Mike Scheuer, who headed the CIA’s Osama bin Laden Unit from 1996 to 1999, and then became its special adviser from 2001 to 2004, probably knew more about bin Laden than any other Westerner alive. He was on the receiving end in Washington of many of the cables from Tora Bora. ‘It’s like many things in your life,’ he said. ‘If you don’t do something when you have the chance, sometimes that chance doesn’t come back.’16
Though he was frustrated by losing bin Laden at Tora Bora, he pointed out that the US had already squandered ten different opportunities to get their man back in 1998 and 1999. President Clinton had signed a secret presidential directive in 1998 authorising the CIA to kill bin Laden after al Qaeda bombed the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than two hundred people. But when it came to it, said Scheuer, Clinton did not have the necessary resolve: ‘Clinton was worried about European opinion. He didn’t want to shoot and miss and have to explain a lot of innocent deaths. Yet the very same day [in 1999] we turned down one opportunity to kill bin Laden, our planes were dropping thousands of bombs on the Serbs from 20,000 feet. The Serbs never did anything to us.’
On one occasion that same year, the US had live video pictures of bin Laden coming in from a Predator spy plane, the only time he was actually seen. ‘But the drone wasn’t armed at that time, because the fools in Washington were arguing over which agency should fund the $2 million installation of the Hellfire missile. It’s a very upsetting business. I got into a slanging match with Clinton on TV because he claimed that he never turned down the opportunity to kill bin Laden. That’s a very clear lie, and we’re all paying the price. Similarly at Tora Bora, our generals didn’t want to lose a lot of our soldiers going after him. They had seen what had happened to the Russians, who lost 15,000 men in Afghanistan. So it was easier to subcontract to Hazrat Ali, Haji Zahir and Haji Zaman. At the time we said, “Look, these guys are going to be a day late and a dollar short.” But they wouldn’t listen.’
Although some of the CIA officers involved later blamed the fiasco on infighting between the CIA and the military, Scheuer insisted that responsibility also lay with George Tenet, the CIA Director at the time. ‘Part of it was Mr Tenet’s fault, because he told the President, Rumsfeld and Powell that all you have to do is spend a lot of money in Afghanistan. Everyone who was cognisant of how Afghan operations worked would have told Tenet that he was nuts. During our covert help to the mujaheddin in the fight against the Russians, we spent $6 billion between us and the Saudis, and I can’t remember a single time the Afghans did anything we wanted them to do. The people we bought, the people Mr Tenet said we would own, let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora into Pakistan.’
I wanted to see for myself the tunnels from which he had escaped, so I went to see the local Governor, Gul Agha Sherzai. ‘Tora Bora is already a world-famous name, but we want it to be known for tourism, not terrorism,’ he said. ‘Long before anyone had heard of Osama, Tora Bora was known as a picnic spot, and now it can be both.’ He showed me plans he’d had drawn up for a $10 million hotel development overlooking the caves. He also intended to build restaurants and to pave the road built by bin Laden leading to the mountains from Jalalabad. ‘I don’t just want one Tora Bora hotel,’ he said. ‘I want three or four!’17
The next morning, the chowkidar of the aid-agency guesthouse where I was staying hammered on my door in terror. ‘Gunmen are asking for you,’ he said. Outside were a police jeep and two pick-ups full of men with Kalashnikovs, one of whom introduced himself as Commander Lalalai, a famous old mujahid from Spin Boldak. As Tora Bora ‘wasn’t quite safe’ Governor Sherzai had sent these guards to accompany me. I climbed into the jeep and we sped off through the streets of Jalalabad, scattering donkey carts and turbaned men on bicycles. Eventually we turned off on an unmade road towards the White Mountains. ‘Tora Bora,’ said the driver, Mahmood, rolling his eyes.
On either side of the track were mud-walled compounds, one of which had an actual-size model of a car on its roof. Every so often Mahmood put on a terrifying burst of speed, throwing up so much dust that we could see nothing, and I would grip the door handle. ‘Al Qaeda, al Qaeda!’ he explained. Occasionally the truck in front would screech to a halt, and Commander Lalalai would jump out and start berating Mahmood for not going fast enough, saying we could be killed by the ‘bad guys’. I began to wonder about the Governor’s plans for tourism.
After two hours we stopped at the schoolhouse that had been used by the CIA and then Delta Force as base camp during the battle for Tora Bora, and collected two more vehicles of guards. By then we had twenty-six gunmen. So much for travelling low-profile.
The road deteriorated from dust to rocky scree, making the journey even more bone-shaking. But the scenery was spectacular, swirled-toffee mountains as far as the eye could see, rising to black rock, all under a deep-blue sky. On one side of the road lay the passes to Parachinar and the tribal areas of Pakistan. Almost twenty years before I had crossed these mountains with mujaheddin coming to fight the Russians, riding a donkey laden with rockets and grenades that left my legs purple with bruises.
Eventually our convoy pulled up under a tree and everyone piled out. ‘Now we walk ten minutes,’ said Mahmood. I had spent enough time in Afghanistan to know to multiply any times and distances by three. Foolishly, I left my food and water in the jeep, as it was Ramadan fasting month, and I didn’t want to eat in front of the others, who must let nothing pass their lips until nightfall. It was a decision I would regret.
An hour later we were still climbing the stony track along a dry riverbed and scrambling up and down scree-covered slopes, breathless from the thinning oxygen. But the guards seemed happy. They held hands, posed for photographs and kept coming to me with little offerings – some lavender they had picked, spent ammunition cartridges, and pieces of pink quartz. Every so often we passed people with donkeys or small children bearing bundles of wood – the slopes all around had been denuded of trees. The women hurriedly pulled their shawls over their faces.
Finally we stopped. The guards pointed across the gorge, shouting, ‘Osama house! Osama house!’ At first I could see nothing, but then I just made out a few holes and ruins on the terraced slopes. We clambered across past a burned-out tank and over some large bomb craters, and came to the ruins of some mud-walled houses.
I realised that the reason I had not seen it at first was that the site of the last great showdown between US forces and al Qaeda was not at all what I was expecting. At the time newspapers had run detailed graphics of James Bond-style hi-tech cave systems with internal hydro-electric power plants from mountain streams, elevators, ventilation ducts, loading bays, caverns big enough for tanks and trucks, and brick-lined walls.
Where was the vast network of tunnels that led to Pakistan? All I could see among the ruins was a circular hole, about three feet high, that seemed to be an entrance. I walked in, cursing myself for not having brought my torch. One of the guards had a cigarette lighter which he flicked on and off, but it was soon clear that the tunnel did not extend very far. Some of the gunmen were nervous, and stayed by the entrance blocking what light there was and giggling as if Osama was suddenly going to appear.
A combination of Afghan scavengers and US and British intelligence had scoured the caves, and nothing remained to suggest their past purpose. In one of them an SAS team had found plans for al Qaeda’s next attack, in Singapore. CIA agents even scraped the sides of the cave for DNA in the hope of finding that they had killed bin Laden.
The ‘light footprint’ which had been such a success in toppling the Taliban with minimum American casualties had enabled the world’s most wanted man to escape the net. Though bin Laden would periodically release videos which CIA agents and geologists would scrutinise to try to identify an area, there would be no more confirmed sightings. The CIA team would start referring to him as ‘Elvis’. President Bush was left with the consolation argument that the al Qaeda leader and his deputy were fatally weakened, detached from their followers and unable to plan any new operations.
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