Manhunt

by Peter L. Bergen

  52 planned to destroy the Buddhas: The Taliban also secretly destroyed all the statues in the Kabul Museum, smashing some 2,500 artifacts using sledgehammers. See Peter Bergen, “Taliban-Destroyed Buddhas May Never Be Restored,” CNN.com, May 11, 2007, edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/10/afghan.buddhas/index.html.

  53 told a visiting delegation of Pakistani officials: Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 215.

  54 helping to wreck the statues: Incident described during interrogation of al-Qaeda recruit Nizar Trabelsi, who was questioned in French in June 2002. The text of his interrogation was later provided in Italian to prosecutors in Milan investigating one of Trabelsi’s associates. Documents acquired and translated by investigative journalist Leo Sisti of L’Espresso, author’s collection. Alan Cullison, “Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive,” The Atlantic, September 2004, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/inside-al-qaeda-rsquo-s-hard-drive/3428/.

  55 called on bin Laden to leave: John F. Burns, “Afghan Clerics Urge Bin Laden to Leave; White House Says Unacceptable,” New York Times, September 20, 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/international/20CND-PAK.html?pagewanted=all.

  56 “informed interrogator” approach: Ali Soufan interview.

  57 The FBI 302s, the official summaries of these interrogations: Abu Jandal, FD-302, Federal Bureau of Investigation, pp. 59–63 and 74–81. Author’s collection.

  58 “dozens and dozens of people”: Ibid.

  59 picked out eight: Ali Soufan, interview by author, New York, December 17, 2009.

  60 “how deeply resented the Arabs were”: Robert Grenier, interview by the author, Washington, DC, January 19, 2010.

  61 “The Americans are coming” … “I will go back”: Ibid.

  62 Grenier thought: Ibid.

  63 shuttled between: Burke, The 9/11 Wars, p. 61.

  64 suffering from psychological problems: Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins, “Files Found: A Computer in Kabul Yields a Chilling Array of al-Qaeda Memos” and “Forgotten Computer Reveals Thinking Behind Four Years of al-Qaeda Doings,” Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2001, both available via LexisNexis. See also Cullison, “Inside al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive.”

  65 Kandahar meeting with Mullah Mansour: JFT-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Salim Hamed (Salim Hamdan), ISN US9YM-000149DP, September 4, 2008.

  66 quickly decamped: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Bashir Lap, ISN US9MY-010022DP, October 13, 2008.

  67 surprise appearance: Osama bin Laden, “Statement,” October 7, 2001, aired on Al Jazeera.

  68 “As a Muslim”: Cited in Summers and Swan, The Eleventh Day, p. 165.

  69 lengthy interview on October 21: Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (New York: Verso, 2005), p. 106; Osama bin Laden in Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 106; transcript of bin Laden’s October 2002 interview with Al Jazeera’s Tayseer Allouni, translated by CNN, February 5, 2002, archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/index.html.

  70 wasn’t “newsworthy” … only post-9/11 television interview: “Bin Laden’s Sole Post–September 11 TV Interview Aired,” CNN.com, February 5, 2002, archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/31/gen.binladen.interview/index.html.

  71 It seems likely: In early October, Qatar’s leader, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, met with secretary of state Colin Powell in Washington. According to reports at the time, Powell and other officials expressed their concerns about Al Jazeera’s coverage, and Powell had said publicly that Al Jazeera was “irresponsible” for broadcasting bin Laden’s tapes. See “Press Institute Criticizes US Pressure on Qatari Al-Jazeera TV Station,” Agence France Presse, October 8, 2001; also see “Al-Jazeera Not to Change Coverage of Afghan Events; Rejects U.S. Criticism,” Al-Watan (BBC Monitoring Middle East), October 12, 2001. Cited in Congressional Research Service report: “The Al-Jazeera News Network: Opportunity or Challenge for U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East?” July 23, 2003, www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl31889.pdf. CNN obtained the interview from another commercial broadcast network in the Middle East, which had downloaded it when it was transmitted over an unencrypted transponder from Kabul to Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

  72 “How about the killing of innocent civilians?”: Transcription of bin Laden’s interview with Allouni.

  73 economic consequences: Osama bin Laden in Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 112.

  74 he well understood: “Osama bin Laden Video Excerpts,” BBC, December 14, 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/south_asia/1709425.stm.

