Blowback - S4 Episode 7 - "Guns of the Patriots"

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

The Bush administration unleashes the first war of the 21st century.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On November 15, 2001, several weeks into the U.S. war in Afghanistan, there was an odd incident. In northern Afghanistan, Northern Alliance commanders outside Kunduz reported seeing Pakistani aircraft fly into the city. There, writes Ahmed Rashid, hundreds of ISI officers, Taliban commanders, and al-Qaeda personnel, boarded the planes. Perhaps as many as 1,000 people escaped. The New York Times confirmed the flights at the end of the month, though the Pentagon would deny that they ever took place. Was Pakistan undermining the U.S. campaign by sneaking agents out of Afghanistan? Apparently not.

Seymour Hirsch reported that these commanders and soldiers, quote, were indeed flown to safety in a series of nighttime airlifts, but that they were approved by the Bush administration. Hirsch reported that the Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders were indeed among those who escaped. Hamid Karzai would later confirm this. A U.S. analyst told Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. The request was made by Musharraf to Bush,

but Dick Cheney took charge. The approval was not shared with anyone at the State Department, including Colin Powell. until well after. The CIA could have insisted, Rashid writes, that it monitor all those who got off the planes in Pakistan, but it made no such demand. After this event, Cheney took charge

of all future dealings with Musharraf and the Pakistani army. Oh, this is the guy. This is the guy. I got the guy. I got the guy. I got the guy. I got the guy. I got the guy.

Welcome to blowback. Welcome to blowback. I'm Brendan James. And I'm Noah Coleman. And this is Season 4, Episode 7, Guns of the Patriots. Last time, we saw the Taliban close the book on its its conquest of Afghan territory, and saw how enemy warlords regrouped under a new name, the Northern Alliance. And we further saw how, after being kicked out of Sudan, Osama bin Laden made his home in Afghanistan. From its Central Asian headquarters, the Bin Laden group organized terror attacks across the world, which culminated in the operation executed on September 11, 2001. The American response to 9-11 was swift. By the end of the month,

Operation Enduring Freedom had been drawn up, and President George W. Bush had delivered a televised death threat to the Taliban. War was coming again to Afghanistan. This episode, we'll see how the Taliban government fell apart, and Osama got away, and we'll look at the man that the Americans would install at the top of the new Afghan government, Hamid Karzai. Corruption ran rampant, among both the Afghan war,

landlords and their American counterparts, called contractors in the parlance of the occupation, and at home, high-ranking Bush officials, members of Congress, the nation's premier spooks, and its top military brass, activated long-standing plans to overhaul America's national security state. Kids like you express themselves every day. on Disney Channel. One of the positive sides of September 11th is that it's brought so many people together.

And I think people look at life so much more differently now. And I think our country has changed a lot. You know, we've come together. We've united. We've learned to work together as one nation and as one people. Everyone's like together, you know? And it's just a better feeling. It's amazing to actually see that, that unity.

You still see people wearing the flags or putting the flags on their cars, and it's just amazing to see that. Disney Channel, express yourself. In the days and weeks after September 11th, FBI director Robert Mueller, fresh to the job, said, quote, he didn't know how the hijackers had taken over the planes,

writes White House scribe Bob Woodward. But, quote, the CIA and the FBI had evidence of connections between at least three of the 19 hijackers and bin Laden and his training camps in Afghanistan. It was consistent with intelligence reporting all summer, showing that bin Laden had been planning spectacular attacks against U.S. targets. President Bush would later recall that he had two thoughts at this moment.

Quote, this was a war in which people were going to have to die. Secondly, I was not a military tactician. End quote. Both things were plainly true. The military tactics would be left to do. General Tommy Franks, the commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command. But Franks had told Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that it would take months to get forces in the region and plans drawn up for a major military assault in Afghanistan.

You don't have months, Rumsfeld said. He wanted Franks thinking in days or weeks. Quote, Afghanistan was not well understood by the Pentagon's high command, writes Steve Cole. The feeling among the chiefs of the Army, Air Force Navy, and Marines, as one general put it to Cole, was, where is Afghanistan? Where are the maps? Now, unfortunately for the United States, the Taliban did not pose a military threat, so much as a military quandary. American war planners soon found that the Taliban had few, quote, unquote, major target for the U.S. to blow up, writes journalist Sean Naylor. Quote, there was a small antique Air Force that the U.S. and her allies would soon put out of action, he writes. But no major early

warning systems, armored division, or naval shipyards against which to deliver devastating attacks. The same was true on a smaller scale for al-Qaeda. It was, after all, Donald Rumsfeld, who in the days after 9-11 suggested Iraq as the spot to bomb, simply because it had better, more plentiful targets. Unlike the vast and mountainous Afghanistan, Iraq was chock full of metropolitan areas and industrial strongholds, even after a decade of U.S. sanctions that brought it near famine. And, of course, Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, was downright fanatical about pinning the blame for 9-11 on Saddam.

But, as the president put it in one national security meeting, many believe Saddam is involved with 9-11. That's not an issue for now. If we catch him being involved, we'll act. He probably was behind this in the end, end quote. And so the hunt for Afghan targets commenced. Quote, we were being pressured enormously by Rumsfeld to do things and come up with ideas, one Pentagon official told Naylor.

