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Tag: National Security Archive

  • Osama Bin Laden Killing Declassified Documents Bio

    I will be posting a series of Documents on the Assassination of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

    These files have been declassified and give an insight into the operation against Osama Bin Laden.

    “Washington, D.C., May 2, 2011 – The Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, killed in Pakistan by U.S. special operations forces yesterday, ranked as “one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic terrorist activities in the world” as early as 1996, according to declassified U.S. documents posted on the web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

    The Osama Bin Laden File includes the CIA’s 1996 biographic sketch [Transcription], the infamous President’s Daily Brief from 6 August 2001 warning “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” a State Department issue paper from 2005 reporting that “some Taliban leaders operate with relative impunity in some Pakistan cities,” the 400-page Sandia National Laboratories profile of Bin Laden focusing on the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2006 State Department cable on the Taliban’s regrouping in Pakistan’s tribal areas making them “a sanctuary beyond the reach of either Government,” the demands made on Pakistan right after 9/11 by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and theonly known conversation between the U.S. government and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

    Osama Bin Laden
    Osama Bin Laden

    *             *             *

    One of the earlier publicly available documentary mentions of Bin Laden comes from a 1996 CIA bio sketch entitled “Usama Bin Laden: Islamic Extremist Financer” [Transcription]. It describes Bin Laden, “who joined the Afghan resistance movement in 1979,” as “one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world.” According to The New York Times, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the CIA actually helped Bin Laden – who supplied construction equipment from his family’s company in Saudi Arabia – to construct the Tora Bora complex as a base to fight the Soviets.  According to Bin Laden, “The [Mujahidin’s] weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis.”

    Almost a decade later, Bin Laden would make good use of his earlier investment. A 1997 State Department cable reported that he had likely retreated into hiding at Tora Bora, stating “bin Ladin had lived in caves south of Jalalabad in Tora Bora and the Taliban had become suspicious.” In December 2001, US troops engaged in a fierce firefight at Tora Bora, hoping to smoke out the Al Qaeda leader. The Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were overrun but Bin Laden was not among the killed or captured.

    The earlier CIA bio indicates that after the 1989 victory over the Soviets, Bin Laden, while living in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, created “a network of al-Qaida recruitment centers and guesthouses in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and has enlisted and sheltered thousands of Arab recruits.” The document also accused Bin Laden of “providing financial support” for the 1992 bombings against US servicemen in Somalia, “at least three terrorist training camps in Sudan” and one in Afghanistan, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

    In mid-1996, Bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan where he lived and operated under the umbrella of the Taliban. From there, he plotted the August 1998 bombings of two American embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed hundreds and wounded thousands more. In response, President Bill Clinton authorized the first U.S. official attempt to kill him. The problem was how to find him.  While CIA and U.S. military personnel tried to come up with actionable intelligence on his whereabouts, American diplomats in Afghanistan attempted to persuade Bin Laden’s Taliban hosts to give him up.  AState Department cable provided an unusual window into the bizarre negotiations, including recording the suggestion by a Taliban intermediary that the U.S. “arrange for bin Laden to be assassinated” because the Taliban could do nothing to prevent it.

    In 1999, Sandia National Laboratories compiled a 400-page profile of Bin Laden – far more comprehensive than the CIA’s brief 1996 sketch, and no doubt reflecting his stratospheric rise in importance to the United States. The report found that the African embassy attacks did not take the U.S. by surprise, given its existing counterterrorism intelligence capabilities.  It added that the retaliatory cruise missile strikes orderd by Clinton – which unfortunately destroyed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant and killed several suspected terrorists training in Afghanistan instead of their intended targets – “did little to help solve the problem posed by bin Laden and may ultimately prove to have done more harm than good.” The Sandia analysts concluded – chillingly – that the bombings showed “The ‘war’ on terrorism will never be ‘won.’”

    On 25 January 2001 the National Security Council’s senior counterterroism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, sent a now-famous memo to incoming National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice which warned, “al Qida is not some narrow, little terrorist issue that needs to be included in broader regional policy.” The memo referenced the Al Qaeda suicide attack on USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39 others.  Clarke recommended that the United States “respond at a time, place, and manner of our own choosing,” pleading, “we urgently need … a Principals level review on the al Qida network [emphasis in original].”

