Post: Counterterrorism official says Osama bin Laden trail 'stone cold'

RAW STORY
Published: Saturday September 9, 2006

According to a counterterrorism official, the Osama bin Laden "trail" has become "stone cold," The Washington Post reports in Sunday's edition.

"The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years," write Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson. "Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world -- no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image -- has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials."

"'The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence'" that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone 'stone cold,'" the article continues.

Priest and Tyson also report that "Pakistan has grown increasingly reluctant to help the U.S. search."

"Pakistani and U.S. counterterrorism and military officials admit that Pakistan has now all but stopped looking for bin Laden," reports the Post. "'The dirty little secret is, they have nothing, no operations, without the Paks,' one former counterterrorism officer said."

Excerpts from the Post article:

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Pakistan will permit only small numbers of U.S. forces to operate with its troops at times and, because their role is so sensitive politically, it officially denies any U.S. presence. A frequent complaint from U.S. troops is that they have too little to do. The same complaint is also heard from U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where there were few targets to go after.

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Bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years, according to officials in several agencies, with both the Pentagon and the CIA accusing each other of withholding information. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's sense of territoriality has become legendary, according to these officials.

In early November 2002, for example, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.

"How did they get the intel?" he demanded of the special operations and other military personnel in a high-level meeting, recalled one person knowledgeable about the meeting.

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FULL POST ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT THIS LINK