All the organizations were told find targets, end quote. In less than a week, the bombing target roster had stretched to include oil production facilities, as well as a fertilizer plant in Mazzari Sharif. The Pentagon staffer's work was soon kicked up to the highest level, and it included more than just bombing targets. Just before a White House meeting on Afghanistan operations, one senior national security official noticed a presentation slide titled, Thinking Outside the Box, Poisoning Food Supply.

That struck me as wrong, the official said. The slide was scrapped from the meeting. Over at the Central Intelligence Agency, a similar Anything Goes mindset took root. Michael Vickers, the former military Wunderkind of the CIA's Afghan Op in the 1980s, he was working at a think tank these days, but not for long. Quote, there is a sign as you enter one of the most important offices in CIA's Counterterrorism Center, writes Vickers in a recent memoir.

It's a picture of the Burning World Trade Center towers, and above it reads, Today is September 12, 2001. And so the Bush administration would head into Afghanistan, Bickers writes, with the CIA in the lead. What did the CIA in the lead look like? Powerpoints by George Tenet, the head of the CIA, and counter-terror chief Koffer Black, spelled things out. Agency paramilitary teams and opposition forces in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, would team up in a classic covert action. Quote, they would then be combined with U.S. military power and special forces into an elaborate and lethal package, records Bob Woodward.

With the CIA teams and tons of money, the squabbling warlords of the Northern Alliance could be brought, or perhaps the word is bought, together. Facing the combined troops of Rashid Dostom, Abdul-Hawk, and those of the late Ahmed Shah Masoud, the Taliban and al-Qaeda would be wiped out in short order. quote, when we're through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs, said Kouffer Black. It was an image of death that left a lasting impression on a number of war cabinet members. Black became known in Bush's inner circle as, quote, the flies on the eyeballs guy.

As we covered last time, the Bush administration had a plan to invade Afghanistan even before the attacks on September 11th. The CIA's Afghanistan plan had been in the works for months, Woodward notes, but CIA director George Tenet now told Bush an even more expanded plan would soon be presented for approval, and it would be very expensive. Whatever it takes, the president said. That same day, the CIA warned that, via Indian intelligence, they had gathered reports that Pakistani jihadists were planning an attack on the White House.

Bracing for one of many attacks that never came, Bush ordered a hamburger for lunch to wait out the emergency. A staffer advised that his boss might as well add cheese. The first weekend after 9-11 was when George Tenant left his most visible stamp on American foreign policy. Tenant later recalled on the 15th of September, We suggested using armed predator UAVs, drones, to kill bin Laden's key lieutenants. We were going to strangle their safe haven in Afghanistan, seal the borders, go after the leadership, shut off their money, and pursue al-Qaeda terrorists in 92 countries around the world.

In the upper left-hand corner of one of Tenants' PowerPoint slides, writes Bob Woodward, was a picture of bin Laden inside a red circle with a slash superimposed over. his face. The next day, Tennant issued a now infamous memo to his own staff. Its subject line simply said, we are at war. There can be no bureaucratic impediments to success, Tenant warned in the text. All the rules have changed. Nor was Tenet operating in a vacuum. The highest levels of the American government in September 2001 acted with rare uniformity. Rumsfeld, in particular, having issued his own jihad against the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, only a day before September 11th, wanted the first war of the 21st century to look and feel like a war in the

21st century. Planning for Afghanistan, the defense secretary noted Cattily that, quote, the military options look like five or ten years ago, quote, a direct swipe at the uniformed military planners, writes Woodward. He also offered, quote, some thoughts on controlling information need tighter control over public affairs. Treat it like a political campaign with daily talking points, end quote. Rumsfeld himself, more than any press secretary, would soon relish the role as chief spokesman for the war. And, foreshadowing many things to come, President Bush told his inner circle, we'll just have to put some of the most sensitive stuff, not on paper.

And tonight, the United States of America, makes the following demand. on the Taliban. Deliver to United States authorities, all the leaders of Al-Qaeda who hide in your land. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist

and every person in their support structure to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are out open to negotiation or discussion. There would of course need to be a campaign on the world stage, a UN resolution to put a rubber stamp on the American policy, and deals to get done with allies about things like troops, flight paths, and military bases.

Much of the work of assembling an international coalition was left to Secretary of State, Colin Powell, writes Woodward. But President Bush personally called, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and also spoke with the leaders of France, Germany, Canada, and China. Russia and NATO issued an unprecedented joint statement of support. China, meanwhile, was, quote, extremely reluctant, writes Ahmed Rashid, to see U.S. troops based a few hundred miles from its border. But China's major security thrust was to deter the Central Asian states from providing any support to the ethnic Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, which it viewed as a

hotspot of violent separatism. Uzbekistan, located directly north of Afghanistan, was valuable territory and therefore near the top of the list of potential deals to be made for any American leader. Here, Russia was happy to help, quote, overnight Moscow began to play the role of conciliator and ally to the U.S. On September 17th, Putin hosted a meeting of all Central Asian leaders in Moscow to hammer out a joint stand on the basis issue. And how about America's decades-old boogeyman, the Islamic Republic of Iran?

The sensitive task of wooing Iran was handled by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, writes Rashid. The Iranian leader, President Mohamed Khatami, was amenable to a war that would see Iran. Iran's hated enemy, the Taliban, destroyed. Straw visited Tehran and the Islamic Republic promised to provide search and rescue help if U.S. pilots were shot down and deployed its military to seal its 560-mile border with Afghanistan. During this time, Bush met privately with the head of the American Red Cross. Keep collecting blood, the president said. Get my drift.

