Elite Officer Recalls Bin Laden Hunt

Delta Force Commander Says The Best Plan To Kill The Al Qaeda Leader In 2001 Was Nixed

(CBS)  This story was first published on Oct. 5, 2008. It was updated on July 11, 2009.

Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon ordered a top secret team of American commandos into Afghanistan with a single, simple order: kill Osama bin Laden. It was America's best chance to eliminate the leader of al Qaeda. The inside story of exactly what happened in that mission, and how close it came to its objective has never been told until 60 Minutes and correspondent Scott Pelley reported this story last fall.

The man you are about to meet was the officer in command, leading a team from the U.S. Army's mysterious Delta Force - a unit so secret, it's often said Delta doesn't exist. But you are about to see Delta's operators in action.

Why did the mission commander break his silence after seven years? He told 60 Minutes that most everything he'd read in the media about his mission is wrong and he wants to set the record straight.

---

"Our job was to go find him, capture or kill him, and we knew the writing on the wall was to kill him because nobody wanted to bring Osama bin Laden back to stand trial in the United States somewhere," the mission commander tells Pelley.

In 2001, just 10 weeks after 9/11, he was a 37-year-old Army major leading a team of America's most elite commandos. Even now, 60 Minutes can't tell you his name or show you his face. 60 Minutes hired a theatrical make up artist to take this former Delta officer through a series of transformations to disguise him. He calls himself "Dalton Fury," and is the author of "Kill Bin Laden," a book out this week.

Dalton Fury is used to disguises. In fact in 2001, his entire team transformed themselves in Afghanistan. "Everybody has their beard grown. Everybody’s wearing local Afghan clothing, sometimes carrying the same weapons as them," he explains.

"The idea was that if this all worked out Osama bin Laden would be dead, and no one would ever know that Delta Force was there?" Pelley asks.

"That's right," Fury says. "That's the plan. And that always is when you're talking about Delta Force."

And there was no mission more important to the United States. "We'll smoke him out of his cave and we'll get him eventually," President Bush had vowed.

But the administration's strategy was to let Afghans do most of the fighting. Using radio intercepts and other intelligence, the CIA pinpointed bin Laden in the mountains near the border of Pakistan. Following the strategy of keeping an Afghan face on the war, Fury's Delta team joined the CIA and Afghan fighters and piled into pickup trucks. They videotaped their journey to a place called Tora Bora.

Fury told 60 Minutes his orders were to kill bin Laden and leave the body with the Afghans.

"Right here you're looking at basically the battlefield from the last location that we had a firm on Osama bin Laden's location," Fury explains to Pelley, looking at a ridgeline with an elevation of about 14,000 feet.

Asked how tough it would be to attack such a position on a scale of one to ten, Fury tells Pelley, "In my experience it’s a ten."

Delta developed an audacious plan to come at bin Laden from the one direction he would never expect.

"We want to come in on the back door," Fury explains. "The original plan that we sent up through our higher headquarters, Delta Force wants to come in over the mountain with oxygen, coming from the Pakistan side, over the mountains and come in and get a drop on bin Laden from behind."

But they didn't take that route, because Fury says they didn't get approval from a higher level. "Whether that was Central Command all the way up to the president of the United States, I'm not sure," he says.

The next option that Delta wanted to employ was to drop hundreds of landmines in the mountain passes that led to Pakistan, which was bin Laden’s escape route.

"First guy blows his leg off, everybody else stops. That allows aircraft overhead to find them. They see all these heat sources out there. Okay, there a big large group of Al Qaeda moving south. They can engage that," Fury explains.

But they didn't do that either, because Fury says that plan was also disapproved. He says he has "no idea" why.

"How often does Delta come up with a tactical plan that's disapproved by higher headquarters?" Pelley asks.

"In my experience, in my five years at Delta, never before," Fury says.

[jmilavic]

Compelling story. Will obtain book for more information. Frustrated will lack of positive action from DOD. Even today, there is a small DOD Organization named Big Crow Program Office that has the capability to find Osama but restricted by USAF and other DOD entities. WHY?

Jack A. Milavic PhD
Edmond Oklahoma

[ProfessorMilcript]

The story that was aired on CBS 60 Minutes on July 12, 2009 at 7 PM EST practically mirrors the book, "Target Washington: The Search for Osama Bin Laden." ISBN: 9781434375230, published April 2009, more than three months prior to the CBS report written by Professor Milcript. If you want to read what really happened, you MUST read this book! You must read this book on how Bin Laden was CAUGHT and RELEASED and for what reasons!

[MaMaSweet]

It makes no sense to me why he was allowed to give this information out. Even filming his disguise bothers me. I saw a graying bald spot too on him. I couldn't even watch all of the video, I'm too upset.
I understand capitolism and freedom of speech, I don't think its right that this information was released though.
If my son/daughter was killed in Iraq/Afghanistan in the name of justice to then find this Delta man's story, I would be really miffed! I do apologize to and thank service personnel for their sacrifices, patriotism and muscles.
We could end this war and save our money & service men-women and feed our hungry people living below standards here in the USA.
I pray for the Obama family and for peace every day. Be well all!

