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CIA tried to have bin Laden killed©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times, WASHINGTON -- The CIA secretly began to send teams of American officers to northern Afghanistan about three years ago in an attempt to convince the leader of the anti-Taliban Afghan opposition to capture and perhaps kill Osama bin Laden, the New York Times reports. The covert effort, which has not been previously disclosed, was based on an attempt to work with Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was then the military leader of the largest anti-Taliban group in the northern mountains of Afghanistan, and to have his forces go after bin Laden. Massoud was himself killed only two days before the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the CIA believes he was assassinated by members of bin Laden's organization. The CIA's clandestine efforts to deal with Massoud were among the most sensitive and highly classified elements of a broader long-term campaign, continuing unsuccessfully through the end of the Clinton administration and into the Bush administration, to destroy bin Laden's terrorist network. The American campaign against bin Laden intensified after the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, which transformed the Saudi-born exile into America's most wanted terrorist. Former Clinton administration officials say they sympathize with their successors in the Bush administration who now confront bin Laden, and defend their own efforts as the best possible in a world that lacked the current sense of urgency about al-Qaida. "It was something that we focused on on a daily basis, and pursued with vigor, and I think we accomplished quite a lot," said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "I think we took it as far as was possible to go at the time, and I think what we did has provided the basis for things the Bush administration is trying to do now." Today, the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants in al-Qaida, the terrorist network he leads from his sanctuary in Afghanistan, has escalated to wartime levels. The Bush administration is considering a full range of overt and covert military and intelligence proposals that Washington policymakers would have considered too risky or unworkable before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the New York Times, citing current and former intelligence officials and other policymakers, reports that the United States has been trying to kill bin Laden and destroy al-Qaida for years, as the terrorist organization has become more ruthless and ambitious in its efforts to attack American interests around the world. Clinton administration lawyers determined that the United States could legitimately seek to kill bin Laden and his lieutenants despite the presidential ban on assassinations, the newspaper reported. The lawyers concluded that efforts to hunt and kill bin Laden were defensible either as acts of war or as national self defense, legitimate under both American and international law. There have been an array of unsuccessful attempts to capture or kill bin Laden and disrupt or destroy al-Qaida, American officials told the newspaper. The Clinton administration even considered mounting a secret effort to steal millions of dollars from the bin Laden terrorist network by siphoning it out of the international financial system, but discarded the scheme because of objections from the U.S. Treasury about the implications for world finance. The United States launched cruise missiles against a meeting bin Laden was believed to be attending and encouraged Massoud and other Afghan leaders to try to capture him. The United States also led an international effort to shut down Afghanistan's airline, which American intelligence officials believed was being used by al-Qaida to ship money and personnel around the world, while also pressuring other nations to arrest and disrupt al-Qaida cells. "This was a top priority for us over the past several years, and not a day went by when we didn't press as hard as we could," said Sandy Berger, national security adviser in the Clinton administration. "But this is a tough, tough problem. I think we were pushing it as hard as we could. And I think the Bush administration is handling it in a smart way." But until the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, the American-led efforts to hunt bin Laden lacked the sense of urgency that prevails today. American intelligence and law enforcement officials grew complacent about the threat of a domestic attack by al-Qaida, failed by their own admission to share information adequately or coordinate their efforts, and were caught by surprise on Sept. 11. At the same time, al-Qaida was rapidly evolving into a larger and more complex terrorist threat, making it difficult for the United States to keep up with its scope and capabilities. Bin Laden's great achievement within the terrorist world has been to forge alliances with other Islamic extremist groups under the umbrella of al-Qaida, providing them financing, training and a sanctuary in Afghanistan, while encouraging coordinated action. The United States had only a hazy understanding of bin Laden's growing significance before 1996, when an al-Qaida insider, Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, defected to the United States and began to describe the extent of bin Laden's plans and objectives. Based largely on al-Fadl's information, a federal grand jury indicted bin Laden on terrorist conspiracy charges in June 1998, just two months before the twin bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The embassy bombings forced Washington to recognize that bin Laden had become a major national security threat. Sometime after the bombings, the CIA began its efforts to work with Massoud against bin Laden, American officials told the New York Times. According to the report, current and former officials said that Massoud was promised large sums of money if he and his rebel fighters could find a way to get to bin Laden. Short of capturing the terrorist leader, Massoud was asked by the CIA to provide intelligence from inside Afghanistan about bin Laden and his organization. It remains unclear whether Massoud -- more interested in toppling the Taliban -- ever made a serious effort to go after bin Laden. The effort to work with Massoud followed the most direct and open American effort to kill bin Laden. It came on Aug. 20, 1998, two weeks after the embassy attacks in East Africa. Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on a complex near Khost, Afghanistan, where the CIA had learned that bin Laden was scheduled to be meeting with 200 to 300 other members of al-Qaida. The sea-launched cruise missiles slammed into the camp only about an hour or so after bin Laden left the conference, American officials believe. According to the New York Times, former senior Clinton administration officials said some 20 to 30 al-Qaida members were killed, temporarily disrupting the organization. But the attack failed in its unstated but clear objective, which was to kill bin Laden. One consequence was that bin Laden dramatically improved his own security measures. Realizing that the United States had collected solid intelligence about his physical movements, he cut back on his use of electronic communications. American officials say he now tends to talk to subordinates only in person, and they then pass on his messages to others in the organization. In addition, he moves frequently, traveling between Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, and the rugged Afghan countryside farther north, American officials say. The Clinton administration has been criticized for not following up on its first missile attack with an all-out effort to get bin Laden. But former officials said that they lacked the "actionable intelligence," or precise information about bin Laden's whereabouts, to launch another attack. In addition, the logistics of launching an attack by special forces in one of the most remote regions of the world also presented formidable obstacles. Washington has also attempted to target bin Laden's finances. One idea briefly considered by the Clinton administration called for a clandestine effort to drain money out of bank accounts that could be tied to al-Qaida. But former Clinton administration officials said that Treasury Department officials opposed the idea, fearing that it might damage the integrity of the financial system. The New York Times quoted a former Clinton administration official as saying the idea was flawed because stealing money from a bank account would in most instances leave the bank liable to make up the loss to the individual, thus hurting the bank rather than depriving al-Qaida of money. But the United States did mount an international effort to curb bin Laden's access to the financial system. In 1998, President Clinton invoked emergency economic powers against bin Laden and al-Qaida, giving the United States the power to freeze assets of any individuals or institutions working with or assisting the terrorist group. In 1999, the Taliban was added to the list, and American officials were surprised to find that the Taliban had actually left large sums of money in banks in the United States, mostly in older Afghan government accounts. Eventually, American and international pressure led to U.N. sanctions and effectively shut down international flights by Ariana Airlines, the Afghan government's air carrier, which American intelligence had concluded was being used by al-Qaida as its conduit to the Persian Gulf and the rest of the world. In 1999, officials from the White House and the Treasury Department traveled to the Persian Gulf to try to pressure governments to shut down al-Qaida's banking relationships. But they achieved only mixed results.
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