Search the Internet          Tips  Links: Terror in America

CIA let Omar slip through the noose

Did the United States have the supreme leader of the Taleban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, in its sights on Day 1 of the attacks on Afghanistan only to let him go?

The South China Morning Post quotes investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in the yet-to-be-released issue of New Yorker magazine, to this effect.

Hersh, citing intelligence and military sources, says that a US reconnaissance aircraft identified a convoy carrying Omar as he fled, on Sunday October 7, the first night of the US bombing raids. As per existing rules of engagement, however, the CIA felt it could not order the plane to fire its missiles on the target.

Instead, F/A-18 jets hit a building Omar had been staying in. The raids killed two adult members of Omar's family, but the Taliban leader had by then long since flown the coop.

Hersh quotes Administration sources as saying that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was enraged by the fiasco, while intelligence officials were crestfallen.

The Hersh report comes at a time when the US air raids, now two weeks old and counting, have targetted as many as 50 military an Taliban sites in Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Qeshla Jadeed, and Herat, without however causing damage of any significance.

Interestingly, Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf in an interview to CBS Radio Sunday said that if he were running the campaign, he would seek to take out Mullah Omar first. Omar, Musharraf said, was the "centre of gravity" and taking him out would signal the end of Osama bin Laden.

The War on Terrorism: The Complete Coverage

The Terrorism Weblog: Latest Stories from Around the World

External Link:
For further coverage, please visit www.saja.org/roundupsept11.html

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report