-Caveat Lector- http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=155481 Friday, 26 January 2001 21:12 (ET) Intelligence failures and the death of the 18 Rangers By Richard Sale, Terrorism Correspondent WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born Islamic terrorist suspect sought by the United States in connection with the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, had months earlier been linked to the 1993 deaths of 18 U.S. Rangers in Somalia. A Justice Department indictment of those responsible, however, was suppressed and no action taken, U.S. intelligence sources revealed Friday. The Rangers were part of an abortive U.S. attempt on Oct. 3, 1993, to kidnap two top lieutenants of Somalia's strongman Gen. Mohammed Farrah Aidid. The original CIA plan had been to use a 10-man force, but this was put off by the U.S. military leadership, and the next day a larger force of 160 Delta operators and Rangers was sent in its place. The task force was ambushed and 18 Rangers killed by militia trained by bin Laden, according to former U.S. military and intelligence sources with close knowledge of the incident. Postponement of the "snatch" of the two aides was a "major blunder," according to a U.S. participant in the incident who asked not to be named. According to former U.S. intelligence officials, bin Laden was secretly indicted for the Ranger killings in 1997. "I personally discussed the indictment with the FBI," one former U.S. government source said. But the indictment was later "torn up" and then made part of a public indictment of bin Laden and 17 co-defendants filed in 1998 by the Justice Department following the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people died. The Ranger murders are mentioned specifically on pages 18 and19 of that indictment. According to former U.S. military sources, the U.S. military leadership, led by Adm. Jonathan Howe, senior officer of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Somalia, believed that Aidid's Somalia National Alliance forces were behind the July 12 murder of Pakistani troops in the U.N. force, and that the warlord should be captured and tried as a war criminal. Howe requested a Ranger force to hunt Aidid down. By the early summer of 1993, Aidid began an escalation. There were attacks by Islamic detachments operating out of Aidid-held areas of Mogadishu on U.N. forces, and on June 5, 24 Pakistani soldiers were ambushed and killed. The U.N. promptly declared the SNA "an outlaw faction," according to one U.S. official. On June 12, Aidid and several of his aides left Mogadishu for Khartoum where they attended a People's Arab and Islamic Conference chaired by Hassan Abdallah al-Turabi, a Sudanese leader who sponsored terrorism against the United States and backed the spread of Islam throughout the Horn of Africa, according to U.S. official who spoke to United Press International on condition of not being named. This source said that Turabi had ties to Abdul-Rahman Ahmad Ahmad Ali Tour who had proclaimed the Islamic code or Sharia as the law of Somalia and had henceforth received financial and military aid from Iran and Sudan. "Certainly Gen. Aidid was receiving some technical and logistical aid from Sudan as part of a fledgling military alliance in 1992," this source said. The decision to fight U.S. forces in Somalia was a direct result of Sudan's strategy, according to a U.S. government analyst. Robert Oakley, former U.S. ambassador to Somalia, disagrees, but he concedes that Sudan was very nervous about U.S. intervention: "The Sudanese thought that they were next, that after we were finished in Somalia we would strike at Sudan." The Hezbollah -- the fundamentalist Islamic militia -- for example, published documents at the time alerting factions that Sudan was really the next U.S. target. "It was a totally mistaken idea," he said. But whatever the reason, Aidid began amassing his assets, with Turabi supplying weapons, men and military supplies, according to U.S. officials. According to U.S. government sources there is general agreement that bin Laden was not the master mind or the grand strategist but rather the logistical officer. He had hidden Arab Afghans -- the Islamic volunteer fighters from all over the Middle East who had fought against the Russians during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- on his "farms' in Sudan, and he had also smuggled large amounts of money into Ethiopia and Eritrea for purchases of supplies for "Afghan" forces. These sources said that bin Laden led a clandestine effort to move militant "Afghans" into Somalia through third countries like Ethiopia and Eritrea, providing lodging, trucks, fuel water, weapons, ammunition, explosives and medical kits, and establishing resupply points. According to current and former U.S. intelligence sources, the on-site commander and field coordinator in Mogadishu, working with Aidid, was Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian militant who is currently in hiding with bin Laden in the Afghanistan mountains. Zawahiri, who is also mentioned in the bin Laden indictment, worked with the "Afghan" forces and with Aidid's senior military aides. Throughout the summer of 1993, the escalations continued. Aidid forces soon began to mortar U.S. and U.N. troops, and by early August, bin Laden-trained groups of the Habar Gidir tribe began to engage the Americans, said one U.S. intelligence source. "It's clear they were well-trained. I mean, they were smart, did some really sophisticated stuff," said the source. On Aug. 11, a Hezbollah-style remotely controlled bomb killed four Americans. On Sept. 5, Aidid's augmented forces ambushed a Nigerian U.N. contingent, killing seven soldiers. It took a massive intervention by U.S.-U.N. forces to relieve the hard-pressed Nigerians, according to U.S. government officials. On Sept. 13, fierce fighting took place between U.S. and Aidid forces in which a Cobra gunship attacked a hospital being used as a Somali headquarters and storage facility. Aidid charged that the U.S. had killed civilians, and on Sept. 15, Aidid launched mortar attacks against the U.N. compound, and when women and children stoned U.N. patrols, the U.N. patrols opened fire, U.S. officials said. According to Oakley, the fight on Oct. 3 was "a spontaneous response" fueled by the previous U.S. killing of Somalis. "It was primarily a Somali operation. They had the motives and the tactical knowledge," he said. But this is disputed by former U.S. govermment officials. A former U.S. military source with close knowledge of the incident said that the continuing growth of Aidid's forces was "by design, (not) something anyone missed." He added that the CIA was reporting that 150 to 200 fighters a day were arriving in Mogadishu. "To most people that would indicate a massing of troops," he said. Not to the U.S. military, he said, who saw the attacks as individual incidents, not the probing of a larger and well-organized force. When the United States could not capture Aidid, it decided to kidnap two of Aidid's top leaders, what one former U.S. military source called "tier-one personalities" -- of top importance -- Omar Salad, Aidid's top political advisor, and his ostensible minister of interior Abdi "Qeybdid" Hassan Awale. They are described as "hard-liners," men with blood on their hands," by a U.S. source. On Saturday, Oct. 2, CIA operatives reported that they had "eyes on" surveillance of the top Aidid aides who were in a teahouse only 400 yards away from the U.N. compound. "It was perfect for a snatch job. We could have had them both and it would have only taken ten men," said a former U.S. military source. He said that the intelligence was passed on to the military leadership, including Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, whose reaction was to wait until the next day and send a big, high-profile force in to seize the men, this source said. The force was called Task Force Ranger, an assault force made up of Delta's C Squadron, a top Army commando unit, and Rangers from Company B, 3rd Battalion of the Army's 75th Infantry, backed up three surveillance helicopters, a spy plane, four MH-6 Little Bird helicopters and eight Black Hawk troop-carrying helicopters. The force was supported on the ground by eight Humvees carrying Rangers, Delta operators and four members of the Navy's SEAL Team Six, the Sea, Air, Land group of the Navy's special forces. Together this force totaled 160 men. The force easily seized the two Aidid aides when they walked into a trap. However, in the fight, two high-tech MH-660 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and two more crash-landed. Eighteen Americans were dead and dozens more were wounded. Aidid's forces suffered at least 500 dead and a thousand more wounded. But to some U.S. intelligence people the frustration remains. Commenting on the two Aidid aides in the teahouse, a former U.S. military source said: "The CIA could have captured them with 10 men. On Saturday afternoon at four o'clock, they had eyes on contact." The U.S. military leadership "bears responsibility for the loss of those lives," he said. Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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