http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040223-012312-3087r
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
U.S. search for bin Laden intensifies
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published February 23, 2004
The Pentagon is moving elements of a supersecret commando unit
from Iraq to the Afghanistan theater to step up the hunt for Osama bin
Laden.
A Defense Department official said there are two reasons for
repositioning parts of Task Force 121: First, most high-value human
targets in Iraq, including Saddam Hussein, have been caught or killed.
Second, intelligence reports are increasing on the whereabouts of bin
Laden, the terror leader behind the September 11 attacks.
"Iraq has become more of a policing problem than a hunt for
high-value Iraqis," the defense official said. "Afghanistan is the
place where 121 can do more."
Task forces typically change names when they move, so it is likely
that the commando unit arriving in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region
will take a new name.
Task Force 121 is a mix of Army Delta Force soldiers and Navy
SEALs, transported on helicopters from the 160th Special Operations
Aviation Regiment. The SEALs and soldiers are based at Joint Special
Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C.
Delta-SEAL teams typically move into theater, practice missions
and wait for military and CIA intelligence to provide the location of
a target, such as Saddam.
The new task force to hunt bin Laden in the Afghanistan area
likely will be led by a Navy SEAL who was toasted in Washington while
working antiterrorism issues in the Bush administration. The
Washington Times is withholding his name because of the secret nature
of the operation.
Military sources said reports of bin Laden's movements are
becoming more numerous as the fugitive Saudi, leader of the al Qaeda
terrorist network, hides in the mountainous terrain straddling the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"They're getting better intelligence, and they've gotten better at
fusing the intelligence," a second defense source said.
A CIA-military intelligence team conducted a similar operation in
Iraq to catch Saddam. Officers made a schematic of family members and
Ba'athist officials close to Saddam and questioned them on his
whereabouts. The team hit pay dirt when a recently detained Iraqi
revealed precise information on the ousted dictator's whereabouts on a
farm south of Tikrit.
Task Force 121 joined a 4th Infantry Division unit Dec. 13 in
raiding the farm and finding Saddam hidden in a hole.
The commando task force took Saddam to Tikrit in a Special
Operations "Little Bird" helicopter before he was imprisoned in the
Baghdad area.
Speculation that the United States is close to finding bin Laden
heightened last month when military officers in Afghanistan predicted
that the terror leader would be killed or captured by year's end.
"We have a variety of intelligence, and we're sure we're going to
catch Osama bin Laden and [Taliban leader] Mullah [Mohammed] Omar this
year," Army Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman for U.S. forces in
Afghanistan, said in January. "We've learned lessons from Iraq, and
we're getting improved intelligence from the Afghan people."
A few days earlier, Lt. Gen. David Barno, the top U.S. commander
in Afghanistan, told the BBC: "You can be assured that we're putting a
renewed emphasis on closing this out and bringing these two
individuals to justice, as well as the other senior leadership of that
organization. They represent a threat to the entire world, and they
need to be destroyed."
Bin Laden is thought to be in the lawless tribal areas along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Officials say U.S. troops do not cross
into Pakistan, leaving the hunt on the ground for bin Laden to the CIA
and the Pakistan army.
But specific intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts might prompt
the use of a Delta-SEAL task force to raid his Pakistan hide-out,
officials say.
Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, recently praised
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's willingness to send troops into
unfriendly tribal areas, where bin Laden reportedly is popular.
"I talk to him frequently," Gen. Abizaid said of Gen. Musharraf.
"I just visited him the other day. I saw him after one of two
assassination attempts. He knows that al Qaeda is trying to kill him,
and he absolutely, positively wants to get the problem under control.
"But there are difficulties that he has that are associated with
working in the tribal areas that he has to work through on his own,"
Gen. Abizaid said.
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