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ABC News
Is White House Blocking Search for Bin Laden?
Pentagon Would Use Special Forces to Nab Bin Laden in Pakistan, New York
Times Says
By MARTHA RADDATZ
June 30, 2008—
The Pentagon has drafted a secret plan that would send U.S. special
forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to capture or kill Osama
bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but the White House has balked at
giving the mission a green light, The New York Times re****ted today.
The Bush administration, which has seven months left in its term, gave
the go-ahead for the military to draw up the plan to take the war on
terror across the Afghan border and into the mountains of Pakistan where
bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to the newspaper.
Intelligence re****ts have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a
network of new training camps, and the number of recruits in those camps
has risen to as many as 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.
Although the special forces attack plan was devised six months ago,
infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies and among White House
offices have blocked it from being implemented, the Times re****ted.
The Bush team would like to leave office next January having put bin
Laden, the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks, behind bars or in his grave.
But sending U.S. forces into Pakistan would be controversial and risky.
The rugged mountain area is populated by bin Laden sympathizers, hurting
the chances that such a raid could succeed. It would also trigger a
diplomatic outcry from the Pakistani government.
The United States has conducted a series of aerial drone attacks on
Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, killing several key Qaeda
figures and narrowly missing bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, in one
strike. But an attack earlier this month killed several Pakistani border
guards instead and has made Pakistan less willing to allow U.S. strikes
on its territory.
The Taliban of Pakistan, who are close al Qaeda allies, have grown
alarmingly stronger in Pakistan's lawless border areas and threatened
the regional capital of Peshawar last week.
Pakistan's new coalition government, which has made a series of truces
with the militants in recent months, was forced over the weekend to
launch an offensive to push the militants back from the outskirts of
Peshawar.
Pakistan called the operation a success, even though none of the heavily
armed militants in the area were re****ted killed.
Pakistan announced Sunday that Bush had invited Pakistani Prime Minister
Yousaf Raza Gilani to Wa****ngton next month. High on that visit's agenda
is the question of whether Pakistan can restrain the Taliban by itself
or whether the United States could decide to take action in the tribal
areas.
A separate re****t said the Bush administration has also begun a "major
escalation of covert operations against Iran ... to destabilize the
country's religious leader****p."
The charge was made by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh in the current
issue of The New Yorker magazine.
Hersh claims that elite American commando units are operating inside
Iran and that Congress has authorized $400 million for the covert
operations.
The article claimed that U.S. special forces have been conducting
clandestine operations against Iran since last year and have seized
members of the Iran commando force al Quds and taken them to Iraq for
questioning.
The U.S. ambassador in Iraq Ryan Crocker denied the re****t.
"I'll tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the
Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," he said in an
interview from Baghdad Sunday.
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