[cactus4rx]

I see Bin Laden in a city called Ctesiphon. He is living on the coast in a cove of buildings with red roofs.

[4angel2]

I think we should ask ourselves: who stood to gain the most from these intentional errors? Let's see, if bin Laden was captured or killed, would the Bush administration have been able to bring the war to Iraq, suspend habeas corpus, give the CIA the right to torture, consolidate power for himself and his cronies so they could plunder the economy and leave us in ruins. Bin Laden empowered Bush and Cheney, just as 9/11 did.

[dfnj2009]

When the time came to make a decision he just stood there wide eye.

continued
I''ll say it here now. Bush Jr. was merely an accessory. The President who was Annointed to lead us was not the Mastermind. Bush Jr. is not an Intelligence Director. (It''s hilarious to have to write that sentence.)

Bush Sr is still tight with CIA. He still gets PDBs. He''s intimate with CIA and other "Former" CIA, and he''s intimate with the Saudis, with Adnan Khashoggi who funded Al-Qaeda in the past.

SEPT 11 WAS A MILTIARY-INTELLIGENCE OPERATION.
SEPT 11 WAS NOT A "CONSPIRACY" per se.
SEPT 11 WAS OFFICIAL POLICY, or nearly-official. The plans were published beforehand too, by top advisors such as Ledeen and Perle, but in discreet terms, a vague "wish" or "hope" that such a bloodbath would occur, since it was VITAL to the future of America''s power in the world.

3000 - 8000 dead Americans? Grief forever? Trauma? Millions of dead Arabs? Who cares? Not them. I care. Ann Coulter said the survivors who demanded answers were enjoying the tragedy, the limelight. Ha ha ha. They hate you. They hate you. They hate you. They hate me. They hate all of us. They don''t care about your suffering. They hate what America REALLY stands for, a liberal democratic republic with an "uppity" population of serfs who think they deserve a say in how things are run.

comment: You Bush-haters out there need to go join your great hero, bin Laden!!! Leave the US! We don''t need nor want your kind!!

However - if Bush made the call to NOT get bin Laden, then HE needs to leave the US as well!
----------
FINALLY! A Bush-loving patriot breaks out of the mind-mold slightly to consider that Bush helped Binladen go free.

9-11 Press for Truth collects a lot of Corporate Media reports on Afghanistan, including Seymour Hersh explaining how they were allowed to escape. THEY WERE FRIGGIN AIRLIFTED ON C-130s to PAKISTAN!!!!

I''m still astonished at the mind control that caused Republicans (and Democrats) to ignore that Bush Senior, former CIA Dir Carlucci, and others were meeting at the Ritz-Carlton hotel with Binladen''s brother on Sept 11, all with the Carlyle group. There was even a scandal! Bush was embarrassed into supposedly divesting. Binladens sold their stock. Binladens are estranged from Osama, but OBL just made them all billions, while getting millions of Arabs killed.

No more questions about that??

Bin Laden''s group got money and weapons in the CIA''s war, but he never worked for the CIA.

WHAT????!!!!!!!

And that a Pakistani General from ISI Intell who sent $100k to the "hijackers" in Venice was in Washington the entire week, having breakfast with future CIA Director Porter Goss on Sept 11.

HOW COULD WE ALL BE THIS COLLECTIVELY STUPIDIZED?

Fury, SAY IT. It''s because Osama Bin Laden is one of our guys. Just like he was in 1979 when Brzezinski secretly started funding the Mujahideen to LURE the Soviets into Afghanistan. Just like during the Clinton Era when the Senate Republican Policy Committee wrote a report the Pentagon using Al-Q, OBL and Iranian weapons in Bosnia-Kosovo (a scandal the Republicans NEVER mention).
Just like when Zawahiri''s brother Mohamed was training guerillas in Macedonia at a US camp, in 2001 and beyond.
Just like on Sept 11.
Just like when James Baker nixed the 9-11 Families inquiry into the Saudis'' Al-Qaeda connections (Baker-Botts law firm).
Just like the 12 agents who testified, three on TV and under oath, one dead agent on a PBS special, about being THWARTED probably over 200 times (70 for Harry Samit alone) in trying to prevent Sept 11.
Same as CIA Director Krongard said we should LET OSAMA STAY FREE, which Bush echoed.

I''m sure that was on a need-to-know basis. You didn''t need to know. But you knew.

(Frankly, considering how top advisors stated that a BLOODBATH was VITAL to starting their wars, I doubt they relied on lapdanced, coked-up, hungover, Arab party boys ... er Islamic Extremists .. willing to die for Allah. Remote control is much more reliable. The Arabs running around the US on the CIA''s black budget can be disappeared.)

[fredrick house]

Osama was the best thing that happened to CheneyBurton since they inherited the vice presidency. He had to escape or like singrich says,
"it really would have been bad for ''bidness'' ". Have we ever been played????????