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To: JDN who wrote (45528)	9/24/2001 6:28:05 PM
From: High-Tech East	Respond to of 64865

... 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. thetimes.co.uk

To: JDN who wrote (45528)	9/24/2001 6:35:26 PM
From: High-Tech East	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

... and this one, JDN ... MONDAY SEPTEMBER 24 2001 America Aims to Topple Taleban FROM ROLAND WATSON IN WASHINGTON THE Bush Administration stated for the first time yesterday that it was exploring ways to topple the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. Condoleezza Rice, the President’s National Security Adviser, said that the Afghan people would be better off without the “very repressive and terrible” Taleban and that Washington was examining “what means are at our disposal to do that”. Her admission marked a significant change of emphasis as Washington began to address publicly the military hurdles involved in fighting the Taleban. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said that the Taleban army was dispersed and ill-equipped — “but it is a force that one would have to take seriously because of their experience in the kind of warfare that is typical of Afghanistan”. The White House insisted last week that overthrowing the Taleban was not a goal of any military action aimed at bringing to justice Osama bin Laden, Mr Bush’s chief suspect for the suicide hijackings. The Administration — which has offered a $25 million (£17 million) reward as part its efforts to apprehend bin Laden and other leaders of the his al-Qaeda network — yesterday dismissed claims by the Taleban that the Saudi-born millionaire had disappeared. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, called the statement “laughable” and “not credible”. General Powell said that government lawyers were checking whether killing bin Laden would contradict laws banning state-sponsored assassination. He said that he hoped in the near future to be able to publish a document “that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking him to this attack”. He also stressed that the target of any American action would be bin Laden, not the people of Afghanistan, after Pakistan yesterday underlined its own concerns about potential civilian casualties. President Bush took a significant step towards building his global coalition against terrorism by lifting American sanctions against India and Pakistan, imposed in 1998 after each country had carried out nuclear weapon tests. Mr Bush said retaining the sanctions was no longer in American interests. Both countries welcomed the move. One setback for the US was the apparent reluctance of Saudi Arabia to allow the Americans to use the huge Prince Sultan air base, south of Riyadh, to command airstrike operations against Afghanistan. Mr Rumsfeld also had to concede that the US had lost one of its unmanned Predator spy planes over Afghanistan. But he would not confirm Taleban claims that it had been shot down. thetimes.co.uk