Did we ever come close?
We had him in the desert, I think in early 1999, in southern Afghanistan, in February. He was staying with a group ... from the United Arab Emirates [UAE] with whom the United States has very good political relations. My Afghans tracked bin Laden to that camp. ...
We could have struck with either cruise missiles, B-1 or B-2 bomber. Again, the question was collateral damage: What about the Arabs that are there in the camp? What about our relations with the UAE? ... The bottom line was, we didn't take a shot, and we missed him. I don't think we ever came that close again, other than December of 2001 at Tora Bora.
[Did] you advocate it?
Oh, absolutely. Bin Laden's organization had just bombed two embassies in Africa, killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and he was a mass murderer. ... He wasn't just some strange Arab who wandered in and they gave him desert hospitality; they knew exactly who he was. I've said several times in the past, "If you lie down with the dogs, you're going to wake up with fleas."
So my advice was: "Take the shot. We won't get another one, and we'll regret not doing this." ...
How intensely do you argue in moments like that?
You argue till you're told to shut up and that the decision's been made. ...
Help me understand the food chain then. It goes from you in Islamabad to where and whom?
The chain of command would be from me, as chief of station, back to the chief of the Near East Division and to the chief of CTC, who then would be working up to the director of central intelligence, DCI, who would then be taking people like those two gentlemen ... down to the NSC, to the White House, to absolutely put everything out on the table.
Of course, something like that would take the president actually to give the authority to do the strike. ...
It went upstairs.
It went upstairs, and went down to the White House. Actually, the debate went on for over a week, because he was there for several weeks. I'd wake up in the morning, go in; I'd get a question: "What tent is bin Laden sleeping in?" ... Then we got one that said, "Where does he go to the bathroom at?" And I said: "I don't have a clue, and even if I knew, what difference would it make? He doesn't go on a schedule!"
Questions like "Which tent are they using as a mosque? Where do they go to pray?" You're looking at a picture from above. How do I know? ... You're getting down into the nitty-gritty, that it was impossible to answer. It just seemed to me at the time that, especially coming out of the NSC, this was a way to find a reason not to do it, rather than to find a way to get the job done.
But Clinton had signed eight or 10 findings that you could kill him?
I think everybody knew and realized we could kill bin Laden. The problem was, we were going to kill a bunch of these Arabs. ... They could have been some of the sons of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, [the capital of UAE], or Dubai. Who knew who they were? The risk of damaging our relationship with them in an area where we don't have a lot of good friends, and the fact that they were buying a whole fleet of F-16 fighter aircraft, all of those factors weighed into the decision that said: "No, we'll get him another time. There will be more shots. There will be more opportunities."
And your understanding, admittedly secondhand at least, of how Tenet acquitted himself during this process? ...
It was my impression, in the field, that he made a strong case for it, but that it was coming out of the NSC, where there was this hesitation to take bin Laden out sitting in the midst of a group of Gulf Arabs. ... To some extent, maybe [counterterrorism expert] Dick Clarke also.
Clarke?
That was what we were told out in the field -- that's coming second- or thirdhand -- ... that Clarke had been one of the individuals generating a lot of questions about who was in the camp, how the camp was laid out, where was bin Laden. ...
Isn't that interesting? Because of course Dick Clarke ... has made himself famous as an anti-Osama bin Laden warrior.
He's very strong on it. I just think that the circumstances at that camp, with the people that were there hosting bin Laden, were such that, whether it was him personally or more the whole group around there saying, "We can get bin Laden later in a situation where we're not killing people, maybe, who are our friends" -- although if they're sitting with a mass murderer who claims he's at war with America, what kind of friends are they? ...
