NIGHTLINE ABC TV 11:35 PM MAY 4, 2005
Interview with Gary Schroen TED KOPPEL, ABC NEWS: May 4th, 2005. I'm Ted Koppel and this is "Nightline." Tonight, the US intelligence officer who's given a stunning set of orders. GARY SCHROEN, FORMER SENIOR CIA OFFICER: I want to see bin Laden's head in a box with dry ice, delivered to me here, so I can take it down to show the president. TED KOPPEL: A team of seven, carrying $3 million in cash. GARY SCHROEN: There was no search and rescue in the area. We were going to be on our own deep inside Afghanistan. TED KOPPEL: And on a day when the number three man in al Qaeda has been captured ... PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, UNITED STATES: His arrest removers a dangerous enemy. GARY SCHROEN: The Pakistanis' arrest of, of, of al Libbi surprised me. TED KOPPEL: Do you think that either the United States or its Pakistani allies ever will capture bin Laden? GARY SCHROEN: I think we can get him in the next few months. TED KOPPEL: Tonight, searching for the world's most-dangerous man. "His Head in a Box." In all likelihood, you have never heard the name Abu Faraj al Libbi. If you have, today was probably the first time. Suffice it to say, you would not want to be in his shoes tonight. He is currently believed to be in the custody of Pakistani security forces, and because he is described as a senior member of al Qaeda's leadership, some sources say he's the number-three man behind Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, there's a great deal of interest in what he knows. The CIA would like to get their hands on him and they may. President Bush publicly expressed his enthusiasm about the news today as did his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. The assumption is that he knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and that he can be induced to share that information. The fact that it has been more than three and a half years since 9/11, more than three and a half years since the president announced his determination to capture bin Laden, dead or alive, has left a lingering flavor of unfinished business. Actually, it turns out that President Bush had actually softened for public consumption the orders that he gave to the CIA in the days immediately after 9/11. He wanted bin Laden, all right, but he wanted him dead. And the man you're going to meet in a moment, now retired but formerly a senior CIA officer, headed up the mission that took on that assignment. Gary Schroen and six other Americans were sent on a covert mission into Afghanistan less than two weeks after 9/11. Schroen's new book, "First In, An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan," comes out next week. Tell me, just to begin with, this, this fascinating story, because administrations and former CIA officers have spent years denying that they were ever involved in any assassination plots, and what just leaps out at the beginning of your book is this story you tell of being called into Cofer Black's office, just before going off on this first mission into Afghanistan, and being told what? GARY SCHROEN: Well, we went in to see Cofer for our final marching orders and. TED KOPPEL: And, and tell our audience who Cofer Black was in those days. GARY SCHROEN: Cofer Black was then the chief of the Counterterrorism Center, who ran all of counterterrorism operations for the CIA. He, basically, gave, repeated the orders he had given us at the, at the very beginning -on the 14th of September. This was on the 19th. And he said your basic orders are to go in and link up with the Northern Alliance and get them to fight the Taliban in -concert with the US military, but more importantly, you're to find bin Laden and his chief lieutenants and kill them. He paused and then said, and I want to see bin Laden's head in a box with dry ice, delivered to me here, so that I can take it down and show the president. TED KOPPEL: He had promised the president, you say. GARY SCHROEN: I, that's what he said. And he said, and as far as the lieutenants, I'd like to see their heads on pikes and photos of those. And I thought for a second and I said, well, I know we can make pikes in the field, sir, but I'm not sure about dry ice. But we'll improvise. TED KOPPEL: Look, it's a, it's a great story and, and as has been said in the past, it, it more than has the additional advantage of being true. The, the, the thing that disturbs me about it a little bit is, isn't that against the law? I mean, I realize bin Laden is a really terrible guy, but do we not not do that kind of thing? GARY SCHROEN: I think that what we heard from, what I heard from Cofer that day was Cofer's, sort of, trying to buck us up and to give us, send us off with a bang. I don't think he, in any way, really expected a head to return in dry ice or pictures of heads on spikes, nor