with having the tribals hold Bin Ladin captive for so long, and the commander
of Joint Special Operations Forces, Lieutenant General Michael Canavan, was
worried about the safety of the tribals inside Tarnak Farms. General Canavan
said he had actually thought the operation too complicated for the CIA--"out
of their league"--and an effort to get results "on the cheap." But a senior Joint
Staff officer described the plan as "generally, not too much different than we
might have come up with ourselves." No one in the Pentagon, so far as we
know, advised the CIA or the White House not to proceed.
of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He wor-
ried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there
was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to
see him acquitted.
idential finding had authorized worldwide covert action against terrorism and
probably provided adequate authority. But mindful of the old "rogue elephant"
charge, senior CIA managers may have wanted something on paper to show
that they were not acting on their own.
senior managers. James Pavitt, the assistant head of the Directorate of Opera-
tions, expressed concern that people might get killed; it appears he thought the
operation had at least a slight flavor of a plan for an assassination. Moreover, he
calculated that it would cost several million dollars. He was not prepared to take
that money "out of hide," and he did not want to go to all the necessary con-
gressional committees to get special money. Despite Pavitt's misgivings, the CIA
leadership cleared the draft memorandum and sent it on to the National Secu-
rity Council.
cent chance of success.The Center's chief,"Jeff," joined John O'Neill, the head
of the FBI's New York Field Office, in briefing Mary Jo White, the U.S.Attor-
ney for the Southern District of New York, and her staff. Though "Jeff " also
used the 30 percent success figure, he warned that someone would surely be
killed in the operation.White's impression from the New York briefing was that
the chances of capturing Bin Ladin alive were nil.
FBI also participated. The rehearsal went well. The Counterterrorist Center