CBS: Commando team that called for Heli in Afghganistan is missing

Posted: 2003-07-30

July 29 — In early 2002, the U.S. campaign against al-Qaida — “Operation Enduring Freedom” — was revving high. U.S. commandos readied themselves for lightning strikes in the dusty plains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Yemen; aerial drones buzzed the skies rigged with cameras and missiles, controlled by technicians on the ground; surveillance planes high overhead listened for electronic whispers of Taliban holdouts.

But, AS “Operation Enduring Freedom” kept al-Qaida on the run, the White House was already planning for war against Iraq. Sources say that in the spring of 2002, key weapons in the war against terror — such as the commandos, the drones and the high-tech surveillance planes — were rotated out of Afghanistan. Now experts tell NBC there was a clear tradeoff as the United States let up on al-Qaida to pursue regime change in Iraq.

A former national security official in the Bush administration tells NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers the White House was warned that the buildup against Saddam might provide a respite for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. “There were decisions made,” says Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House, “to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam.”

Leverett, a former senior CIA analyst, talks with the professorial precision of an academic. “We see today,” he says, “that al-Qaida has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and it would seem in Eastern Iran.”

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But during deliberations leading up to war, according to Leverett and military experts, there were insiders who worried whether in fact the Iraq war was a distraction. “There were people in the interagency process,” Leverett says, “who warned that if you drew down in Afghanistan too precipitously that it was going to impact negatively our ability to go after al-Qaida on the ground.”

Retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing agrees that there was a tradeoff in resources, although he supports the Iraq war and says the impact on the war on terror was not major. Downing was the Bush administration’s chief terrorism czar for nine months after the 9/11 attacks. “I think clearly there was concern,” he says. “There was concern by the intelligence operatives, by the FBI people in the field and by some of our intelligence agencies who were forward deployed that this Iraq war was going to divert some of their key intelligence-gathering resources.”

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NBC News has learned that in one still-classified incident in Yemen, commanders wanted to engage what sources call a “viable mission against an al-Qaida target.” After all, in the past they had used the missiles on the remotely piloted drones to strike at terrorists. But in this case, because of the Iraq war, there was not a Predator they could use. The al-Qaida target got away.

What’s more, members of the CIA’s elite special activities division and the Army’s entire 5th Special Forces Group (Green Berets), who’d hunted down hundreds of al- Qaida terrorists, were pulled out of Afghanistan. The 5th, based in Fort Campbell, Kent., specializes in the Middle East and Central Asia. These soldiers are the ones who speak Arabic and Central Asian languages, so it’s only natural that they were some of the first to head to Afghanistan. But in May 2002, according to Army Special Operation Command spokesman Maj. Rob Gowan, the 5th Group was pulled out of Afghanistan and brought back to Fort Campbell. The 5th Group would deploy later for Iraq.

In Afghanistan they were replaced chiefly by the 3rd Special Forces Group, which is trained culturally and linguistically to operate in sub-Saharan Africa. The A-Team members speak French and various African languages, which would be of no value in the craggy Hindu Kush mountain range. Other Green Berets stepping into Afghanistan came from the 7th Group, which specializes in Latin America and has Spanish language skills.