Senator from Delaware. Mr. President, my mom has an expression. Out of every tragedy, something good will come if you look hard enough. In mid-September, Congress passed an authorization for the use of military force, or the AUMF, that became the political permission slip for the global war on terror. We gave the president today, as we should have and as is our responsibility, all the authority he needs to prosecute these individuals or countries. To my good friend and distinguished colleague from California, Ms. Waters.

Mr. President, I'm going to vote yes on this resolution. However, I vote yes with great reservations. To be honest, Mr. President, I do not. know what this means. The language of this resolution can be interpreted in different ways. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield one minute to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Pence. May God have mercy on their souls because the United States of America will not. A month later, the infamous surveillance bill, the Patriot Act, was passed into law. This law will give intelligence and law enforcement officials important new tools.

to fight a present danger. I want to thank the Vice President and his staff for working hard to make sure this law was passed. I want to thank Attorney General John Ashcroft. I want to thank the director of the FBI and the director of the CIA for waging an incredibly important part on the two front war, one overseas and a front here at home." Quote that autumn, the CIA's counterterrorist center grew chaotically to about 2,000, full-time personnel, writes Steve Cole. Its Office of Terrorism Analysis alone

ballooned from 25 to 300. This monumental new policy regime was summoned into existence within a matter of weeks after 9-11. On September 17th, the day after George Tenets we're at war memo, President Bush signed his own memorandum.

This authorized the CIA to initiate a new covert action targeting al-Qaeda as well as allocating the agency fresh funding, which would eventually carry into the billions. As listeners may recall, George W. Bush's father, H.W., he had once been director of the CIA,

and during his tenure in the 1970s, the agency was consumed by scandal, assassination plots. Well, now it was junior's turn to take a crack at an assassination's policy. W's memo, six days after 9-11, allowed the CIA to conduct targeted killing operations, also known as assassinations.

This Bush document also provided, in the words of a CIA report, authorization for CIA to undertake operations designed to capture and detain persons who pose a continuing serious threat of violence or death to U.S. persons and interests or who are planning terrorist activities. In other words, there would be more than just assassination. There would also be kidnapping, rendition, detention, and, soon enough, torture. On September 18th, Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, and CIA counter-terror chief,

Kofor Black, took a trip to Moscow, sticks, and carrots in hand. Quote, we're in a war, Black, told the Russians, we're coming to Afghanistan, regardless of What you do, we're coming anyway. At the very least, we want you to look away, end quote. But it was clear by now that Vladimir Putin, whose government had sent America warnings before 9-11, regarding Muslim extremism, would be cooperative. Still, one Russian official noted, quote, with regret, I have to say you're really going to get the hell kicked out of you.

Black scoffed, we're going to kill them, he said. We're going to put their heads on sticks. we're going to rock their world. A few days later, President Bush called President Putin. The two spoke for almost 45 minutes. We are going to support you in the war on terror, Putin said. He would not go so far as to offer troops, writes Woodward, but said, quote, we are prepared to provide search and rescue

if you have downed pilots in northern Afghanistan. I am prepared to tell the heads of governments of the Central Asian states that we have good relation and that we have no objection to a U.S. role in Central Asia. Putin made good on his word, and National Security Advisor Condi Rice, who had a Ph.D. in Russia studies, was surprised.

It was a significant concession. It seemed, thought Condi Rice, that Putin wanted not just to move from being enemies to neutral, but all the way to embracing a sense of common security between Russia and America. I'm here to help, was the message. A formal deal was finally struck, between Moscow and Washington on September 22nd.

We found many areas in which we can cooperate. We've found some areas where we disagree, but nevertheless our disagreements will not divide us as nations that need to combine to make the world more peaceful. Our objective is a common, both for the United States and for Russia. The objective is to achieve security for our states, for our nations, and for the entire world.

What did Putin get out of it? Well, in return for Putin's help, Bush promised to desist from criticizing Russia's controversial war in Chechnya and to consult with Moscow before taking any steps in Central Asia, while promising to help accelerate Russia's integration into Western economic institutions. And it gives me a great pleasure to deal and to work with President Bush, who is a person, a man who does what he says. The first CIA officers inside Afghanistan arrived on September 26th by helicopter in the Panshear Valley to liaise with the Northern Alliance.

Northern Alliance spymasters set up shop with the CIA, where agency men had, quote, carried in 10 million in boxed cash. They handed out bundles of it like candy on Halloween, writes Steve Cole. Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who had once been pals with Osama bin Laden, got $100,000 in cash. He would use it to essentially buy the town of Pakman on the outskirts of Kabul, famous for its beautiful gardens. Serving as top bagman was Gary Shrown, an old CIA hand from the anti-Soviet jihad days.

Shrown had been ready to retire only days earlier until Kofor Black called him in for one last job. And as he flew into Northern Alliance territory, Woodward writes, between Gary Shrohn's legs was a large strapped metal suitcase that contained $3 million in the United States currency, non-sequential $100 bills. He always laughed when he saw a television show or a movie where someone passed $1 million in a small attache case. Shroen knew it just wouldn't fit. Within several hours,

Gary Shrown would lay $1 million on the table across from General Mohamed Fahim, the successor to Ahmed Shammu Sued. It must have felt like old times. When does the war start? Fahim asked. I don't know, Shroon said, but it will be soon. You're going to be impressed. You have never seen anything like what we're going to deliver onto the enemy. The cases full of dollar bills they received

would allow the warlords to build huge houses in Kabul and the Penshire Valley after the war, writes Ahmed Rashid, set themselves up in business as suppliers of goods and local manpower to U.S. bases, ply the drug trade, and play the region's currency markets. I want him help. I want, I want justice. And there's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said wanted, dead or alive.

