The Longest War (68 page)

77
“Essentially I used”
: Berntsen interview op. cit.

77
U.S. forces only observed
: Interview by author with Dalton Fury, telephone, December 8, 2009.

77
“The time is now”
: Fury email to author, December 8, 2009.

78
One member of Berntsen’s team
: Berntsen interview.

78
Hubayshi remains bitter
: Robert Lacey,
Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
(New York: Viking Press, 2009), p. 253.

78
according to an interpreter
: Interview by author, Tora Bora battle participant.

78
confirmed by the various American radio intercepts
: Interview by author, Tora Bora battle participant.

78
especially sacred day
: Koranic verses from the Night of Power chapter: “
The Night of Al-Qadr is better than a thousand months.
” [97:3] “
The Angels and the spirit descend thereon by the leave of their Lord with every command.
” [97:4].

78
“A Soviet airplane”
: Basil Muhammed,
Al Ansar Al Arab fi Afghanistan
(“The Arab Volunteers in Afghanistan”), The Committee for Islamic Benevolence Publications, 1991, p. 307.

78
escape from Tora Bora
: Peter Finn, “Bin Laden used Ruse to Flee; Moroccans Say Guard Took Phone at Tora Bora,”
Washington Post
, January 21, 2003.

78
the al-Qaeda leader fled
: “Moroccan security source views danger of Moroccans released from Guantánamo,”
Al Sharq al Awsat
, August 20, 2004.

79
had gone to Afghanistan
: Ghanim Abdul Rahman al Harbi, Guantánamo Administrative Review Board hearing round 1 summaries, p. 1.

79
ended up with a group
: Ghanim Abdul Rahman al Harbi, Guantánamo Administrative Review Board hearing round 1 summaries, p. 3.
http://projects.nytimes.com/Guantánamo/
detainees/516-ghanim-abdul-rahman-
al-harbi/documents/1/pages/467
.

79
estimated that at battle’s end
: Fury op. cit., pp. 277–278.

79
thousands of the paramilitary constabulary
: Berntsen,
Jawbreaker
, p. 305.

79
attack by a group
: Indian parliament,
http://www.indianembassy.org/
new/parliament_dec_13_01.htm
.

79
“We had to respond”
: Moinuddin Haider, interview by author, January 24, 2002, Karachi, Pakistan.

79
up to 240 militants
: Pervez Musharraf,
In the Line of Fire
(New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 265.

80
some four hundred American soldiers
: Ambassador Hank Crumpton, “Remarks at CSIS Smart Power series,” Washington, D.C., January 14, 2008.

80
“The mountains of Tora Bora”
: Michael Delong,
A General Speaks Out: The Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
(Osceola: Zenith Press, 2007), p 56.

80
not a single American had died in combat
:
Chicago Tribune
, March 23, 2003.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/
2003/030330-public-opinion01.htm
.

80
more journalists had died than U.S. soldiers
: Icasualties.org; three soldiers had died:
http://www.icasualties.org/OEF/Fatalities.aspx
; four journalists had been killed on November 19, 2001. Claire Cozens,
The Guardian
, November 27, 2001. Swedish TV cameraman killed in Afghanistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2001/
nov/27/terrorismandthemedia.afghanistan
.

80
“stay in the foothills”
: Fury op. cit., and Fury interview, December 18, 2008.

80
“wants us to look for options in Iraq”
: Tommy Franks,
American Soldier
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 315.

81
“I realized”
: Richard Myers,
Eyes on the Horizon
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 218.

81
seven days a week, sixteen-plus hours a day
: Franks op. cit., p. 335.

81
“close to 100 journalists”
: email to author from Nic Robertson.

81
Could the Pentagon
: Drew Brown, “U.S. lost its best chance to decimate al-Qaida in Tora Bora,” Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, October 14, 2002. And see also
U.S. Special Operations Command History
(6th edition, 2008), p. 98, which describes a reinforced company of the 10th Mountain being at Bagram and Mazr-e-Sharif. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on page 17 explains that it was the 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units;
http://foreign.senate.gov/
imo/media/doc/Tora_Bora_Report.pdf
.