  75 natural choice: Mir had interviewed bin Laden in 1997 and 1998. “The Man Who Interviewed Osama bin Laden … 3 Times,” The Independent, March 9, 2009, www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-man-who-interviewed-osama-bin-laden-3-times-1639968.html.

  76 blindfolded and bundled up: Hamid Mir interview, May 11, 2002.

  77 fall of Kabul was only four days away: “The Fall of Kabul,” NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, November 13, 2001, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/afghanistan/kabul_11-13.html.

  78 Mir turned the tape recorder back on: Hamid Mir interview, May 11, 2002, and March 2005; Summers and Swann, The Eleventh Day, p. 166.

  79 When Mir asked him: Hamid Mir interview, May 11, 2002; Hamid Mir, “Osama Claims He Has Nukes: If US Uses N-arms It Will Get Same Response,” Dawn, November 10, 2001, www.dawn.com/2001/11/10/top1.htm.

  80 “I wish to declare”: Mir, “Osama Claims He Has Nukes.”

  81 Mir told Zawahiri: Hamid Mir interview, May 11, 2002.

  82 two years earlier: Cullison, “Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive.”

  83 summoned to Kabul in early November 2001: Bootie Cosgrove-Mather, “Osama’s Doc Says He Was Healthy,” Associated Press, November 27, 2002, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/27/attack/main531070.shtml. Similarly, Ahmed Zaidan of Al Jazeera television, who interviewed bin Laden for two or three hours eight months before 9/11, says, “I didn’t see anything abnormal”; Ahmad Zaidan, interview by author, Islamabad, Pakistan, March 2005. That was also the take of Baker Atyani of the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, who’d met al-Qaeda’s leader five months later. Atyani thought that bin Laden had put on weight and was in “good health”; Bakr Atyani, phone interview by author, Islamabad, Pakistan, August 22, 2005. Abu Jandal, the al-Qaeda leader’s chief bodyguard up until 2000, recalled that his boss had a problem with his larynx because of inhaling napalm during the anti-Soviet jihad, which is why he needed to “drink a lot of water” when he spoke for long periods of time; see al-Hammadi, “Bin Laden’s Former ‘Bodyguard.’ ” Abdel Bari Atwan, who spent two days with bin Laden in Tora Bora in 1996, recalls, “He was in perfect health. He never complained about how high it was in the mountains, and it was freezing. He had dry mouth most of the time. I noted that he drinks a lot of water and tea”; Abdel Bari Atwan, interview by author, London, June 2005. Bin Laden did have a variety of ailments, including low blood pressure and a foot wound that he sustained while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, but although all these conditions were sometimes debilitating, none of them was life-threatening; see Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, p.320.

  84 “He was in excellent health”: “Doctor Says Bin Laden Was Healthy,” Associated Press, November 28, 2002, articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/28/world/fg-doctor28.

  85 began arriving: Gary Schroen, who led the CIA team that entered Afghanistan after 9/11, writes that he received word on October 17 that a Special Forces team had arrived in the country’s north. Schroen, First In, p. 194.

  86 jihad against the Soviets: The detainee assessment for Ali Hamza Ismail (also known as Ali al-Bahlul), bin Laden’s media maven, notes that the last time Ismail saw bin Laden was a month before Ramadan (which started on November 17, 2001), in the company of Jalaluddin Haqqani, at Haqqani’s house. See JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Ali Hamza Ismail, ISN US9YM-000039DP, November 15, 2007.

  87 Haqqani was sure: Aslam Khan, “Interview of Jalaluddin Haqqani,” The News, Octobe
r 20, 2001 (location of interview unknown).

  88 invited bin Laden to move into his territory: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Awal Gul, ISN US9AF-000782DP, February 15, 2008.

  89 attended a memorial ceremony: Burke, The 9/11 Wars, p. 61.

  90 met with tribal elders: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Awal Gul.

  91 winding road to Jalalabad: Gary Berntsen, interview by author, Washington, DC, October 27, 2009.

  92 A few days later: Atef was killed sometime between November 14 and 16, 2001. His death, though initially reported to have come in a U.S. air strike, was later confirmed to have been the result of a drone strike. See Steven Morris and Ewen MacAskill, “Collapse of the Taliban: Bin Laden’s Deputy Reported Killed: Mullah Omar About to Quit Stronghold of Kandahar,” Guardian, November 17, 2001. Also GlobalSecurity.org, www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/mohammed_atef.htm.