September 19th, you have one mission. The CIA's counterterrorism guru Kouffer Black, instructed Gary Shrohn. Go find the al-Qaeda and kill them. We're going to eliminate them. Get bin Laden, find him. I want his head in a box. You're serious. asked Gary. Absolutely, Black said. Quote, I want to take it down and show the president. Well, that couldn't be any clearer, Shron said. The team, on its way there, was literally flying in a Russian-made MI-17 helicopter transport, making sure to evade any fire from the Stingers and Z-23s that the U.S. had made sure the very same Afghan militants had received a decade earlier. By about 6 p.m., The Americans had their secure comms up.

Gary sent a classified cable asking for some resupply, and mindful of Kofor Black's request about Bin Laden's head, he added a line to the cable, requesting some heavy-duty cardboard boxes and dry ice, and, if possible, some pikes. America's heart has been wounded, but her spirit her spirit

shines as a beacon of freedom a beacon of freedom that never has been nor ever will be extinguished the World Wrestling Federation would like to thank each and every one of you here in the Compact Center tonight meanwhile in after

Afghanistan, some in the Taliban government urged Mullah Omar to hand over bin Laden. The Council of Clerics, the highest religious body in the land, ruled that bin Laden should be asked to leave. The Taliban foreign minister even traveled to meet with American officials in Islamabad to discuss the mechanics. Top deputies met covertly there with the CIA's Islamabad station chief in hopes of arranging bin Laden's transfer to a neutral third country, writes Adnan Gopal. But Washington stood firm on its position of an unconditional handover. And Mullah Omar was listening most of all to his Pakistani intelligence advisors. One long-time ISI handler, writes Gall, urged Omar to ignore the demands to handover bin Laden and resist the American attacks. Mullah Omar, realizing his position,

became depressed and paranoid, according to Gopal. He slept in a bunker with a gas mask next to his bed, fearful of a potential chemical weapons attack, a fear now incidentally shared by millions of Americans due to the new anthrax scare sweeping the country. By October, as the CIA's paramilitary plan carried on, Bush was already thinking about his war as something other than retaliation for 9-11.

Quote, we're going to go after the hosts and the parents, parasites, he said. It's a broader war. If we don't get Osama, it doesn't mean it's a failure. Osama bin Laden is just one person. He is representative of networks of people. Just one month after the attacks, the White House seemed to be saying it might be a foregone conclusion that bin Laden himself is ungetable. In the north, American troops and North, American troops and Northern Alliance forces were advancing from the Uzbek and Tajik borders. Uzbekistan in particular had been the subject of high-stakes negotiations with the U.S.

The Americans had wanted a large base floating just above Afghanistan. The Uzbeks wanted full NATO membership, but that was out of the question. So what could be offered instead? Americans were rich, and the Uzbeks wanted things like $50 million in loans from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, end quote. And, of course, Uzbekistan, like many an American client, had their own fundamentalists, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, one of the many jihadi movements that grew out of the Afghan jihad of the 1980s. The post-Soviet kleptocracy wheeled and dealt until Colin Powell granted them a backroom deal

in exchange for hosting a U.S. military installation, known as K2. The U.S. paid Uzbekistan in initial $15 million. But by the end of 2002, Uzbekistan would receive $120 million in military equipment and training to their army, $55 million in credits, and another $82 million for intel services, writes Rashid. The same agencies that were to help the CIA render al-Qaeda prisoners and torture Uzbek civilians. By mid-October, more than 2,000 troops from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division were at K2 ready to invade Afghanistan. It would serve as a wonderful base of operations floating above Afghanistan, but not a particularly good home for the soldiers. McClatchy would later report that the soldiers

stationed there, claimed that chemical and radioactive debris on site poisoned at least 61 of them with various cancers. Uzbekistan set the standard for its Central Asian neighbors in the global war on terror. Tajikistan hosted French Mirage fighter bombers. Later, Kyrgyzstan was to provide bases for U.S. and coalition forces and aircraft, and Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided overflight facilities for U.S. aircraft. So, by October 2001, the Uzbekistan base was coming together, special forces were flowing into the Gulf dictatorship of Oman, and more had set sale on the USS carrier, Kitty Hawk. Around this time, President Bush reportedly asked a valuable question. Who will run Afghanistan? National security advisor Condoleezza Rice thought to herself,

we should have addressed that. The American Airs, The American Airs, the American Air, campaign in Afghanistan commenced on the night of October 7th. This marked the official beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. Earlier we had heard from both Kandahar and close to Jalalabad talking about attacks in the last hour or so. In Kandahar, reached by telephone at or by radio at the airport, they're saying that the command center had been hit, the radar station had been hit. More bombing runs would follow. As more than a thousand soldiers, primarily special forces units were deployed that month.