    Less than nine months later, nineteen Al Qaeda operative hijacked four planes and struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

     Laboratories, “Osama bin Laden: A Case Study,” December 6,

     

    But the stepped-up pressure failed to produce all the desired results, and Pakistan soon became protected territory for the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Immediately after September 11, according to an unnamed Pakistani security official, “the tribes were overawed by US firepower.” But by the time this quote was made to a senior State Department in Islamabad (reported in an embassy cable on 13 November 2002), “that window had closed.” The Federally Administered Tribal Areas were once again “no go areas.”

    Three years later, in late 2005, the situation had not changed.  Despite Pakistan’s formal denials that it was a safe haven for anti-American forces, a State Department Issue Paper for the Vice President confirmed that indeed “some Taliban leaders operate with relative impunity in some Pakistani cities, and may still enjoy support from the lower echelons of Pakistan’s ISI.”

    Source:

    http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB343/index.htm

    Source.

    NSA Archives.

    Related;

    http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB343/osama_bin_laden_file04.pdf

    Related articles

  • This is How US would Wage A Nuclear War-Declassified Documents.

    Declassified Documents released by the US on Foreign Policy during Jimmy Carter,Brezhnev era reveal how the US will wage the Nuclear War and its counter measures to Nuclear Strike.( National Security Archive,The George Washington University)

    Read On’

    Signed by President Jimmy Carter on July 25, 1980, the directive (titled “Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy”) aimed to give presidents more flexibility in planning for and executing a nuclear war — that is, options beyond a massive strike. Leaks of the document’s Top Secret contents, within weeks of its approval, gave rise to front-page stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post, alleging that its changes to U.S. strategy lowered the threshold of a decision to go nuclear.

    With other recently declassified material, PD-59 shows that the United States was indeed preparing to fight a nuclear war, with the hope of enduring. To do this, it sought a nuclear force posture that ensured a “high degree of flexibility, enduring survivability, and adequate performance in the face of enemy actions.” If deterrence failed, the United States “must be capable of fighting successfully so that the adversary would not achieve his war aims and would suffer costs that are unacceptable.”

    Perhaps even more remarkable than this guidance is the fact that, although the Obama administration is conducting a review of U.S. nuclear targeting guidance, key concepts behind PD-59 still drive U.S. policy to this day.

    The National Security Archive obtained the virtually unexpurgated document in response to a mandatory declassification review request to the Jimmy Carter Library. Highly classified for years, PD-59 was signed during a period of heightened Cold War tensions owing to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, greater instability in the Middle East, and earlier strains over China policy, human rights, the Horn of Africa, and Euromissiles. Press coverage at the time elicited debate inside and outside the government, with some arguing that the directive would aggravate Cold War tensions by increasing Soviet fears about vulnerability and raising pressures for launch-on-warning in a crisis.

    A key element of PD-59 was to use high-tech intelligence to find nuclear weapons targets in battlefield situations, strike the targets, and then assess the damage — a “look-shoot-look” capability. A memorandum from NSC military aide William Odom depicted Secretary of Defense Harold Brown doing exactly that in a recent military exercise where he was “chasing [enemy] general purpose forces in East Europe and Korea with strategic weapons.” That is, he was planning how to use large nuclear weapons to defeat conventional troops. Drafters of PD-59 like Odom did not believe that deploying weapons in this way would necessarily result in apocalypse — they believed they could control escalation during a nuclear war.

    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 390

    Posted – September 14, 2012

    For more information contact:
    William Burr –     202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu

    National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski sitting to the right of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. While Brzezinski kept Vance in the loop on the nuclear targeting review, eventually the State Department was cut out. (Photo from National Archives Still Pictures Branch, RG 59-SO, box 18)
    Zbigniew Brzezinski’s military assistant Colonel William E. Odom played a central role in drafting PD-59 (Photo from William E. Odom Papers, box 30, Library of Congress Manuscript Division).
    President Jimmy Carter greeting Secretary of State Edmund Muskie at a reception at the close of the administration. (Photo from National Archives Still Pictures Branch, RG 59-SE, box 8, file VS-121-81)
    An exmple of the extensive press coverage of PD-59 during August 1980, The Washington Post, August 6, 1980.

    Washington, D.C., September 14, 2012 – The National Security Archive is today posting – for the first time in its essentially complete form – one of the most controversial nuclear policy directives of the Cold War. Presidential Directive 59 (PD-59), “Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy,” signed by President Jimmy Carter on 25 July 1980, aimed at giving U.S. Presidents more flexibility in planning for and executing a nuclear war, but leaks of its Top Secret contents, within weeks of its approval, gave rise to front-page stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post that stoked wide-spread fears about its implications for unchecked nuclear conflict.