82
asked to send his men into Tora Bora
: Mary Anne Weaver, “Lost at Tora Bora,”
New York Times Magazine
, September 11, 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/
magazine/11TORABORA.html
.

82
three hundred U.S. soldiers
: Interview by author with Dalton Fury, December 19, 2008.

82
blackout conditions
:
U.S. Special Operations Command History
(6th edition, 2008), pp. 93–94.

82
“unrealistic”
: “A Different Kind of War,”
United States Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, October 2001–September 2005
, Combat Studies Institute Press, June 2009, p. 128.

82
story on November 25
: Tim Weiner, “Bin Laden reported spotted in fortified camp in Afghan east,”
New York Times
, November 25, 2001.

82
background briefing reported by CNN
: “U.S. Officials Believe bin Laden is in Tora Bora,” CNN transcript, December 15, 2001.

83
“senior military officer”
: John Kifner, “Al-Qaeda balks at surrender,”
New York Times
, December 12, 2001.

83
“I think he’s probably”
: Dick Cheney, ABC News, November 29, 2001.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/
story?id=132168&page=1
.

83
Two weeks later
: Vice President Dick Cheney,
Meet the Press
, December 9, 2001.

83
“We don’t have”
: Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Department Briefing, December 10, 2002.

83
“at one point or another”
: Robert Burns, “U.S. war commander says search of Tora Bora caves ending with no bin Laden,”
Associated Press
, January 7, 2002.

83
official U.S. military history
:
U.S. Special Operations Command History
(6th edition, 2008), p. 101.

83
“Did we get him?”
: Michael Delong,
A General Speaks Out
(Washington, D.C.: Zenith Press, 2004), p. 57.

83
“When we had Osama”
: John Kerry, Presidential Debate, Coral Gables, FL, September 30, 2004.
http://www.debates.org/pages/
trans2004a.html

84
“We don’t know”
: General Tommy Franks, “War of Words,”
New York Times
, October 19, 2004.

84
“absolute garbage”
: Cheney was speaking in Ohio on the morning of October 19, 2004.

84
Bush himself weighed in
: Dan Froomkin, “Bush buys himself some time,” Washingtonpost.com, October 27, 2004. President Bush was speaking on the morning of October 27 at a rally in Lancaster County, PA.

84
suddenly appeared on a videotape
: Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli,
Al-Qaeda in its own Words
(Boston: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 75.

84
Kerry was quick to point out
: Agence France Presse, “Bush rips Kerry’s ‘shameful’ attacks,” October 30, 2004.

85
“I am just a poor slave”
: Osama bin Laden videotape, Al Jazeera, December 27, 2001.

85
“I was in the Gulf region”
: Abdel Bari Atwan, interview by author, London, June 2005.

85
“As to my children”
: Osama bin Laden, “The Will of One Seeking the Support of Allah Almighty, Usama Bin Laden.”
Al-Majallah
(Saudi magazine), December 14, 2001.
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ubl-fbis.pdf
, p. 222.

86
“The tactics took over”
: Noman Benotman, interview by author, London, UK, August 30, 2005.

86
Omar bin Laden
: BBC1,
Mr. and Mrs. Bin Laden
;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512463/
Mr-Mrs-Bin-Laden-Rockers-Rome-
hoping-peace-meeting-Pope.html
.

86 part of the small contingent: Khalid al-Hammadi, “Bin Laden’s former bodyguard interviewed,”
Al Quds al Arabi
, August 3, 2004 and March 20 to April 4, 2005; Omar bin Laden, Najwa bin Laden, Jean Sasson,
Growing Up Bin Laden
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009), pp. 136–145.

87
“Those guys are dummies”
: Hutaifa Azzam, interview by author, Amman, Jordan, September 13, 2005.

87
permanent wedge
: Paul Schemm, “Bin Laden son wants to be peace activist,”
Associated Press
, January 18, 2008. For more on Omar’s life, see
Growing Up Bin Laden
op. cit. (2009).

87
just how demoralized
: Letter from ‘Abd al-Halim Adl to Mukhtar, June 13, 2002, translated by Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Harmony collection.
www.ctc.usma.edu/aq/pdf/Al_Adl_Letter
_Translation.pdf
.