It's very good. I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you, and I hate doing it. The Secretary of Defense has just walked in to the Pentagon. He's about to start his briefing. He just got back in the country on Saturday. Quote, the best target that was developing was in the north around Kabul, Woodward writes. From intelligence, it looked like a place where al-Qaeda could be making chemical or biological weapons. Later, American intelligence discovered that it was a plant that made agricultural fertilizer. I think I've said repeatedly from this podium that they're not a lot of high value targets. I pointed out that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda do not have armies, navies, and air forces. And that's clear. They don't. I've therefore characterized this

conflict, this campaign, this so-called war, as being notably different from others. Later that same morning, the president met with King Abdullah of Jordan. Jordan was providing fantastic intelligence cooperation, Woodward writes, and receiving millions in CIA covert action funds to assist in the roundup of suspected terrorists. Our nation is still somewhat sad, Bush told the king, but we're angry. There's a certain level of bloodlust, but we won't let it drive our reaction. We're steady, clear-eyed, and patient, Bush said. but pretty soon

we'll have to start displaying scalps. Secretary, was Osama Ben Laden targeted in this raid, and can you give us understanding that it's still early any preliminary assessment of how successful these are tested?

No, it's far too early to try to measure success, and the answer is no with respect to him. This is not about a single individual. It's about an entire terrorist network and multiple terrorist networks across the globe. By now, the CIA had already been renditioning suspected U.S. enemies abroad. Quote, various foreign intelligence services

were either cooperating or were being bought off to take suspected terrorists into custody, according to Woodward. In countries such as Egypt, Jordan, or certain African states where civil liberties and due process were not significant issues, the intelligence services were more than willing to accommodate CIA requests. You spoke of multiple terrorist networks in multiple countries. Is this phase of the operation going to involve strikes in some other places other than Afghanistan? As you know, we've had a policy here, at least during my tenure, where we don't discuss ongoing operations, and we don't discuss intelligence matters.

As the bombing commenced, the president returned to yet another National Security Council meeting, where Attorney General John Ashcroft announced, quote, we're thinking about a national neighborhood watch system. The war room had by now decided to push for Kabul itself. We should encourage the Northern Alliance to take Kabul, Cheney said. We as a superpower should not be stalemated. How does taking Kabul help us against al-Qaeda, someone asked. But Bush agreed. We need a victory.

With bombing underway, in Kandahar in the south, the American campaign was probably the single biggest crack in morale against the Taliban in the entire life of their movement. Taliban radio reported that, quote, after a day's bombardment, 880 fighters were missing from the front lines, writes Koppel. One Taliban mullah, laying in a bed, considering the day's events, experienced something he'd never felt before about the Taliban. Doubt.

But as bad as the Taliban commanders felt they had it, every day. Afghans had it worse. The American bombing campaign had begun just before Ramadan, and it showed no signs of letting up despite the Muslim holiday. In Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported, hundreds of families have fled nightly bombing raids by U.S. jets, searching for bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network. Now the refugees live in this camp, a sprawling tent village. The United Nations says the families in this ramshackle camp are but a tiny fraction.

of the tens of thousands who have fled Afghan cities. Just a follow up, please. You say you're running out of targets on, Mr. Secretary, and going back to the fielded forces, where are you going to continue to hit? Well, for one thing, we're finding that some of the targets we hit need to be re-hit.

Second, we're not running out of targets. Afghanistan is. Three days after the first bombing campaign, Bush asked, Why can't we fly more than one predator drone at a time? We ought to have 50 of these things. Cheney started to feel that maybe the president shouldn't be in the room when, say, George Tenet floated the idea of starving the Taliban who refused to surrender.

Give him deniability, Cheney said. And so only Condi Rice was present in a meeting where CIA briefers revealed their strategy to win over Afghan commanders. Withdraw and get fed. If you don't withdraw, you don't withdraw. you don't get fed. According to Woodward, it was a highly questionable proposition. The United States could be accused of abetting famine,

the use of organized starvation as a political tool. However, this would not be the last time the U.S. utilized that kind of strategy in Afghanistan. October 15th, Bush is pleased to be informed that AC-130 gunships, slow-flying planes equipped with a 100, and 5-millimeter howitzer and a gatling gun were filling Afghan fighters with fear. October 16th, an American F-18 bombed several international Red Cross depots.

The next morning, Rumsfeld tells the National Security Council that the Red Cross had been at fault, giving them the wrong coordinates for the warehouses. October 19th, the first U.S. Special Forces 18 Team 555 was finally arriving. They were greeted by the CIA on the ground. Hey guys, how you doing? Welcome to Afghanistan. October 23rd, the 14th day of bombing. Cheney was getting sick of waiting for progress from the Northern Alliance, Woodward writes. Do we have to go get involved ourselves?

General Fahim, successor to Ahmed Shammu Suu, wasn't even in the country. And the fact was, the South was dry and the North was not moving, as Rice put it. And we've bombed everything we can think of to bomb, and still nothing. is happening. Bush, writes Woodward, hated the idea that he was coming across as weak and indecisive. October 26th, the next morning, Bush told the NSC, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia said that we shouldn't strike during Ramadan. I'm going to write him a letter saying that we'll continue to strike, because al-Qaeda continues to threaten the United States, and they will keep fighting

whether we bomb or not. And that's, at the end of the day, what is decisive. Tenet, Woodward writes, wanted to stand up and cheer. Rice, too, thought it was a key moment. Rumsfeld reported to his aides that the president had been particularly strong that day.

