battlefield and having them do some exploring. The destination was the spot where some of General Ali’s fighters had reported seeing a tall individual, whom they believed to be bin Laden, enter a cave about noon on December 14, the day that his last radio transmission had been intercepted. The muhj reported the lanky figure had been accompanied by approximately fifty companions. The cave they entered had been targeted by a B-52 bomber that dumped dozens of JDAMs on the site and forever rearranged the terrain. Follow-up strikes pounded the area day and night with an extraordinary amount of ordnance.
The investigation team was preceded by several dozen Green Berets and some Navy SEALs under my command, who drove in during the early-morning darkness and mowed down trees and obstacles with explosives to create a landing zone for a couple of CH-47 helicopters. Then a combined group of the 101st Airborne Division, soldiers of the Canadian army, and a twenty-man forensic exploitation team arrived.
The Canadians and 101st paratroopers found the caves completely sealed by tons of rubble that towered several stories high. It was obvious that the few hundred pounds of explosives they had brought along with them were not going to be enough to open that rocky tomb.
The forensic team shifted its focus instead to an eerie place known by the locals as the Al Qaeda Martyr Memorial, where colorful banners fluttered lazily on graveyard sticks, a place that would later give the intel imagery analysts fits during planning for the raid to capture Gul Ahmed. An assortment of Afghan mujahideen watched them work, probably feeling ashamed and insulted as dozens of jihadist graves were exhumed.
None of the DNA recovered from the cemetery proved to be the bin Laden jackpot, and the suspect cave where the terrorist leader was believed possibly to be entombed was impenetrable. The mission was a bust, doing little more than deepen the mystery.
TV personality Geraldo Rivera had spent several days near Tora Bora during the battle and returned to the mountains for a television special in September 2002. His interview with Gen. Hazret Ali in Jalalabad was broadcast on September 8, and I tuned in.
The general looked sharp in a suit and his familiar muhj hat, no longer just a bewildered muhj commander, but someone of substance and importance in his country. Shortly after the Tora Bora battle, Afghanistan’s new leader, Hamid Karzai, had promoted Hazret Ali to the rank of three-star general, and the sly fellow with only a sixth-grade education had become the most powerful warlord in eastern Afghanistan. I was biting my nails while he was on camera, but he stayed with our agreement and never even hinted that American commandos had been anywhere near the Tora Bora battlefield.
Ali remained consistent and accurate with the known facts: Usama bin Laden was seen by some of his fighters in Tora Bora and was repeatedly heard talking on the radio. Initially, the terrorist had been full of confidence and resolve, encouraging and sending instructions to his al Qaeda forces. But as the battle wore on, that confidence evaporated, and he was heard apologizing to his men and weeping for his failures.
That matched up perfectly with what I knew to be the basic reasons to show bin Laden had been there.
General Ali also used the broadcast to level blame at his archrival, Haji Zaman Ghamshareek, for orchestrating the cease-fire fiasco during the fight, and negotiating with al Qaeda fighters to buy time for bin Laden to escape. He offered no proof of the latter part of his statement.
A few years later, a newspaper in Pakistan reported an Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman who had been present at the battle as saying it was General Ali who was truly at fault, and that bin Laden paid Ali to look the other way as the terrorist fled across the border.
It was just tit-for-tat fingerpointing and got us no closer to finding out how bin Laden obtained safe passage into Pakistan.
While Ali became a three-star, his slippery rival Zaman fled the country and, at the time of this writing, remains on the run.
Several days after that interview, Rivera was back on TV from near the Afghanistan and Pakistan border. Sitting on a large boulder, the visibly exhausted television guy described having made a three-hour walk through the Tora Bora Mountains, from Afghanistan into Pakistan. He displayed a colorful tourist map on which he had marked a small black X near the border to illustrate his location. His point was that if he could do it in three hours, then bin Laden would have had plenty of time during the cease-fire to abandon the field and cross safely into Pakistan. Just a three-hour hike!
For emphasis, Rivera read off his current latitude and longitude coordinates. I’m not sure exactly where Rivera was, but my mates and I had a good laugh as we watched him weave this bit of show business. What he claimed was a mere three-hour trek was a stretch of his imagination, because he was there in pleasant weather; during the harsh winter campaign, that same route would have required about ten hours, if it could have been done at all. Huge peaks blocked the way, along with impassable valleys where the snow blew horizontally in a hard and wicked wind and temperatures stayed well below freezing. By the way, the only thing shooting at Geraldo during his peaceful tour was his photographer’s camera.
The two events were in no way comparable. Rivera gave us nothing new.
Peter Bergen, an author and well-known terrorism expert, uncovered vital clues in doing research for his superb book,
Bergen also uncovered that in October 2002 bin Laden’s personal will was published in the Saudi magazine
On December 27, 2002, two days after Christmas, my troop was once again back in Afghanistan and had gathered atop a tan mud-brick and mortar building in the center of Bagram Air Field. It was the same building we had occupied when we first arrived on that cold and mysterious night the previous year.
In those days the building was a skeleton of neglect, with large bullet holes, and loose wires hanging from the roof. Since then, it had progressed from being an emergency bunkhouse, to being a movie room, to transient quarters, to the Rangers’ headquarters, to becoming the Speer Medical Clinic. It was named in honor of Delta Force medic Chris Speer, who was mortally wounded in a firefight near Khost.
Bagram was now the epicenter of combat operations in Afghanistan, with dozens of large green and tan tents erected over plywood stands, indirect fire bunkers strategically placed, and a large metal hangar or two in which commanders and large battle staffs managed the war effort.
On this day, the weather was clear and cool and offered a beautiful view of those stark peaks to the north. More than a full year after the Tora Bora battle, most of the boys and air force combat controllers now wore full beards and were dressed in blue jeans, boots, and some form of light cold-weather top. They stood at attention as I pinned medals on their chests for their actions twelve months earlier-two Silver Stars and a handful of Bronze Stars for Valor.
Our little ceremony was sans fanfare. No large formations with senior officers who were nowhere near the action giving congratulations and returning hand salutes. No live news coverage, or the presence of family and friends, or tables laden with finger food and punch. Just a private session for some sterling warriors who thought the medals were more than they deserved anyway. Typical Delta.
The men who fought at Tora Bora have always believed that just having been granted the responsibility of going after bin Laden, our nation’s highest priority at the time, had been reward enough. The medals might be enjoyed by the grandkids years from now, but we would gladly trade them in for confirmation that Delta had played a role in killing Usama.
For years, no positive confirmation came out to prove that bin Laden had survived. At least not on the public record, although I trusted that the intelligence community knew more than it could say.
I used to wake up daily hoping that a breaking story would scroll across the television screen, stating that
