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Rice, Hadley, and the NSC staff member for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad,
told us they opposed giving aid to the Northern Alliance alone.They argued that
the program needed to have a big part for Pashtun opponents of the Taliban.They
also thought the program should be conducted on a larger scale than had been
suggested.Clarke concurred with the idea of a larger program,but he warned that
delay risked the Northern Alliance's final defeat at the hands of the Taliban.
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During the spring, the CIA, at the NSC's request, had developed draft legal
authorities--a presidential finding--to undertake a large-scale program of
covert assistance to the Taliban's foes.The draft authorities expressly stated that
the goal of the assistance was not to overthrow the Taliban. But even this pro-
gram would be very costly. This was the context for earlier conversations, when
in March Tenet stressed the need to consider the impact of such a large pro-
gram on the political situation in the region and in May Tenet talked to Rice
about the need for a multiyear financial commitment.
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By July, the deputies were moving toward agreement that some last effort
should be made to convince the Taliban to shift position and then, if that failed,
the administration would move on the significantly enlarged covert action pro-
gram.As the draft presidential directive was circulated in July, the State Depart-
ment sent the deputies a lengthy historical review of U.S. efforts to engage the
Taliban about Bin Ladin from 1996 on. "These talks have been fruitless," the
State Department concluded.
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Arguments in the summer brought to the surface the more fundamental
issue of whether the U.S. covert action program should seek to overthrow the
regime, intervening decisively in the civil war in order to change Afghanistan's
government. By the end of a deputies meeting on September 10, officials for-
mally agreed on a three-phase strategy. First an envoy would give the Taliban a
last chance. If this failed, continuing diplomatic pressure would be combined
with the planned covert action program encouraging anti-Taliban Afghans of
all major ethnic groups to stalemate the Taliban in the civil war and attack al
Qaeda bases, while the United States developed an international coalition to
undermine the regime. In phase three, if the Taliban's policy still did not change,
the deputies agreed that the United States would try covert action to topple
the Taliban's leadership from within.
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The deputies agreed to revise the al Qaeda presidential directive, then being
finalized for presidential approval, in order to add this strategy to it. Armitage
explained to us that after months of continuing the previous administration's
policy, he and Powell were bringing the State Department to a policy of over-
throwing the Taliban. From his point of view, once the United States made the
commitment to arm the Northern Alliance, even covertly, it was taking action
to initiate regime change, and it should give those opponents the strength to
achieve complete victory.
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Pakistan.
The Bush administration immediately encountered the dilemmas
that arose from the varied objectives the United States was trying to accom-
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THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
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