October 29th, U.S. intelligence reports that something very bad might be headed from Pakistan to D.C. or New York. Maybe a radioactive weapon meant to decapitate the American government. Those bastards are going to find me exactly here, Bush said. This isn't about you, Cheney shot back. This is about the Constitution.

And that's why I'm going to a secure, undisclosed location. Cheney was not asking for permission. He was going. At that day's National Security Council meeting, Tenet informed everyone of the threat. Al-Qaeda was, perhaps, planning to use a hijacked aircraft, to hit a nuclear power plant and maybe even one of the American storage sites where our weapons were sitting. And where was the vice president? Dick Cheney's going to stay gone for a while,

the president said. Cheney was already off at a secure location many miles away. This kind of situation has been. had in fact been an obsession of Cheney's and Rumsfelds for many decades. At least once a year during the 1980s, writes James Mann, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. The two men were part of a Reagan-era continuity-of-government program, or COG, where different senior officials were periodically whisked away to remote bunkers across the country. In fact, this was not so much a scheme for continuity of government,

per se, in the event of an emergency, but rather a plan to shift power to the executive branch under the pretense of a national emergency. It seems fair to conclude that some of these American presidents would have served as mere figureheads for their more experienced chiefs of staff, such as Cheney or Rumsfeld, man writes. The problem was that this program was extra legal and extra constitutional. One of the awkward questions we faced was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack, explained one participant in the COG exercises to man. It was decided that, no, it would be easier to operate without Congress.

Continuity of government planning was the official name for this process devised by the military and political power players. And once the Cold War ended, the official exercises with the war, the government officials stopped. But with the shift in focus from the Cold War to the War on Terror, the policy began buzzing to life once again. What was missing until September 11th was an invulnerable group of managers with the expertise and resources to administer these programs in a national emergency reported the Washington Post in 2001. On 9-11, Peterdale Scott writes, At a moment when the nation was under attack, Cheney and Rumsfeld both simultaneously absented themselves for a period from their associates and their appointed posts to hold a significant conversation

about which, A, they have since been deceptive, B, the 9-11 report, is silent or misleading, and C, Scott writes, the facts are unknown. The day after bombing began in Afghanistan, the post continues, Bush created the Office of Homeland Security, with Executive Order 13228. Among the responsibilities he gave its first director, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, was to, quote, review plans and preparations for ensuring the continuity of the federal government

in the event of a terrorist attack that threatens the safety and security of the United States government or its leadership. End quote. A wide mandate, to say the least. What Cheney and the others discussed when in these bunkers remains unknown. But, quote, some of the key elements of their decades-old COG plan

turned up in Bush's War on Terror, writes Peter Dale Scott. The Patriot Act, which gave the government new legal authority to surveil, detain, and prosecute, so-called terrorists, was passed. Bush, quote, had become fascinated with the ability of the NSA to intercept phone calls and other communications worldwide, records Bob Woodward. Bush summarized his strategy. Listen to every phone call. In November 2002, the Department of Homeland Security,

upgraded from a mere office the year before, was created, the first new cabinet-level department in 13 years. President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, the Washington Post reported at the time. Deployed on the fly in the first hours of turmoil on September 11th, one participant said,

the shadow government has evolved into an indefinite precaution. For tonight's ceremonial first pitch, and please welcome the prize, President of the United States. October 30th, Bush throws the first pitch at game three of the World Series. The president emerged wearing a New York Fire Department windbreaker, Woodward writes. He raised his arm and gave a thumbs up to the crowd on the third base side of the field. Probably 15,000 fans threw their arms in the air, imitating the motion.

He then threw a strike, and the stadium erupted. Watching from owner George Steinbrenner's box, White House advisor Karl Rove thought, It's like being at a Nazi rally. But behind the scenes, with little progress actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan, President Bush began to feel that he was fumbling this crucial opportunity. Over a month out from the attacks, his vice president was in hiding, and Osama bin Laden was at large.

And the supposedly medieval, primitive Taliban were still in power. On November 10th, the New York Times ran a short profile of General Abdul-Rashid Dostom. An ethnic Uzbek who had been with the Afghan communists, then against the Afghan communists, and then with the legendary warlord Ahmed Shah Masoud, before turning against Massoud. Dostom was known for a few things, switching sides, obviously, his personal opulence, and his unsparing brutality. If you upset me, I'm telling you. No one except God up there and me down here will care about you. Your village might be looted, your family will be in danger.

They'll be killed, they'll be raped. There will be no safety for them. I'm telling you straight, you must be honest with me. I'm being honest with you here. Dude now dead, Dostom was the undisputed military lynchpin of the Northern Alliance. General Dostom was, in early November 2001, charging on horseback right into his former stronghold, the city of Mazar Isharif, after having lost it to the Taliban more than two years earlier. General Dostom had actually retaken Mazar by the hour that the paper would have gone to press.

And as a result, Dostom went on to commit what journalist Akhm Rashid describes as, quote, the most outrageous and brutal human rights violation of the entire war. Near the outskirts of Mazar, Taliban fighters who had already agreed to surrender were corralled into cargo container trucks, and they were packed in, one by one, 200 men to a truck. The fighters realized they were not going home as promised, Newsweek reported. Quote, the doors of the container trucks were locked. One survivor, a 28-year-old Pashtun named Abdul,

recalled to the magazine that, quote, After nearly 24 hours without water, the prisoners were so desperate with thirst that they began licking the sweat off each other's bodies. Some prisoners began to lose their reason and started biting those around them. By the time they reached the prison, he says only 20 to 30 in his container were alive.