would I have done that. But it was symptomatic of the time. We were leaving about eight days after 9/11. We were enthused. Everybody was anxious. We were the first Americans to, to actually get a chance to start the retaliation against bin Laden. And it was the kind of speech that, that I just expected from, from Cofer. But it was dramatic. TED KOPPEL: You were quite literally, I mean, when one talks about the point of the spear, of the US projecting power, you were the very tip of that point. I mean, you and six other guys? GARY SCHROEN: There were six, six, well, total of seven officers and then three flight crew, and we were the only Americans in Afghanistan from the 26th of September until about the 19th of October. TED KOPPEL: I want to come back to that in a moment, but roll back the time to 9/11, if you will. As I was reading your book, I must confess, that image of all of you standing around watching television at CIA headquarters out at Langley struck me only because my image of you guys would be, you'd be on the phone, you'd be on communications, you'd be on satellite hookups, you'd be talking to each other, people out in the field getting information. And where are you getting your information at that point? From us. And, and God knows we didn't know what was going on. And then you, then you speak a little later on, I guess, an hour or two later on, you're all given orders to get the hell out of there. GARY SCHROEN: There was - there were reports, of course, that there were a number of airplanes still in the air that had been hijacked, again, confusion was, was rampant that morning, and that there was a plane heading for Washington. One had already struck the Pentagon. And so, there was a second reported to be en route and we were ordered to evacuate. And so, begrudgingly, all of us, I think, I felt really, this was not the thing to do was to be leaving the building. (inaudible), we all trooped down the stairs and out into the parking lot to the biggest traffic jam I've ever seen. TED KOPPEL: You were in the middle of your retirement process, right? Apparently the CIA has a, a sort of three month get you oriented back to civilian life again kind of program. GARY SCHROEN: Exactly. There's a 90 day transition program and I, on the 1st of September, had entered that program planning to, to retire at the end of those three months. TED KOPPEL: So, you thought you were out of this thing. I mean, whatever it was going to be, whatever the -US reaction was going to be, you were no longer going to be a part of it. GARY SCHROEN: That was my thought as I went home that night. And I sat there really feeling almost sorry for myself that this was something that I had trained all my life to, to be good at and that I was in retirement and that I was going to miss this. TED KOPPEL: A couple of days later, you got a phone call saying, hey, Gary, we need you to come back and can we talk to you about a mission? And you and I will talk about that mission and how you prepared for it, and how you staffed it, in just a moment. TED KOPPEL: And I'm back, once again, with Gary Schroen, a - a now-retired CIA officer who's just written a book called, "First In." When we left folks just before the commercial break, you had been called back to CIA headquarters and they said, in effect, Gary, we still need you. Can you, can you create this group to go into Afghanistan and do what? What, what did you, what did you believe your mission to be at that point beyond the, the assassination of bin Laden? GARY SCHROEN: The key part of our mission was going to be to link up with the group of Tajik fighters called, who called themselves the Northern Alliance. They had been created and, and, and led by Ahmed Shah Massoud ... TED KOPPEL: Who had just been assassinated. GARY SCHROEN: Who had just been assassinated on the 9th of September. And they were the only armed military force on the ground in Afghanistan fighting in opposition to the Taliban. TED KOPPEL: I love the, the image of you shopping at your local supermarket, picking up plenty of, you know, plastic baggies and things to take with you, and, and this notion of you and some of the other guys going to sporting goods shops. Again, the image, I mean, that's what we foreign correspondents do. My image of you guys was that you go down and you get equipped somewhere in the basement at Langley, that they have all this stuff. It's, it's no different for you than it is for us? GARY SCHROEN: Not a bit. There's no store or storage warehouse with all of this equipment in it. That's true even today with all of the people we have deployed in Iraq and, and Afghanistan. You simply go out and, and buy what you think you will need in the way of camping-type clothing and, and, and gear and pack your own bag, and, you know, take it out. TED KOPPEL: A - a few little