Lost opportunity: Drone pilot had clear shot at Mullah Omar 14 years ago
CBS News talked to the pilot of a Predator drone who had a clear shot at a convoy believed to be carrying Taliban leader Mullah Omar on the opening night of the war in Afghanistan in October 2001.
But the pilot, Scott Swanson, was not allowed to take the shot for fear of damaging a building that might have been a mosque.
"A big part of me says the problem in any leadership that Omar provided [the Taliban] could have been solved that evening" nearly 14 years ago, Swanson told CBS News.
The full story of what happened that night appears in the book "Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution" by Richard Whittle, who was the first journalist to interview Swanson.
The Afghan government said Wednesday it had confirmed that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed figurehead of the Taliban, is dead.
Omar was the spiritual leader of the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until it was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion of the country following the terror attacks on Washington and New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. The group was targeted for providing a safe haven to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, which plotted and carried out the attacks.
While the White House has not yet confirmed Omar's death, White House Spokesman Eric Schultz said in a briefing Wednesday, "We do believe the reports of his death are credible." U.S. intelligence is still looking into the matter.
Afghanistan's largest intelligence agency says that Omar died over two years ago, and a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security told CBS News' Ahmad Mukhtar that Omar died of natural causes in a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.
CBS News' Tucker Reals contributed to this report.