Bin Laden was tracked to the mountainous areas of Milawa and Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in late November 2001. After unsuccessful attacks on him, CIA Field Commander Gary “Berntsen, who was back in Kabul, summoned several members of his team to tell him what they would need to take down bin Laden now that they thought […]
Category: quotes
11/25/2001
At a briefing in late November 2001, CIA Director George “Tenet laid out for Vice President [Dick] Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a stunning trove of new intelligence [on al Qaeda’s attempts to acquire nuclear capabilities]… Cheney, by [journalist Ron] Suskind’s account, had been grappling with how to think about ‘a low-probability, high-impact […]
11/25/2001
“Not until November 25 [2001], seven weeks after starting the operation, did the United States insert a ground force unit (Marines) to take and hold a former al Qaeda and Taliban facility near Kandahar [Afghanistan]. The Taliban kept control of the city, however, until December 7. The late-November operation did not include any effort by U.S. […]
11/25/2001
“In late November [25] 2001, a group of recently captured Arab Taliban fighters at Qala Jangi [Afghanistan] used concealed weapons to kill CIA agent Johnny Spann and others and took over the facility for a week until they were subdued in one of the most brutal battles in the Afghanistan campaign.” – Jack Goldsmith, The […]
11/25/2001
“In late November 2001 the imminent fall of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz alarmed the Pakistani military regime. Thousands of Taliban and foreign fighters had retreated to Kunduz from areas seized by the Northern Alliance. Hundreds of Pakistani military officers, ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] advisers, and foreign fighters, including Pakistani volunteers, had been trapped, raising […]
11/25/2001
John Walker “Lindh was an American who went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan to learn Islam. He joined the Taliban, although he apparently expressly rejected an offer by an Al Qaeda leader to commit terrorism in the United States. U.S. personnel captured Lindh [on November 25, 2001] after the American intervention in Afghanistan.” – Peter […]
11/25/2001
American Taliban member John Walker Lindh was “present during a prison uprising in Afghanistan [on November 25, 2001] by Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees that resulted in the death of Capt. Johnny ‘Mike’ Spann, although there is no evidence that Lindh was responsible for Spann’s death.” – Peter Margulies, Law’s Detour, Page 47 […]
11/25/2001
“Once victory in Afghanistan was ensured, [President] Bush had privately instructed [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld in late November 2001 to dust off the military’s Iraq invasion plans, which had been on the shelf with minimal updates since the 1991 Gulf War. Rumsfeld had delegated the assignment to General Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM [Central Command] […]
11/25/2001
“In November [25, 2001], CIA officers went to interrogate Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners detained at a primitive nineteenth-century Afghan fortress, Qala-i-Jangi. A riot ensued. Using weapons smuggled onto the complex, enemy fighters killed one of our officers, Johnny ‘Mike’ Spann, making him the first American combat death in the war.” – George W. Bush, […]
11/24/2001
Then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “After the [Afghan] city of Konduz fell on November 24 [2001], Northern Alliance forces incarcerated many hundreds of prisoners in a nineteenth-century fortress called Qala-i-Jangi. …Many of the Taliban POWs were foreigners, including at least fifty Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and elsewhere. Also in the mix were Russians, […]