87
how precarious life on the run had become
: Muhammad al Shafi’i, “A Site Close to al-Qaeda Posts a Poem by bin Laden in which He Responds to His Son Hamzah,”
Al Sharq al Awsat
, June 16, 2002.

87
ten thousand to twenty thousand recruits
: CIA analytic report, “Afghanistan: An incubator for international terrorism,” CTC 01-40004, Mar. 27, 2001; CIA analytic report, “Al-Qa’ida still well positioned to recruit terrorists.” 9/11 Commission Report, p. 470, fn. 78.

88
Only around two hundred
: Author interview with former FBI Special Agent Daniel Coleman, Washington, D.C., April 26, 2006.

88
oath of allegiance
: West Point, Harmony document “Employment contract,’ AFGP-2002-600045,
http://ctc.usma.edu/aq/pdf/AFGP-2002
-600045-Trans.pdf
.

88
The training camps
: See generally Omar Nasiri,
Inside the Jihad
(New York: Basic Books, 2006).

88
L’Houssaine Kherchtou
: USA v. Usama bin Laden, testimony of L’Houssaine Kherchtou, February 21 and 27, 2001, quoted in Peter Bergen,
Holy War, Inc
. (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 93.

88
Encyclopedia of Jihad
: C. J. Chivers and David Rohde, “Turning out guerrillas and terrorists to wage a holy war,”
New York Times
, March 18, 2002.

88
Al-Qaeda’s bylaws
: translated by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, April 18, 2002. AFGP-2002-600048,
http://ctc.usma.edu/aq/pdf/
AFGP-2002-600048-Trans.pdf
.

89
“to discuss their issues”
: Abu Jandal, FD-302, Federal Bureau of Investigation, pages 40–41. Author’s collection.

89
as some had portrayed it
: Adam Curtis, “The Power of Nightmares,” BBC Two, October 2004; and Jason Burke,
Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam
(New York: I. B. Tauris and Co., Ltd, 2004).

90
were part of a far-reaching
: “Al-Zarqawi: The Second al-Qa’ida Generation,” by Fu’ad Husayn, a Jordanian journalist who received information from three people close to al-Zarqawi, including Saif al-Adel, to whom this chapter is attributed. The Arabic-language London-based daily
Al-Quds al-Arabi
serialized the book. This section was published by the newspaper on 21–22 May 2005.

90
painted a grim picture
: Abu Musab al-Suri,
The Call for Global Islamic Resistance
, published on jihadist websites, 2004.

91
Suri’s bleak assessment was seconded
: Hank Crumpton, “Intelligence and War: Afghanistan, 2001–2002,” in Jennifer Sims and Burton Gerber,
Transforming U.S. Intelligence
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), p. 162.

91
“Terrorists want a lot of people watching,”
Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins, “Will terrorists go nuclear?”, November 1975,
www.rand.org/pubs/
papers/2006/P5541.pdf
.

91
economic consequences
: Osama bin Laden, interview by Taysir Alouni, somewhere near Kabul, Afghanistan, October 20, 2001.

92
disrupting the global economy
: Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera, October 6, 2002. Original date, location unknown. FBIS Report, Compilation of usama bin Laden Statements, 1994-January 2004.

92
“No doubt about that”
: Osama bin Laden, (Internet) Jihad Online News Network WWW-Text in Arabic 21 Jan 03. FBIS Report op. cit., p. 244.

92
low tens of thousands
: “Asian Muslims hold anti-U.S. marches; Pakistan seeks to curb demos,” Agence France Presse, October 19, 2001.

93
the way to accomplish this
: see generally Fawaz A. Gerges,
The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

93
an estimated $500 billion
: Royal Institute of International Affairs quoted in James Fallows, “Declaring victory,”
The Atlantic
, September 2006; an annual output: Budget of the United States Government, GPO Access, Table 10.1,
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/
fy05/hist.html
.

93
provoking the world’s only superpower
: Peter Bergen, “Al-Qaeda at 20: Dead or Alive?”
Washington Post
, August 17, 2008.
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/
al_qaeda_20_dead_or_alive_7760
.

94
ten hijacked planes
: 9/11 Commission Report op. cit., p. 154.