h/t to IraqSlogger
A lengthy cover article in Newsweek magazine by Evan Thomas seems detail rich of our military and intelligence agencies incompetence in not catching Bin Laden. Reporting classified plans, details, and briefings as if they were witnesses to the events themselves, this “story” credits thirteen individuals. It is incredibly difficult to find, track, and target a single individual, especially if that person might be shielded in a lawless, mountainous terrain area on the Afghan/Pakistan border region. As the Director of the National Counter-Terrorist Center, Retired US Navy Vice-Admiral Scott Redd, says in the same Newsweek edition:
And my standard answer on OBL is: remember [convicted Atlanta Olympics bomber] Eric Rudolph. Nobody likes to hear it but, I mean, here’s a guy [who was on the run] in the United States of America. We had unlimited access—the FBI, local law enforcement—and the guy hid out for an awful long time just by keeping a low profile. One reporter said the other day, “Well, gee, you’ve got all this great overhead stuff and various surveillance things.” I said, “Yeah. I’d trade those for about three great human sources.”
But in the cover story which is being quoted in many places, this paragraph causes me to question the entire article:
The spooks and Special Operations Forces planned an airborne commando raid that could have been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Some 30 U.S. Navy SEALs were to be flown by C-130 transport planes, under cover of darkness, to a spot high above the Afghan side of the Pakistan border, about 30 to 40 miles away from the target. The SEALs would jump from the plane and use parasails—motorized hang gliders—to fly through the night sky, across the mountains, to a secret staging point close to the compound. They would attack the target and capture Zawahiri or whatever other HVTs were on the premises, killing them only if necessary. The SEALs would then spirit their captives away to another staging point, where two CH-53 helicopters awaited to airlift them back to Afghanistan.
Now, there very well may be some new pieces of equipment that special ops folks are using that I don’t have current knowledge of. But having personally called the green light on SEALs and other special operations airdrops and having been a special ops planner, the idea that 30 guys are going to be zipping around the sky in motorized hang gliders, around the mountains of Pakistan for 30 miles, at night, with the gear needed to conduct a raid just sounds WAY too Hollywood for me. Might there have been this alleged mission planned for some other sort of infiltration method, perhaps, I do not know. But for me, based on this highly detailed snippet, I would call this a “story” and leave it in the genre of Jerry Bruckheimer.