items that, that the government did have to provide for you. A certain amount of, of ready cash, some spending money. How much did you take with you? GARY SCHROEN: $3 million. TED KOPPEL: Three million in cash. GARY SCHROEN: Three million in cash. AK-47's. Browning 9mm pistols. TED KOPPEL: There had been efforts before 9/11 to find the al Qaeda leadership, in particular, Osama bin Laden, and even to eliminate him. I mean, you write about one particular incident in which his, his location had been established. He was at some kind of a hunting camp, I gather? GARY SCHROEN: We, we tracked bin Laden through a -a tribal, Afghan tribals that we had recruited for a number of years. We had two or three separate - activities where, or operations, where we actually thought we, knew we had him in our gun sights. One was a hunting camp in the southern part of Kandahar Province. He was being hosted by a number of sheiks from the United Arab Emirates. These -was a well-equipped hunting party. Our guys tracked him to the spot, put a, put a beacon down that we, our satellites could -identify and confirm that that was indeed the camp they were talking about. The debate went on on how to strike the camp for several weeks. TED KOPPEL: For several weeks? GARY SCHROEN: Several weeks, yes, sir. TED KOPPEL: Well, how long were they at the camp? GARY SCHROEN: Close to three weeks. And because of the thought of collateral damage, cruise missiles would have just killed virtually everybody in the camp, how do you get a bomber in and do the same thing without killing these people, the final decision was not to, to strike the camp. TED KOPPEL: You were frustrated by that. GARY SCHROEN: Very much so. It was one of the, the best chances I think that we ever had to get him because we clearly could see the tents that he was in. But it was a decision, we, we made the plan, sent it back to Washington, and the administration said no. TED KOPPEL: Is that something that you think was particular to the, to the Clinton administration, or do you think that the, the Bush administration, prior to 9/11, everything changed after 9/11, I think we all understand that, you think any US administration would have, would have made a different decision? GARY SCHROEN: No. I, I, honestly don't. And it would have been different, I think, had he been alone or just isolated with a group of his commanders, but -to attack him in a place where there were innocent people or, or, or people who were noncombatants was ... TED KOPPEL: Well, you didn't think they were that innocent because they were associating with a man ... GARY SCHROEN: Well, not in, as I've said repeatedly, if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas and that was the biggest dog in the world. They knew who he was. But there were strategic interests of the US dealing with the UAE and the Gulf area and the decision was made in the administration not to, to attack. TED KOPPEL: Theoretically, 9/11 might have been prevented. GARY SCHROEN: We might have eliminated bin Laden ... TED KOPPEL: I mean, one never knows about ... GARY SCHROEN: But one never knows. TED KOPPEL: Right. GARY SCHROEN: If the plan was far -along enough, then it would have continued with, whether he was around or not. TED KOPPEL: I want to talk about, I want to talk about the present when we come back. Only today, the, apparently the number-three al Qaeda man in Pakistan has been arrested and I want to talk to you about why we've had such a hard time finding bin Laden. But I'll be back with Gary Schroen in just a moment. TED KOPPEL: And I'm back once again with Gary Schroen, author of "First In." You tweak the Pentagon in your book, just a little bit, it seems to me. You seven guys were the first in with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and you're kind of hoping that you can get some of the SEALs and, and, and, we're used to calling them Green Berets, right, the, the special operations guys in, and the Pentagon won't do it because they don't have any search and rescue capability. What was that all about? GARY SCHROEN: Well, from day one, we reached out to all the special ops units that, that, you know, in the special ops command, asking individuals, colonel, at the colonel level, would they like to send someone to come along and be a, a member of our team. I think everybody on, on the individual level -was anxious to participate. But there, there was no search and rescue in the area. If we, something bad happened to our helicopter, we were going to be on our own deep inside Afghanistan. And basically the military said it was too dangerous to send people without that capability. TED KOPPEL: I mean, let's be as, as fair and reasonable about this as we can. You guys are perceived to be, not expendable, but if you die, there's a certain deniability -about who you, who you