A State Department report declassified years later, included an estimate that at least 1,500 Taliban prisoners died on the container truck journey. The facts of the massacre were confirmed to UN investigators within weeks of the discovery of mass graves in early 2002. There were even American Special Forces who had been detached to General Dostom's unit, the celebrated horse soldiers, later depicted in the 2018 Hollywood flick 12 Strong. Would there be an investigation of this massacre? Aside from a flat denial, would there be any look into what American soldiers may have known and when they knew it? American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation because the warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostom, was on the payroll of the CIA and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001.

Describing a high-level meeting to the New York Times years later, an anonymous official said, quote, Somebody mentioned Dostom and the story about the containers and the possibility that this was a war crime. And Deputy Pentagon Chief Paul Wolfowitz said, We are not going to be going after him for that. End quote. Filmmaker Jamie Duran also interviewed then Pentagon advisor Richard Pearl about the administration's decision to ally with a warlord like Dostom. You have to balance out competing interests. Obviously, we would much rather be aligned with Mother Teresa.

That wasn't possible in those circumstances. It would be the fall of Mazar y Sharif, where General Dostom packed human beings into cargo containers that would turn the tide for the Northern Alliance and America. On November 9th, Dostom soldiers, now under the banner of the Northern Alliance and working directly with American Special Forces, took control of the key northern city.

The fall of Mazar was the beginning of the end of Taliban rule, and once again, money talked. Bin Laden had bought the Taliban years earlier, now it was America's turn. The real undermining of the Taliban was caused by dollars, not bombs, reported Ahmed Rashid. Quote, guided by Britain's MI6, the CIA had bought every Northern Alliance commander in sight, and had then gone on to buy off the Taliban commanders. Bush's counter-terror czar Richard Clark estimated that the CIA spent around $70 million in bribes. A lot in Afghanistan. Kofar Black's deputy estimated that thousands of Taliban had been bought off and switched sides.

In one case, $50,000 was offered to a commander to defect. Let me think about it, the commander said. So, within a few hours, the Special Forces A-team directed a precision bomb right outside the commander's headquarters. The next day, they called the commander back, taking the price down a tad. How about 40,000? He accepted.

From Washington's perspective, everything was coming up freedom. Less than a week after Mazzari Sharif was conquered, Kabul fell after only a little conflict. The NSC debate over whether or how to take Kabul had been overtaken by events. The Northern Alliance and a variety of Pashtun tribal leaders had already occupied the city.

The capital had been largely abandoned by many Taliban for their traditional rural stronghold of Kandahar. As the Americans and their Afghan allies began to take over Afghanistan bit by bit, a special operations war planner sat in a conference room, writes Craig Whitlock. The Americans were surprised by their own success. Quote, you didn't believe this shit would work,

one official said. Leaders in the Pentagon were equally bewildered. Now we own the country. Before Christmas, one said. You go, whoa, that's kind of cool. Thanks to this military support, the United Front was able to push the Taliban out of many major cities. And by early December 2001, the Taliban regime had collapsed. The conditions were being set for what needed to be done.

The air defenses were being taken out, and we were putting people on the ground so that they could begin assisting with respect to resupply and targeting and the like. It looked like nothing was happening. Indeed, it looked like we were in a altogether now quagmire. By December 2001, the country had been taken over, with only 2,500 American troops, on the ground. On the surface, Craig Whitlock writes, Afghanistan looked like it was stabilizing, and so it was time to pick the new government. While the Taliban were surrendering, dying, or being stuffed into containers, the U.S. convened a bustling conference in Bonn, Germany, to decide Afghanistan's new leader, and with him, and it would be a him, a new political regime. The man of the moment was Hamid Karzai.

But before the Americans made Karzai president, they almost blew him up. America and Afghanistan are now allies against terror. We'll be partners in rebuilding that country. And this evening, we welcomed the distinguished interim leader of a liberated Afghanistan, Chairman Hamid Karzai. James Dobbin, the Diplomat and Rand Corporation official named special representative to Afghanistan later told the journalist Joshua Partlow,

in 2001, we wanted somebody who was a conciliator, somebody who would unify as much of the country as possible, somebody who would be regarded as broadly representative. In other words, an Afghan, but not in Islamic fundamentalist. A Pashtun, but a leader of the Pupplesai tribe, rather than the Gilzai ties of the Taliban. going on napkin math alone. In Hamid Karzai, America had found its man.

Meanwhile, American special forces made their way into the Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan. They set up shop on the outskirts of Kandahar, and by the next morning, there was Hamid Karzai, greeting local elders, making his presence known like a good politician. And that morning, Karzai's bunker exploded. Had the Taliban struck back on their home turf? Had al-Qaeda done their hosts one last favor? As it turns out, Karzai was nearly taken out by his patrons, the American military.

Quote, three U.S. Special Forces soldiers and five Afghan opposition fighters were killed when a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb from a U.S. B-52 missed its intended target, north of Kandahar, reported CNN on December 5th. The number of Afghans killed was later revised upward to 50. Karzai was not among them. You're doing a good job. May God bless you. Keep it up. And the Afghan people are thankful for what you have done. Thank you very much.

