... hey JDN ... you will love this ... from "The Times" - of London, of course ...
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 24 2001
Clinton Sent Hit Squad for bin Laden
FROM ZAHID HUSSAIN AND STEPHEN FARRELL IN ISLAMABAD
US SPECIAL forces launched a secret mission to capture Osama bin Laden two years ago after President Clinton authorised his assassination.
In 1999 dozens of American commandos trained in northern Pakistan at a remote military base near Peshawar in a joint Pakistan-US attempt to seize the fugitive.
Yesterday Mr Clinton confirmed that a year earlier his Administration had given the CIA approval to kill bin Laden. “At the time we did everything we can do,” Mr Clinton said in New York.
“I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it. We also trained commandos for a possible ground action, but we did not have the necessary intelligence to do it in the way we would have had to do it.”
The Times can disclose that a mission was set in motion in July 1999, when Nawaz Sharif, then Pakistan’s Prime Minister, visited the US during the Kargil conflict, in which India and Pakistan came close to war in Kashmir after both had tested nuclear weapons. Last night Pakistani sources confirmed that Mr Sharif had agreed to co-operate with a covert action inside Afghanistan to seize bin Laden. Soon afterwards Mr Sharif’s younger brother, Shahbaz, visited Washington with Lieutenant Khawaj Ziauddin, then Pakistan’s Intelligence chief, to finalise details of the plan.
America agreed to provide $25 million for the operation and Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency formed a special unit of retired senior espionage agents.
US commandos trained at the Parachinar military base, 90 miles west of Peshawar, just across the border from Afghanistan. When the US troops’ presence leaked out to local Urdu-language newspapers in mid-1999, it provoked heated protests from religious parties.
The move was opposed by some senior officers within the Pakistani military. Preparations continued until Mr Sharif’s Government was ousted in the bloodless military coup in October 1999 that brought President Musharraf to power. The plan was then quietly dropped.
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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