    The National Security Archive obtained the virtually unexpurgated document in response to a mandatory declassification review request to the Jimmy Carter Library [See Document 12]. Highly classified for years, PD 59 was signed during a period of heightened Cold War tensions owing to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, greater instability in the Middle East, and earlier strains over China policy, human rights, the Horn of Africa, and Euromissiles.

    In this context, the press coverage quickly generated controversy by raising apprehensions that alleged changes in U.S. strategy might lower the threshold of a decision by either side to go nuclear, which could inject dangerous uncertainty into the already fragile strategic balance. The press coverage elicited debate inside and outside the government, with some arguing that the PD would aggravate Cold War tensions by increasing Soviet fears about vulnerability and raising pressures for launch-on-warning in a crisis. Adding to the confusion was the fact that astonishingly, even senior government officials who had concerns about the directive did not have access to it.

    With other recently declassified material related to PD-59, today’s publication helps settle the mystery of what Jimmy Carter actually signed, [1] as well as shedding light on the origins of PD-59 and some of its consequences. Among the disclosures are a variety of fascinating insights about the thinking of key U.S. officials about the state of nuclear planning and the possible progression of events should war break out:

    • PD-59 sought a nuclear force posture that ensured a “high high degree of flexibility, enduring survivability, and adequate performance in the face of enemy actions.” If deterrence failed, the United States “must be capable of fighting successfully so that the adversary would not achieve his war aims and would suffer costs that are unacceptable.” To make that feasible, PD-59 called for pre-planned nuclear strike options and capabilities for rapid development of target plans against such key target categories as “military and control targets,” including nuclear forces, command-and-control, stationary and mobile military forces, and industrial facilities that supported the military. Moreover, the directive stipulated strengthened command-control-communications and intelligence (C3I) systems.
    • President Carter’s first instructions on the U.S. nuclear force posture, in PD-18, “U.S. National Strategy,” supported “essential equivalence”, which rejected a “strategic force posture inferior to the Soviet Union” or a “disarming first strike” capability, and also sought a capability to execute “limited strategic employment options.”
    • A key element of PD-59 was to use high-tech intelligence to find nuclear weapons targets in battlefield situations, strike the targets, and then assess the damage-a “look-shoot-look” capability. A memorandum from NSC military aide William Odom depicted Secretary of Defense Harold Brown doing exactly that in a recent military exercise where he was “chasing [enemy] general purpose forces in East Europe and Korea with strategic weapons.”
    • The architects of PD-59 envisioned the possibility of protracted nuclear war that avoided escalation to all-out conflict. According to Odom’s memorandum, “rapid escalation” was not likely because national leaders would realize how “vulnerable we are and how scarce our nuclear weapons are.” They would not want to “waste” them on non-military targets and “days and weeks will pass as we try to locate worthy targets.”
    • An element of PD-59 that never leaked to the press was a pre-planned option for launch-on-warning. It was included in spite of objections from NSC staffers, who saw it as “operationally a very dangerous thing.”
    • Secretary of State Edmund Muskie was uninformed about PD-59 until he read it about in the newspapers, according to a White House chronology. The State Department had been involved in early discussions of nuclear targeting policy, but National Security Adviser Brzezinski eventually cut out the Department on the grounds that targeting is “so closely related to military contingency planning, an activity that justly remains a close-hold prerogative and responsibility” of the Pentagon.
    • The drafters of PD 59 accepted controversial ideas that the Soviets had a concept of victory in nuclear war and already had limited nuclear options. Marshall Shulman, the Secretary of State’s top adviser on Soviet affairs, had not seen PD-59 but questioned these ideas in a memorandum to Secretary Muskie: “We may be placing more weight on the Soviet [military] literature than is warranted.” If the Soviets perused U.S. military writing, it could “easily convince them that we have such options and such beliefs.” Post-Cold War studies suggest that Shulman was correct because the Soviet leadership realized that neither side could win a nuclear war and had little confidence in the Soviet Union’s ability to survive a nuclear conflict.
    • http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb390/

  • CIA- New Declassified 9/11 Documents.

    Goof ups?

    CIA's File on Osama Bin Laden
    CIA File on Osama Bin Laden

    “In the months before the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the CIA unit dedicated to hunting for Osama bin Laden complained that it was running out of money, and analysts considered the likelihood of catching the terror leader to be extremely low, according to government records published Tuesday.

