Well, here's something a bit more definitive on "Mullah Omar's Excellent Adventure".
http://www.newyorker.com/PRESS_RELEASES/ October 14, 2001
THIS WEEK IN THE NEW YORKER
PRESS CONTACTS:
Perri Dorset, Director, Public Relations (212) 286-5898
Betsy Judelson, Junior Publicist (212) 286-5996
Seymour M. Hersh, in "King's Ransom," in the October 22, 2001, issue of The New Yorker, reports that the U.S. military failed to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar when he was in its sights during the first night of the war, according to intelligence-community members with whom Hersh spoke, who said they "were crestfallen" about the incident.
An unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft operating in the Kabul area identified a convoy carrying Mullah Omar as he fled the capital. The Predator is armed with two anti-tank missiles, but under the rules of engagement in effect Sunday night the C.I.A. could not order such a strike.
Although the precise sequence of events could not be fully learned, Hersh reports, General Tommy R. Franks, the commander in charge at the United States Central Command in Florida reported that "my JAG"—Judge Advocate General, a legal officer— "doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire." It was decided to target a few cars in front of the building to perhaps scare Mullah Omar out of the building to take a look.
Omar did leave the building, but not immediately. Soon after he left, Hersh reports, the building was targeted and destroyed by F-18s, too late to kill Omar.
Reaction in Washington to the failure to strike immediately was fierce, Hersh reports. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors," one military official said. "But in the end I don't know if it'll mean any changes."
Hersh also reports that a number of conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family that were electronically intercepted by the National Security Agency, beginning as early as 1994, "demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups."
The intercepts, Hersh writes, "depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country's religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it."
By 1996, Hersh reports, Saudi money was supporting Al Qaeda and similar extremist groups in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and throughout both Central Asia and the Persian Gulf region. "Ninety-six is the key year," one American intelligence official tells Hersh. "Bin Laden hooked up to all the bad guys—it's like the Grand Alliance—and had a capability for conducting large-scale operations."
Hersh reports that the intercepts have provided several important insights into political and economic affairs in the kingdom, including the extent of the physical incapacitation of King Fahd, the corruption of specific royal-family members, and the funding of fundamentalist groups through charities. The intelligence official tells Hersh that as far as bankrolling fundamentalist groups goes, the Saudis had "gone to the dark side."
Current and former intelligence officials suggest, Hersh reports, that the instability of the Saudi regime is "the most immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the Middle East," and that "the Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront this reality."
Interesting side-note, I think.