  93 chief executive officer: Feroz Ali Abbasi, Guantánamo Bay Prison Memoirs, 2002–2004, author’s collection.

  94 working around the clock: Author interview with U.S. intelligence officials, Washington, DC, June 6, 2003.

  95 “shocked us deeply”: Mohammad al-Tariri, “Former Member of Al-Qaeda Tells Al-Hayat About Living Through the Events of 9/11 at the Side of Al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden,” Al-Hayat, September 20, 2006 (translated from Arabic).

  96 made arrangements: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Salim Hamed.

  CHAPTER 2: TORA BORA

  1 pep talks: Gary Berntsen interview.

  2 and a contingent of bodyguards: “Moroccan Security Source Views Danger of Moroccans Released from Guantánamo,” Asharq Al-Awsat, August 20, 2004. The detainee assessment for Mohammed al-Qahtani at Guantánamo Bay says that Qahtani saw bin Laden in Tora Bora four or five days before Ramadan began on November 17. See also JTF-GTMO detainee assessment for Mohammed al-Qahtani, ISN US9SA-000063DP, October 30, 2008.

  3 several offenses by the Russians: Mohammad Asif Qazizanda, a mujahideen commander based at Tora Bora, interview by author, Jalalabad, Afghanistan, July 4, 2004.

  4 more than six months to build: Hutaifa Azzam, interview by author, Amman, Jordan, September 13, 2005.

  5 “I really feel secure”: Abdel Bari Atwan, interview by author, London, June 2005.

  6 took his older sons: bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden, p. 73.

  7 subsistence diet: Ibid., p. 186; also pp. 160–61. 41 Even honored guests: Abdel Bari Atwan interview.

  8 During the 1987 Jaji engagement: For a description of the battle of Jaji and the impact it had on bin Laden and his following, see Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, pp. 50–60.

  9 bin Laden had dispatched: U.S. v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al., Indictment in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S14) 93 Cr. 180 (KTD), December 14, 2009.

  10 digging trenches and tunnels: Detainee Yasin Muhammad Salih Mazeeb Basardah told his interrogators that Saudi Sultan al-Uwaydha allegedly went to Tora Bora three weeks before bin Laden arrived, to prepare matters for him; see JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Sultan al-Uwaydha, ISN US9SA-000059DP, August 1, 2007. Another detainee (and Uwaydha’s uncle), Abdul Rahman Shalabi, was reportedly also at Tora Bora preparing for bin Laden’s arrival, by digging tunnels, setting up security, and moving stockpiled food. See JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Abdul Shalabi, ISN US9SA-000042DP, May 14, 2008.

  11 stream of intelligence reports: Gary Berntsen interview.

  12 “multiple hits”: Gary Berntsen, e-mail to author, November 24, 2009.

  13 fed into an electronic map that overlaid data: Henry A. Crumpton, “Intelligence and War in Afghanistan, 2001–2002,” in Transforming U.S. Intelligence, eds. Jessica E. Sims and Burton Gerber (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), p. 172; Henry A. Crumpton, interview by author, Washington, DC, November 2009.

  14 the CIA now predicted: United States Special Operations Command, “History of United States Special Operations Command,” 6th ed., 2008, p. 97, www.socom.mil/SOCOMHome/Documents/history6thedition.pdf.

  15 “grave mistake and taboo”: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Muhammad al-Qahtani, ISN US9SA-000063DP (S), October 30, 2008.

  16 Bin Laden was convinced: Faiza Saleh Ambah, “Out of Guantánamo and Bitter Toward Bin Laden,” Washington Post, March 24, 2008, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301594.html.

  17 somehow to duplicate: Peter Bergen, “The Battle for Tora Bora,” New Republic, December 22, 2009, www.tnr.com/article/the-battle-tora-bora. The battle is reconstructed here based on interviews with two American generals who directed the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. ground commander at Tora Bora, three Afghan ground commanders, and three CIA officials deeply involved in the battle; accounts by eyewitnesses that were subsequently published on jihadist websites; recollections of more than a dozen captured survivors who were later questioned by interrogators or reporters; discussions with a CIA officer who interrogated al-Qaeda members who survived Tora Bora; an official history of the Afghan War by U.S. Special Forces Operations Command; an investigation of the Tora Bora battle by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and visits to the battle sites themselves.

  18 thirty square miles: The Special Operations Command history of the battle says the battle area was ten kilometers by ten kilometers, United States Special Operations Command History, p. 95.

