The Hunt for bin Laden Read Online Free PDF Page B

1990, Massoud would just take the CIA’s cash and sit on his hands.
    In the end, the National Security Council approved written guidance to authorize intelligence cooperation with Massoud. But the highly classified documents made clear that the CIA could provide no equipment or assistance that would, as several officials recalled its thrust, “fundamentally alter the Afghan battlefield.”
    A few months after the JAWBREAKER-5 team choppered out, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center picked up intelligence that bin Laden had arrived in Derunta Camp, in a jagged valley near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
    It was a typical bin Laden facility: crude, mainly dirt and rocks, with a few modest buildings protected by ridges. Massoud’s sources reported that no Afghans were permitted in Derunta, only Arabs. Testimony from al-Qaeda defectors and interrogation of Arab jihadists showed that Derunta was a graduate school for elite recruits. The Defense Intelligence Agency had relayed reports that bin Laden’s aides might be developing chemical weapons or poisons there. The White House’s Counterterrorism Security Group routed satellites above the camps for surveillance.
    The CIA recruited Afghan agents who traveled or lived in the region, an area of heavy smuggling and trade and relatively weak Taliban control. Through their liaison in the Panjshir, CIA officers pushed intelligence-collection equipment to Massoud’s southern lines, near Jalalabad. Besides radio intercepts, the technology included an optical device, derived from technology used by offshore spy planes, that could produce photographic images from more than 10 miles away. Massoud’s men, with help from CIA officers, set up an overlook above Derunta and tried to watch the place.
    The Counterterrorist Center’s bin Laden unit relayed a report to Massoud that bin Laden had arrived in Derunta. Massoud ordered a mission. He rounded up “a bunch of mules,” as a U.S. official who was involved later put it, and loaded them up with Soviet-designed Katyusha rockets. He dispatched this small commando team toward the hills above Derunta.
    After the team was on its way, Massoud reported his plan to Langley: He was going to batter bin Laden’s camp with rocket fire.
    The CIA’s lawyers convulsed in alarm. The White House’s legal rules for liaison with Massoud had not addressed such pure military operations against bin Laden. The Massoud partnership was supposed to be about intelligence collection. Now the CIA had, in effect, provided intelligence for a rocket attack on Derunta. The CIA was legally complicit in Massoud’s operation, the lawyers feared, and the agency had no authority to be involved.
    The bin Laden unit shot a message to the Panjshir: You’ve got to recall the mission.
    Massoud’s aides replied, in effect, as a U.S. official involved recalled it: “What do you think this is, the 82nd Airborne? We’re on mules. They’re gone.” Massoud’s team had no radios. They were walking to the launch site. They would fire their rockets, turn around and walk back.
    Langley’s officers waited nervously. Some of them muttered sarcastically about the absurd intersections of U.S. law and a secret war they were expected to manage. Massoud’s aides eventually reported back that they had, in fact, shelled Derunta. But the CIA could pick up no independent confirmation of the attack or its consequences. The lawyers relaxed and the incident passed, unpublicized.
    During 2000, Massoud planned an expanding military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. His strategy was to recruit allies such as the guerrilla leaders Ismail Khan and Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum and seed them as pockets of rebellion against Taliban rule in northern and western Afghanistan, where the Taliban was weakest. As these rebel pockets emerged and stabilized, Massoud explained, he would drive toward them with his more formal armored militia, trying to link up on roadways, choking off Taliban-ruled