Sunday, October 16, 2005
 This story dances around the real issue here. The Bush administration allowed its family friend bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora by stalling special forces who had OBL in their sights.
From WTOP / FederalNewsRadio Updated: Friday, Oct. 14, 2005 - 3:53 PM: "
A "highly decorated" former CIA operative has run into what he calls "resistance" from the agency as he seeks to publish an eye-opening book about the U.S. attempt to capture Osama bin Laden in the months after September 11, 2001.
In an exclusive interview, author Gary Bernsten says the "Jawbreaker" manuscript was submitted to the agency on May 17, 2005.
He says after 98 days and a lawsuit to force the agency to move on it, the manuscript was returned to him on August 23 with 22 pages of redactions. He says he made the changes within two weeks and returned the manuscript to the CIA for further review. And there it sits. [...]
"Jawbreaker" contains previously unreleased, sensitive details about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and CIA operations in Afghanistan. Much of the story takes place in the rugged terrain of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in December of 2001.
"Osama was there, we were aware he was there, and we were doing everything in our power to capture, kill him, and destroy his forces," says Bernsten, who was the leader of a secret CIA paramilitary unit pursuing bin Laden.
n the battle on the Shomali Plains leading up to Tora Bora, he says U.S forces and Northern Alliance allies were surrounded and outnumbered.
Bernsten says, "I was commanding a unit of about 50 men and the Northern Alliance had six to eight thousand men there, the Taliban and Al Qaida had over 12,000. And they had a desire to engulf our people where they were."
His story details the valiant fight his CIA team put up to survive and win.
"Our special forces fought like Lions. "I lost no one. I had none of my men killed or captured."
Bernsten's story talks in explicit detail about the chase after bin Laden including, "My command of teams that were in Talaquan, Shomali Plains which was the battle for Kabul and those events that led us into Tora Bora."
And the book details how bin Laden escaped.
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