  19 skirmishes: See Burke, The 9/11 Wars, p. 64.

  20 intense U.S. bombing: Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, p. 226.

  21 snow was falling steadily: Weather observations from a personal log kept by a Delta operator on the ground at Tora Bora, in e-mail to author, August 6, 2009.

  22 seemed preoccupied mostly: Andrew Selsky, “Yemeni Says Bin Laden Was at Tora Bora,” Associated Press, September 7, 2007, www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2007-09-07-3032626105_x.htm.

  23 traveled into Tora Bora: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al-Haj, ISN US9YM-000256DP, March 23, 2008.

  24 borrowed $7,000: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Harun al-Afghani, ISN US9AF-003148DP, August 2, 2007.

  25 growing certainty: Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Department Briefing, December 10, 2001.

  26 “We were hot”: Michael DeLong and Noah Lukeman, A General Speaks Out: The Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Osceola: Zenith Press, 2004) p. 57.

  27 “was equipped to go to ground there”: “Transcript of Cheney interview,” ABC News, November 29, 2001, abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132168&page=1.

  28 about seventy: Dalton Fury, Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), p. xx; and e-mail from Fury to author, December 8, 2009.

  29 least expect them: Dalton Fury, e-mail to author, January 15, 2011.

  30 turned down: Fury, Kill Bin Laden, p. 76.

  31 somewhat effective mortar barrages: Author interview with Tora Bora battle participant, Washington, DC, 2009.

  32 Arab and Pakistani militants: Mohammed Zahir, interview by author, Jalalabad, Afghanistan, summer 2003.

  33 “They fought very hard”: Muhammad Musa, interview by author, Jalalabad, Afghanistan, June 2003.

  34 buoyed by the fact that: Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (New York: Viking Press, 2009), p.322. Lacey explains how Saudis cherish the story of the Battle of Badr.

  35 bombing began, and continued around the clock: Osama bin Laden, “Message to Our Brothers in Iraq,” Al Jazeera, February 11, 2003 (translated by ABC News).

  36 seven hundred thousand pounds of American bombs: Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, p. 226.

  37 wrote out nineteen death certificates: Ayman al-Zawahiri, “Days with the Imam #1,” obtained via Jihadology.net; “Osama Bin Laden Was Tender and Kind, Zawahiri Says,” BBC, November 15, 2011, www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-us-canada-15750813.

  38 observe the Ramadan breaking of the fast: United Stat
es Special Operations Command History, p. 97; also see Fury, Kill Bin Laden, p. 239.

  39 the evening of December 3 … eight hundred elite: Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander (New York: Crown, 2005), p.299; Henry A. Crumpton interview.

  40 Berntsen’s boss: Henry A. Crumpton interview.

  41 “100 percent” … Franks pushed back: Ibid.; also General Tommy Franks, e-mail to author, November 24, 2009.

  42 Rumsfeld didn’t ask Franks: Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Penguin Group, 2011), pp. 402–3.

  43 Franks also believed: “Campaign Against Terror,” PBS Frontline, June 12, 2002, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/interviews/franks.html.

  44 Crumpton had repeatedly warned: Henry A. Crumpton interview.

  45 Bush even asked Crumpton directly: Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, p. 227.

  46 suggested dropping GATOR antipersonnel mines: Fury, Kill Bin Laden, p. 78.

  47 directed laser beams: Ibid., p. 76.

  48 the latest intelligence: United States Special Operations Command History, p. 98.

  49 “awakened to the sound”: The statement was posted to Al Neda, al-Qaeda’s website at the time, on September 11, 2002.

  50 intercept from Tora Bora: Fury, Kill Bin Laden, p. 173.

  51 Afghan soldiers said: United States Special Operations Command History, p. 99.

  52 Wolfowitz … told reporters: Wolfowitz, Defense Department Briefing, December 10, 2001.

  53 He told his men he was leaving them: See JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment for Faruq Ahmed, ISN US9YM-000032DP, February 18, 2008.

  54 suggested a cease-fire: Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today,” November 30, 2009, p. 11.

  55 bin Laden addressing his followers: Dalton Fury, e-mail to author, December 8, 2009.

  56 kept a careful log: Dalton Fury, phone interview by author, November 23, 2009.

  57 would be treated like antigens: DeLong and Lukeman, A General Speaks Out, p. 56.