    The declassified documents, dated between 1992 and 2004, are heavily blacked out and offer little new information about what the U.S. knew about the al-Qaida plot before 2001. Many of the files are cited in the 9/11 Commission report, published in 2004. The commission determined the failure that led to 9/11 was a lack of imagination, and U.S. intelligence agencies did not connect the dots that could have prevented the attacks.

    Though few new details are revealed in the documents, the files offer more historical context for the years surrounding the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

    The National Security Archive obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request and published them on its website Tuesday. The archive is a private group seeking transparency in government.

    An April 2000 document from the CIA’s bin Laden unit alluded to a budgetary cash crunch that was cutting into the agency’s efforts to track the terror leader.

    At that time, al-Qaida was a major concern to U.S. intelligence agencies because of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed many, including two CIA employees. Bin Laden had declared a holy war against the U.S., and the CIA had received multiple warnings that al-Qaida intended to strike the U.S.

    “Need forward movement on supplemental soonest,” said a heavily blacked-out document titled “Islamic Extremist Update.” The supplemental budget was still being reviewed by the national security council and White House Office of Management and Budget. Because of budgetary constraints, the bin Laden unit would move from an “offensive to defensive posture,” the document said. This meant that officials feared they would have to shelve some of their more elaborate proposals to track al-Qaida and instead rely on existing resources.

    The “Uzbek Initiative,” referenced in the same document, was one of the more expensive programs the CIA ran at the time, according to a source familiar with the initiative. The program involved paying off CIA tipsters who monitored bin Laden followers traveling through Uzbekistan. The source spoke anonymously as a condition of describing the sensitive program.

    The documents do not make clear whether the portion of the budget in question was passed. But they hint at complaints later detailed publicly after the 9/11 attacks by previous directors of the bin Laden unit that the Bush and Clinton administrations did not fully appreciate the severity of the threat, and as a result failed to fully fund their operations.

    The documents also show that U.S. officials were concerned that bin Laden was using Afghanistan’s national airline to carry in vast cash reserves when he was sheltered by the ruling Taliban mullahs in the late 1990s. The CIA’s “National Intelligence Daily” in June 1999 urged the imposition of sanctions on Ariana Airlines, then controlled by the Taliban, in order to put pressure on bin Laden’s cash flow. His cash flow reportedly depended heavily on flights from the United Arab Emirates into Afghanistan.

    “Closing of Ariana’s UAE offices would force them to find alternative – and most likely less secure – carriers, routes and methods for moving bin Laden’s cash,” the document said. Later that year, the U.S. and United Nations imposed harsh sanctions on Afghanistan and its airline, shutting down all flights and closing Ariana’s offices abroad.

    The newly released files also offer details about the subsequent investigations into the attacks.

    In one case, the U.S. intelligence community investigated a link between one of the hijackers and the Iraqi Intelligence Service – a connection that was later proved false but that the White House used in its campaign to connect the attacks to Iraq.

    http://kstp.com/article/stories/s2662430.shtml

    Washington, D.C., June 19, 2012 – The National Security Archive today is posting over 100 recently released CIA documents relating to September 11, Osama bin Laden, and U.S. counterterrorism operations.  The newly-declassified records, which the Archive obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, are referred to in footnotes to the 9/11 Commission Report and present an unprecedented public resource for information about September 11.

    The collection includes rarely released CIA emails, raw intelligence cables, analytical summaries, high-level briefing materials, and comprehensive counterterrorism reports that are usually withheld from the public because of their sensitivity.  Today’s posting covers a variety of topics of major public interest, including background to al-Qaeda’s planning for the attacks; the origins of the Predator program now in heavy use over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran; al-Qaeda’s relationship with Pakistan; CIA attempts to warn about the impending threat; and the impact of budget constraints on the U.S. government’s hunt for bin Laden.

    Today’s posting is the result of a series of FOIA requests by National Security Archive staff based on a painstaking review of references in the 9/11 Commission Report.

