U.S. Planned Raid to Capture Terror Suspect, Officials Say

American intelligence officials drew up plans last spring for a covert raid to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, the New York Times reported today, citing senior U.S. government officials.

The planning began after U.S. military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials concluded that they had ample evidence linking Bin Laden to a series of anti-American terrorist attacks in recent years, the newspaper reported.

Developed by the CIA and U.S. special forces months before last month’s bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the secret plan called for U.S. forces to extricate the Saudi millionaire from his hide-out in Afghanistan and bring him to justice in the United States.

The mission was ultimately scrapped by CIA Director George J. Tenet and other senior officials because of the potential for casualties among Americans and innocent Afghans, the paper reported.

Even so, Clinton administration officials said they continued to develop a range of other options aimed at Bin Laden when deadly bombs exploded Aug. 7 at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden is suspected by the U.S. of orchestrating the bombings.

The cruise missile strikes the United States launched against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan to retaliate for the bombings were a much lower-risk operation than the proposed raid and did not result in any American casualties. But they did not deliver Bin Laden.

Bin Laden had emerged as the leading target of the CIA’s Counter-terrorism Center by 1996, the paper said. He was named in a secret presidential covert action order on terrorism signed by Clinton that authorized intelligence agencies to plan and carry out covert operations that might lead to some deaths, the paper said.