U.S. Had Plan for Covert Afghan Options Before 9/11

Moving to stem the criticism of its actions leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the White House said Friday that it was on the verge of approving a $200-million covert military program to aid beleaguered anti-Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan last summer.

The proposal, developed after repeated CIA attempts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden had come to naught, was finalized Sept. 10 and was awaiting President Bush’s approval when the suicide skyjackers crashed commercial airliners into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Officials said the plan, known as a national security presidential directive, was viewed as an extension of secret CIA operations already underway in and around Afghanistan, rather than a first-time effort to attack Bin Laden.

But the plan also reflected intense frustration among policymakers. The Clinton administration had tried both diplomacy and arms sanctions in an unsuccessful campaign to convince the Taliban ruling elite to surrender Bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

White House officials said Bush’s senior national security team--including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice--had agreed at a Sept. 4 “principals committee” meeting to try another tack by backing Northern Alliance guerrillas.

The White House described the plan, parts of which were previously reported, as congressional critics stepped up their demands for an independent investigation into whether the Bush administration ignored clues that might have averted the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The furor was sparked when news reports this week revealed that the CIA had advised Bush on Aug. 6 at his regular morning briefing that Al Qaeda might seek to hijack a commercial jet.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said Friday that the title of the president’s intelligence brief that day was “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States.”

It was because of such threats, Fleischer said, that the proposed covert aid program was “a comprehensive, multi-front plan to dismantle the Al Qaeda.”

He said it included directions for the Pentagon “to develop military options” as well as efforts to “dry up” the group’s financial sources.

But other officials said the plan did not propose using U.S. airstrikes or American ground troops, which later played a crucial role in driving the Taliban from power.

Victoria Clarke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Central Command never received orders to move forces or military assets in preparation for a campaign in Afghanistan before Sept. 11. “It was not a Pentagon battle plan at all,” she said.

The plan had special urgency, however, because U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as other governments’ spy services, were picking up a crescendo of threats of possible terrorist strikes last summer.

“The chatter level went way off the charts,” Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recalled recently, “and had been for several months.”

The CIA had opened a special unit at headquarters to track the Saudi terrorist after he moved to Afghanistan in 1996 and was able to intercept conversations on his American-made satellite phone until he changed phones, officials said.

In September 1998, a month after Al Qaeda operatives bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the Clinton administration fired 70 missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan.

The target was chosen, intelligence officials said, because an electronic intercept had indicated Bin Laden would be present. He wasn’t.

Intelligence officials said the agency later began training and arming proxy forces in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and inside Afghanistan, hoping they would capture or kill Bin Laden. They didn’t.

Other CIA operatives used remote-controlled Predator drone aircraft, then armed only with cameras, to search for Bin Laden. And covert teams of CIA paramilitary officers entered the country at least once in hopes of grabbing Bin Laden.

“We had people who had been in and out of Afghanistan,” said a senior intelligence official.

In a recent speech, Jim Pavitt, head of the CIA clandestine service, said the agency’s covert operations inside Afghanistan paved the way for last fall’s rout of the Taliban.

“We knew who to approach on the ground, which operations, which warlord to support, what information to collect,” he said. “Quite simply, we were there before the 11th of September.”

Northern Alliance commanders, in particular, had pleaded for American support in meetings with the CIA and other officials. They sent emissaries armed with maps and other intelligence to Washington, and met U.S. diplomats in Europe and Central Asia.

But some U.S. policy planners warned that the ethnic minorities in the group, and the groups’ political ambitions to rule in Afghanistan, could draw the United States into a new round of the factional fighting that had ravaged the country for a decade.

“The argument was it was politically untenable--that it could create a civil war,” one official recalled of the debate within the State Department. “But there were other people who said, ‘Who cares?’”

A State Department official in the Clinton administration said the proposal to arm the Northern Alliance was discussed “the whole year of 2000,” especially after the U.S. destroyer Cole was attacked by suicide bombers in a small boat in Yemen.

But no decision was made because President Clinton left office before the FBI concluded that it was Al Qaeda that attacked the Cole, the former official said.

Before its term ended, the Clinton administration successfully fought at the United Nations to impose an arms embargo on the Taliban, beating back moves to extend the ban to other armed groups in Afghanistan.

At the time, the Northern Alliance was getting assistance from Russia and Iran.

“We wanted to punish the Taliban, and we made it very specifically clear we were not going to cut off the Northern Alliance,” the official said.

“The issue was how do you take out Al Qaeda?” he added. “Do you do the full mass invasion, which was really not an option prior to 9/11?

“No one seriously considered that. The only other option ... was to support the Northern Alliance in varying degrees.”

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Times staff writers Esther Schrader and Josh Meyer contributed to this report.