“After a few weeks, in December 2001, they [David Wurmser and Mike Maloof of the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group] produced a fat set of PowerPoint slides, each crammed with information on financial, operational, ideological, or other connections among terrorist groups and their state and nonstate supporters. This information had been developed through a careful […]
Category: quotes
12/15/2001
U.S. military Commander Dalton Fury (pseudonym) spoke about his pursuit of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “At one point, he said, his forces were closing in on Bin Laden’s men–but he decided to abort the mission because he did not have support from Afghan troops. And in another incident Delta […]
12/15/2001
The capture of potential 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani in December 2001 was “the immediate cause for ratcheting up the military’s [enhanced interrogation] techniques. …top Pentagon officials were increasingly desperate for actionable intelligence on pending Al Qaeda attacks. …U.S. officials believed the suspect was hiding more, and that tougher measures were called for to make him […]
12/15/2001
U.S. military Commander Dalton Fury (pseudonym) spoke about his pursuit of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “One night–alone without his Afghan allies–Fury said he was told Bin Laden was two kilometres away. Faced with overwhelming odds, he elected to stay away. But the decision always nagged him. He wrote in […]
12/15/2001
In December 2001, “The Taliban was on the run, and bin Laden and the hard core of al Qaeda were cornered in the White Mountains at Tora Bora [Afghanistan], against the Pakistani border. But the Pentagon did not deploy enough American troops to seal off the area, on either side of the border. Army Gen. […]
12/15/2001
U.S. military Commander Dalton Fury (pseudonym) spoke about his pursuit of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “[A] Delta force named Jackal radioed they had Bin Laden in sight. He wrote: ‘The operation Jackal team observed 50 men moving into a cave that they hadn’t seen before. The mujahideen said they […]
12/15/2001
“Following the overthrow of the Taliban in December 2001, Spain decided to deploy up to five hundred troops as part of the U.S.-led occupation force in Afghanistan.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Deepak Tripathi, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Page 38 […]
12/15/2001
A WikiLeaks document leaked from Guantanamo Bay included a statement by detainee Harun Shirzad al-Afghani, who told of bin Laden’s (OBL’s) escape from the Tora Bora compound in Afghanistan in December 2001. “Al-Afghani was a commander in the militant group Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, a close ally at the time of al Qaeda. Al-Afghani claims that the […]
12/15/2001
Appearing on Frontline on January 11, 2006, “Michael Scheuer, chief of the CIA’s bin Laden desk from 1995 to 1999, said the failure [to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001] was owing to ‘the abject fear of American casualties.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] […]
12/15/2001
Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote, regarding Osama bin Laden: “Some people contend that we had a chance to capture or kill him at Tora Bora [Afghanistan] in [December] 2001. In fact, there were conflicting reports about his whereabouts at the time, and as a result the military did not request additional forces to conduct […]