    DOCUMENT HIGHLIGHTS

    The documents released by CIA detail the meticulousness of al-Qaeda’s plot against the United States and CIA attempts to counter the rising terrorist threat. A previously undisclosed raw intelligence report that became the basis for the December 4, 1998, President’s Daily Brief notes that five years before the actual attack, al-Qaeda operatives had successfully evaded security at a New York airport in a test-run for bin Laden’s plan to hijack a U.S. airplane. [1998-12-03]. CIA analytical reports also provide interesting insights into al-Qaeda’s evolving political strategies. “In our view, the hijackers were carefully selected with an eye to their operational and political value. For instance, the large number of Saudi nationals was most likely chosen not only because of the ease with which Saudi nationals could get US visas but also because Bin Ladin could send a message to the Saudi Royal family.” [2003-06-01]

    Reports on early attempts to apprehend bin Laden detail the beginning of the U.S. Predator drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “First Predator mission over Afghanistan [excised] September 7, 2000.” [1] “Twice in the fall of 2000, the Predator observed an individual most likely to be Bin Ladin; however we had no way at the time to react to this information.” [2004-03-19] American UAVs did not have sufficient weapons capabilities at the time the CIA likely spotted bin Laden in 2000 to fire on the suspect using the UAV.

    Al-Qaeda’s ties to Pakistan before September 11 are also noted in several documents. “Usama ((Bin Ladin))’s Islamic Army considered the Pakistan/Afghanistan area one region. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan serve as a regional base and training center for Islamic Army activities supporting Islamic insurgencies in Tajikistan, the Kashmir region and Chechnya. [Excised] The Islamic Army had a camp in Pakistan [Excised] purpose of the camp was to train and recruit new members, mostly from Pakistan.” [1997-07-14] While, “UBL elements in Pakistan reportedly plan to attack POTUS [U.S. President Clinton’s] plane with [excised] missiles if he visits Pakistan.” [2000-02-18]

    Similar to the 9/11 Commission Report, the document collection details repeated CIA warnings of the bin Laden terrorist threat prior to September 11. According to a January 2000 Top Secret briefing to the Director of Central Intelligence, disruption operations against the Millennium plot “bought time… weeks… months… but no more than one year” before al-Qaeda would strike. [2000-01-07] “A UBL attack against U.S. interests could occur at any time or any place. It is unlikely that the CIA will have prior warning about the time or place.” [1999-08-03] By September 2001, CIA counterterrorism officials knew a plot was developing but couldn’t provide policymakers with details. “As of Late August 2001, there were indications that an individual associated with al-Qa’ida was considering mounting terrorist operations in the United States, [Excised]. No further information is currently available in the timing of possible attacks or on the alleged targets in the United States.” [2001-08-24]

    Despite mounting warnings about al-Qaeda, the documents released today illustrate how prior to September 11, CIA counterterrorism units were lacking the funds to aggressively pursue bin Laden. “Budget concerns… CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level. Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections. Due to budgetary constraints… CTC/UBL [Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit] will move from offensive to defensive posture.” [2000-04-05]

    Although the collection is part of a laudable effort by the CIA to provide documents on events related to September 11, many of these materials are heavily redacted, and still only represent one-quarter of the CIA materials cited in the 9/11 Commission Report. Hundreds of cited reports and cables remain classified, including all interrogation materials such as the 47 reports from CIA interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from March 24, 2003 – June 15, 2004, which are referenced in detail in the 9/11 Report.

    • http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB381/
    • Let’s start there. In 2000 and 2001, the CIA began using Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan. “The idea of using UAVs originated in April 2000 as a result of a request from the NSC’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism to the CIA and the Department of Defense to come up with new ideas to go after the terrorists in Afghanistan,” a 2004 document summarizes. The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. For the CIA, that meant trying to get Afghan tribal leaders and the Northern Alliance to kill or capture bin Laden, Elias-Sanborn says. “It was forced to be less of a kinetic operation,” she says. “It had to be only for surveillance, which was not what they considered an offensive posture.”“Budget concerns … CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level,” an April 2000 document reads. “Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections.” In addition, the Air Force told the CIA that if it lost a drone, the CIA would have to pay for it, which made the agency more reluctant to use the technology.

      Still, the drone program began in September 2000. One drone swiftly twice observed an individual “most likely to have been Bin Laden.” But since the CIA only had permission to use the drones for intelligence gathering, it had no way to act on its findings. The agency submitted a proposal to the National Security Council staff in December 2000 that would have significantly expanded the program. “It was too late for the departing Clinton Administration to take action on this strategic request,” however. It wasn’t too late for the Bush administration, though. It just never did.

      http://digg.com/newsbar/worldnews/new_nsa_docs_contradict_9_11_claims