The diplomatic agreement reached in Bonn, Germany, regarding Afghan's future governance, excluded the Taliban. If the Americans had learned from the Soviet-Afghan War not to load up the country with troops, for now at least, unlike the Soviets and Najibullah, the U.S. would refuse to pursue any kind of national reconciliation. And so the Taliban, the best organized and in some cases, still the most popular political movement in the country, was left out of the peace process. According to the former diplomat Dobbins, I think there was a missed opportunity in the subsequent months. Many Taliban did surrender or offered to surrender, including, according to one account, Mullah Omar himself. Instead, the Americans would pursue vast presidential powers to be vested

in their man, Hamid Karzai. The Bush administration pushed the Afghans to consolidate power in the hands of their president, writes Whitlock, with few checks or balances. An unnamed diplomat said, the time frame for creating a strong central government in Afghanistan is 100 years, which we didn't have. One could add, of course, that Afghanistan did decades earlier enjoy a stronger central government, and that America had been one of the key states sabotaging it ever since the 1970s. By December 2001, an estimated 10,000 Taliban, or roughly 20% of their total fighting force, had been killed, with thousands more wounded and between 5,000 and 10,000 taken prisoner.

The rest had melted back into the villages to lick their wounds, or they had skipped town, leaving Afghanistan altogether for Pakistan, only to return later. Quote, despite the killing of thousands of additional innocent Afghans by U.S. bombing, the Americans were welcomed, right Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould. Quote, the monstrous product of Pakistan's ISI dissolved as quickly into the countryside as they had appeared. Back home in the USA, it was mission accomplished. Quote, the media ran stories of future wars being fought in a similar way to Afghanistan,

writes Rashid. Cheap in dollar and manpower terms and driven by technology. The new laser-guided bombs, drones armed with hellfire missiles, and the 17A teams on the ground were considered. to be the wave of the future. 75% of Kabul had been reduced to rubble, with the remainder badly damaged Fitzgerald and Gouldad. The country's infrastructure had been rendered useless.

Power plants and water facilities lacking spare parts produced electricity for only part of the day, if at all. Clean water was barely available. In these months alone, there were between 4,000 and 8,000 Afghan civilian casualties. Add to that, quote, up to 20,000 Afghans, who may have died indirectly as a result of drought, hunger, and displacement. These small changes, cinema, television, music, beard, turban, these things

may make happy a lot of people. But I'm nervous. We do not have a government yet. And when we have the government, we will be watching. I'm hopeful, but I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure yet. The search for Osama bin Laden, there was constant discussion about him hiding out in caves,

and I think many times the American people have a perception that there's a little hole dug out of a side of a mountain. Oh, no. This is it. This is a fortress. A complex. Multi-tiered bedrooms and offices on the top, as you can see. Secret exits on the side and on the bottom. Cut deep to avoid thermal detection. A ventilation system to allow people to breathe and to carry on. The entrance is large enough to drive trucks and even tanks, even computer systems and telephone systems. It's a very sophisticated operation. Oh, you bet. This is serious business. And there's not one of those. There are many of those. Amidst the chaos of the general invasion, the hunt for Osama bin Laden was still going on. On November 29, Dick Cheney, in his interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, announced the American intention to level the underground facility, Torabora, located near the Pakistan border.

It was a complex that had been used off and on by both the Soviet and Mujahideen armies in the 1980s. And as the Americans bore down on Afghanistan in Afghanistan, autumn 2001, Toribora became a way station and final holdout for Taliban and Al-Qaeda network fighters heading toward Pakistan. Fearing that bin Laden might escape over the unguarded border to Pakistan, writes Whitlock, CIA and Army Delta Force commanders pleaded with Central Command to send reinforcements. But Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks refused. At Bagram Air Base, Army Major William Rodbaugh heard that bin Laden had been cited, and, quote, became surprised when his unit wasn't called upon to rush to the scene.

In an internal government interview, the major said, we were ready if they asked us. I always wonder what would have happened if they had found him that night, or if they had asked our battalion to go and help, which never happened. Over four days in early December, quote, B-52s and other high-altitude aircraft dropped about 700,000 pounds of explosives on al-Qaeda's suspected positions, writes Steve Cole. Bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda leaders, however, had gotten away. Bin Laden would later brag publicly that he had actually been at Tora Bora, but had gotten away.

Kofor Black would never get bin Laden's head in a box. General Franks and Donald Rumsfeld tried to to so doubt with the public that the al-Qaeda leader had actually been at Torabora in December 2001, writes Whitlock. Franks would later write in the New York Times, as his boss Mr. Bush was up for re-election, quote, Mr. Bin Laden was never within our grasp. With Rumsfeld's blessing, the Pentagon distributed a dubious set of talking points, Whitlock writes, claiming that the allegation that the U.S. military allowed Osama bin Laden to escape Tora Bora is utterly false, end quote. Bob Woodward and a colleague interviewed Donald Rumsfeld. They asked the secretary

of defense about his remarks the day after the 9-11 attacks, when Rumsfeld had suggested bombing Iraq. Rumsfeld exploded, calling the information classified, and demanding they strike the question from the record. I didn't say that, Rumsfeld declared. And then he tried to pretend that someone else had shouted behind him. Larry, stop yelling over my shoulder, will you please? Woodward calmed the defense secretary down. He said, perhaps. he could put an 18 and a half-second gap in their interview tape. Rumsfeld seemed pleased.

Quote, now you're talking.