Wednesday, Mar. 24, 2004 10:26 AM EST
9/11 Commission: Clinton Refused to Let CIA Kill Bin Laden
Announcing some of its preliminary findings on Wednesday, the 9/11 Commission has confirmed that President Clinton ordered the CIA to take Osama bin Laden alive or not at all - a directive that made the task of neutralizing the terrorist kingpin infinitely more difficult.
In a statement read at the beginning of Wednesday's session, 9/11 staffer Michael Hurley revealed:
"CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try to capture bin Laden.
"They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation. 'We always talked about how much easier it would have been to try to kill him,'" a former chief of the bin Laden station told the Commission.
"Working level CIA officers were frustrated by what they saw as the policy restraints of having to instruct their assets to mount a capture operation," the Commission statement said.
Commission staffer Hurley detailed one attempt to recruit indigenous Afghan forces in a bin Laden capture operation, explaining, "When Northern Alliance leader Massoud was briefed on the carefully worded instructions for him, the briefer recalled that Massoud laughed and said, 'You Americans are crazy. You guys never change.'"
The Commission found that at least two senior CIA officers would have objected to killing bin Laden even if Clinton had authorized the hit. "One of them, a former counterrorism center chief, said that he would have refused an order to directly kill bin Laden," the Commission statement said.
Last week NBC News quoted former CIA official Gary Schroen as saying that White House orders to spare bin Laden's life cut the chances of getting him in half, from 50 to 25 percent.
Schroen's revelation - now confirmed by the 9/11 Commission - was ignored by the mainstream press beyond its initial coverage by NBC.
9/11 Commission: Clinton Refused to Let CIA Kill Bin Laden
Announcing some of its preliminary findings on Wednesday, the 9/11 Commission has confirmed that President Clinton ordered the CIA to take Osama bin Laden alive or not at all - a directive that made the task of neutralizing the terrorist kingpin infinitely more difficult.
In a statement read at the beginning of Wednesday's session, 9/11 staffer Michael Hurley revealed:
"CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try to capture bin Laden.
"They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation. 'We always talked about how much easier it would have been to try to kill him,'" a former chief of the bin Laden station told the Commission.
"Working level CIA officers were frustrated by what they saw as the policy restraints of having to instruct their assets to mount a capture operation," the Commission statement said.
Commission staffer Hurley detailed one attempt to recruit indigenous Afghan forces in a bin Laden capture operation, explaining, "When Northern Alliance leader Massoud was briefed on the carefully worded instructions for him, the briefer recalled that Massoud laughed and said, 'You Americans are crazy. You guys never change.'"
The Commission found that at least two senior CIA officers would have objected to killing bin Laden even if Clinton had authorized the hit. "One of them, a former counterrorism center chief, said that he would have refused an order to directly kill bin Laden," the Commission statement said.
Last week NBC News quoted former CIA official Gary Schroen as saying that White House orders to spare bin Laden's life cut the chances of getting him in half, from 50 to 25 percent.
Schroen's revelation - now confirmed by the 9/11 Commission - was ignored by the mainstream press beyond its initial coverage by NBC.
