Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed To Get Bin Laden And Why It Matters Today
A Report To Members Of The Committee On Foreign Relations United States Senate
John F. Kerry, Chairman
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
NOVEMBER 30, 2009
1. Flight to Tora Bora
"A Controversial Fight"
Military and intelligence officers at Tora Bora have provided ample evidence that bin Laden was there. Al Qaeda detainees have maintained that he was there. And the Pentagon’s own summary of evidence in the case against a former senior jihadi commander at Guantanamo Bay concluded the detainee helped bin Laden escape. But the most authoritative and definitive unclassified government document on bin Laden’s location in December 2001 is the official history of the United States Special Operations Command.
The Special Operations Command, based alongside CentCom at MacDill Air Force Base, oversees the special forces of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The heavy reliance on special operations forces during the first stages of the Afghan campaign meant that the command played a central role in executing the war plan. Its units included the Delta Force team on the scene at Tora Bora. In preparing the official history of the command, a team of historians working for the command interviewed military and intelligence officials from every branch of the armed forces. The unclassified version of the history was published in 2007 and includes a lengthy section on the operations at Tora Bora.
The section opens by saying that bin Laden and a large contingent of Al Qaeda troops had fled the area around Kabul for Nangahar Province and its provincial capital, Jalalabad, in early November. ”Analysts within both the CIA and CentCom correctly speculated that UBL would make a stand along the northern peaks of the Spin Ghar Mountains at a place then called Tora Gora,” says the history. ”Tora Bora, as it was redubbed in December, had been a major stronghold of AQ for years and provided routes into Pakistan.” The history said bin Laden had ”undoubtedly” chosen to make his last stand there prior to the onset of winter, along with between 500 and 2,000 others, before escaping into Pakistan.
In the concluding passage assessing the battle of Tora Bora, the historians from the Special Operations Command wrote: ”What has since been determined with reasonable certainty was that UBL was indeed at Tora Bora in December 2001. All source reporting corroborated his presence on several days from 9-14 December. The fact that SOF (special operations forces) came as close to capture or killing UBL as U.S. forces have to date makes Tora Bora a controversial fight. Given the commitment of fewer than 100 American personnel, U.S. forces provide unable to block egress routes from Tora Bora south into Pakistan, the route that UBL most likely took.”
Franks declined to respond to any questions about the discrepancies about bin Laden’s location or the conclusion of the Special Operations Command historians. ”We really don’t have time for this,” one of his aides, retired Col. Michael T. Hayes, wrote in an email to the Committee staff. ”Focused on the future, not the past. Gen Franks made his decisions, based on the intel at the time.”
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