Meeting." "Bin Laden Video Claims Responsibility for Cole Bombing." "Yemen Foils Bin Laden Plot to Kill U.S. Investigators." "Bin Laden Group Planned to Blow Up U.S. Embassy in India..." And finally, at week's end, U.S. forces all over the Gulf confined to barracks and ships put to sea because of a "non-specific but credible threat" from Bin Laden's group. Vile acts and wretched conspiracies reported from all over the world, all carrying the imprimatur of the Saudi terror tycoon skulking in the hills of Afghanistan, his name now the globally recognizable shorthand for Islamist terror in the same way that "Xerox" has become for "photocopy."
In the language of advertising, Bin Laden has become a brand - a geopolitical Keyser Soze, an omnipresent menace whose very name invokes perils far beyond his capability. To be sure, his threat is very real. Bin Laden is a financier of considerable means who maintains a network of loyalists committed to a war of terror against the U.S. And he has put his money, connections and notoriety to work in attracting a far wider web of pre-existing Islamist groups to his jihad against Washington.
If Bin Laden didn't exist, we'd have to invent him
Still, the media's picture of Bin Laden sitting in a high-tech Batcave in the mountains around Kandahar ordering up global mayhem at the click of a mouse is more than a little ludicrous. Yes, the various networks of Islamist terror have made full use of the possibilities presented by technology and globalization. But few serious intelligence professionals believe Bin Laden is the puppet-master atop a pyramid structure of terror cells. It's really not that simple, but personalizing the threat - while it distorts both the nature of the problem and the remedy - is a time-honored tradition. Before Bin Laden, the face of the global terror threat against Americans belonged to the Palestinian radical Abu Nidal. Or was it Colonel Ghaddafi? Ayatolla Khomeini, perhaps? And does anyone even remember the chubby jowls of Carlos the Jackal, whose image drawn from an old passport picture was once the icon of global terror?
Personalizing makes it seem more manageable. Bin Laden may be out of reach right now, safe in the care of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. But by making him the root of the problem, we hold out the possibility that his ultimate removal from the scene will make the world safe from Islamist terror. A comforting thought, but a delusion nonetheless.
The dangers are real. The Cole bombing, and this week's indictments handed down in the Khobar Towers attack, are brutal reminders of the vulnerability of U.S. personnel stationed in the Arab world to attack by extremists. Last Saturday, Indian police arrested a group of men allegedly planning to blow up the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and quickly turned up evidence linking the plot to Bin Laden. Two days later, an unrelated plan, involving suicide bombers killing U.S. agents investigating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, was foiled in Yemen; their trail, too, leads back to Bin Laden. He was in the news again the following day after Western reporters were shown a Bin Laden promotional video in which he appeared to claim responsibility for the bombing of the Cole in a macabre poem.
Then there is the sublime: For sheer diabolical genius (of the Hollywood variety), nothing came close to the reports that European security services are preparing to counter a Bin Laden attempt to assassinate President Bush at next month's G8 summit in Genoa, Italy.
Iraq Says It Will 'Punish' Allies
By Sameer N. Yacoub
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2001; 3:17 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010621/aponline151711_000.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq warned that an alleged U.S.-British airstrike on a soccer field "will not go unpunished," the official Iraqi News Agency reported Thursday.
Iraq claimed that an allied airstrike Tuesday killed 23 people in Tall Afar, 275 miles northwest of Baghdad, but Washington said if there were deaths, they were likely caused by Iraq's own "misdirected ground fire."
"Iraqis will not be terrorized by such criminal acts," Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed al-Douri, told the agency.
U.S. and British defense officials said a mission was flown over Iraq's no-fly zone Tuesday, but denied warplanes fired on any positions.
The Pentagon said Iraqi forces had fired several surface-to-air missiles at allied planes and it appeared that part of at least one of the Iraqi missiles malfunctioned and landed on the soccer field.
"How do the U.S. officials know the missile malfunctioned?" an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, asked The Associated Press. "Do they have representatives working with our anti-aircraft missiles units?"
Lauren Cannon, the leader of visiting American and British activists currently visiting Iraq, said the group will travel to Tall Afar "to see for ourselves who was behind the deaths."
The newspaper of Iraq's ruling Baath party, Al-Thawra, accused the U.N. Security Council on Thursday of "turning a blind eye to U.S. and British aggression because it is dominated by the United States."
The Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"This new aggression is more proof of America's political and moral bankruptcy," the paper said in an editorial.
Allied aircraft patrol zones over southern and northern Iraq, which were established after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslims rebels in the south and Kurds in the north. British and American jets enforcing the northern zone are based in Turkey.
Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has challenged allied aircraft since December 1998.
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6/24/01 Afghan Taliban Dismiss Bin Laden Threat Reports
6/25/01 Bin Laden aide denies attack plan As U.S. forces remain on alert, Israel also warns of terror threat
6/26/01 U.S. Has Bin Laden 'On the Run,' Sen. Shelby Says
06/26/01 Overlooking Terrorism
06/26/01 A Memo From Osama
06/29/01 U.S. Tells Taliban to Control Bin Laden
07/03/01 Bush Decides to Keep Sanctions on Afghanistan
07/04/01 Terrorist (Millenium Bomber> Details His Training in Afghanistan
07/07/01 White House divided on Saddam
07/10/01
08/06/01 FBI´s growth abroad adds to clashes
08/10/01 US - Iraq Chronology
08/16/01 GAO: FBI Doesn't Always Share Info
08/19/01 F.B.I. Is Investigating a Senior Counterterrorism AgentThe F.B.I. has begun an internal investigation into one of its most senior counterterrorism officials, who misplaced a briefcase containing highly classified information last year. The briefcase contained a number of sensitive documents, including a report outlining virtually every national security operation in New York, government officials said. The agent, John O'Neill, left government service to head up security at World Trade Center and died in the 9-11 attacks
08/21/01 FBI Confirms Probe of Stolen Briefcase
08/21/01 U.S.: FBI Team May Return to Yemen for Cole Probe
08/31/01 2 U.S. Embassies In E. Europe Shut
09/04/01 US Aircraft Bomb Iraqi Air Defenses
09/04/01 FBI Agents Resume Cole Probe
09/07/01 Committee Approves Intelligence Bill
09/07/01 Americans in Japan warned of possible terror attack
09/09/01 U.S. attacks three Iraqi missile sites
09/11/01 US SHIES AWAY FROM UN TREATIES ON TERRORISM
09/11/01 Planes crash into World Trade Center
09/12/01 Saddam Says 'Evil' U.S. Policy to Blame for Attacks
09/12/01 Plotters Found the Flaw In Nation's Defense Plans - Debate Revived on Sharp Rise of Counterterrorism Spending
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