[Mb-civic] CIA Commander: "We Let bin Laden Slip Away"

[Jef Bek]

A Newsweek exclusive gives us yet another instance of "Kerry Was Right." In
an new book by Gary Berntsen, a CIA field commander for the agency's
Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Berntsen discloses that the CIA did know where
bin Laden was. Contrary to the Bush administration's assertions that they
did not, Kerry the "worst-kind of Monday-morning quarterback" as Bush called
him, obviously knew the plays better than Bush...

Exclusive: CIA Commander: We Let bin Laden Slip Away
Newsweek


Aug. 15, 2005 issue - During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush
and John Kerry battled about whether Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora
Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush, Kerry charged,
"didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of
Al Qaeda. The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of
Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the
ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the
Afghan border.

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's
Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S.
commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda
and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin
Laden was holed up at Tora Bora‹intelligence operatives had tracked him‹and
could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to
comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick
Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy
Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in
December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden
was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But
he was not on the ground out there. I was."

In his book‹titled "Jawbreaker"‹the decorated career CIA officer criticizes
Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the
CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora
Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the
book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other
recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls
Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a
cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members.
Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora
Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."

Berntsen's book gives, by contrast, a heroic portrayal of CIA activities at
Tora Bora and in the war on terror. Ironically, he has sued the agency over
what he calls unacceptable delays in approving his book‹a standard process
for ex-agency employees describing classified matters. "They're just holding
the book," which is scheduled for October release, he says. "CIA officers,
Special Forces and U.S. air power drove the Taliban out in 70 days. The CIA
has taken roughly 80 days to clear my book." Jennifer Millerwise, a CIA
spokeswoman, says Berntsen's "timeline is not accurate," adding that he
submitted his book as an ex-employee only in mid-June. "We take seriously
our goal of responding quickly."

‹Michael Hirsh
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/