Oct. Surprise book for Bush: "Jawbreaker" (failure to capture bin Laden)

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Exclusive: CIA Commander: We Let bin Laden Slip Away

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and John Kerry battled about whether Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush, Kerry charged, "didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of Al Qaeda. The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."

In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."

Berntsen's book gives, by contrast, a heroic portrayal of CIA activities at Tora Bora and in the war on terror. Ironically, he has sued the agency over what he calls unacceptable delays in approving his book—a standard process for ex-agency employees describing classified matters. "They're just holding the book," which is scheduled for October release, he says. "CIA officers, Special Forces and U.S. air power drove the Taliban out in 70 days. The CIA has taken roughly 80 days to clear my book." Jennifer Millerwise, a CIA spokeswoman, says Berntsen's "timeline is not accurate," adding that he submitted his book as an ex-employee only in mid-June. "We take seriously our goal of responding quickly."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/



This title will be released on October 18, 2005.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307237400/qid=1123458548/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-6070223-8490518

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Gary Bernsten better get ready for the character assassination that will

be heading his way in the next few months...
:nuke:

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

3. It will be the same as Kitty Kelley's launch of "The Family"...

...he'll be invited on all of the network & cable news shows, and there will be an ambush waiting for him at each one.

[shaniqua6392]

4. Everyone on Du

should pre-order this book...if for no other reason that to show support for the truth about what happened at Tora Bora. Maybe it will help to assassinate the character of Mr. Bush and his accomplices. We need all the help we can get.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. excellent idea.

[Wapsie B]

2. Berntsen better watch his back.

People who cross the BFEE don't always fare too well.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. kick