were. If, if guys from the SEALs, or the Delta Force, or the, or the Rangers, or whoever it may be, if they are found to be in Afghanistan, that's a declaration of war, right? I mean, then the United States government is in. So, can you understand why the Pentagon was unwilling to put folks in at that point? GARY SCHROEN: Well, yes. And we talked about, within the team about this and we just accepted the risk. We, you know, there's, there is a deniability on our part, we're in civilian clothing, and so, it was part of what we'd done throughout my career. TED KOPPEL: Let me give you my theory as to why the CIA was not only prepared to let you write this book but actually pleased to have you write this book. The CIA has gotten, taken some bad knocks over the last few years, particularly with the sense that maybe you guys let us down in terms of preventing 9/11, being prepared for these things. Here's an opportunity for one of their old, senior guys to say, no, no, no. Not only that, we were the first in, first on the ground, we did the job. I mean, there has to be a balance between, on the one hand, not having you tell too much of your tradecraft and, on the other hand, saying, hey, America, we're still your best team. You know, we're still the first guys. GARY SCHROEN: I think you're absolutely correct. In the aftermath of, of the victory in Afghanistan, I think the agency felt that this was a good, this was a positive story. We were ready for them. We had people trained. We had people with area expertise. And we had the contacts. We had the language skills. We got in first. We led the way. And we did the job at minimal cost, really, in American lives. And I think it was a story that, that the agency wanted to, to be told and I was encouraged to attempt to write a book about this. TED KOPPEL: When you say, "we did the job," yes, you did. You, you prepared the way for the military. You did overthrow, ultimately, the Taliban. You sent al Qaeda on the run. You didn't get bin Laden. GARY SCHROEN: No. No, you're correct there. I, part of the problem, I, I think, in hindsight, was that we, we fought a war that was a special operations war. There were small units of CIA and, and basically Green Beret special forces, guys from the Army, scattered around the country, working with the local, the local population to get them to take up arms. It worked. And I think we went into -the battle at Tora Bora, where we thought we had bin Laden and his guys trapped, with the idea that this, we were going to be able to do this. What we didn't have was enough people to block the, the escape routes going into Pakistan, and we hired local commanders from the area with their, with their guys to guard these mountain passes and trails. Unfortunately, a lot of those guys turned out to be sympathizers of bin Laden, of the Taliban, and so, despite paying their commanders, a lot of these guys simply turned their backs and allowed Taliban, al Qaeda, and bin Laden to flee. TED KOPPEL: But what about now? GARY SCHROEN: Now, we have, indeed, been, some of the, the, the premiere special operations units that were, were on the border with CIA in the aftermath of Tora Bora and, and (inaudible) have been redeployed. TED KOPPEL: Your assets and the military. GARY SCHROEN: Our assets and the military. It's been very hard for us to staff the border areas of Afghanistan where we have bases because of the heavy demand that, that's going on in, in Iraq today. TED KOPPEL: The Pakistanis, today, captured a man who was believed to be the number three man in al Qaeda. You know him ... GARY SCHROEN: Mr. al Libbi. TED KOPPEL: Libbi. GARY SCHROEN: The Libyan. I must say that - that the Pakistanis' arrest of, of, of al Libbi in that area surprised me, pleasantly surprised me, because I had the distinct feeling that the Pakistanis weren't that anxious to, to go after bin Laden. TED KOPPEL: Especially their security service. GARY SCHROEN: Especially their security service. The potential blowback for actually having the Pakistani government arrest or, or bring to justice, or allow him to be, bin Laden to be killed, would be, could be tremendous in that ... TED KOPPEL: When you say potential blowback, they've tried to assassinate the president twice. What, what greater blowback can you have than that? GARY SCHROEN: Well, the, the -Pakistan's fundamentalist religious parties now are, actually control the seats in both the northwest frontier province and in Belujistan. They can put 100,000 people on the street to demonstrate against the government with, with great ease if they so desire, and could really work to destabilize the government in Pakistan should -someone of the caliber of bin Laden be captured with, with the help of the government. TED KOPPEL: In the final analysis, do you think that either the United States or its Pakistani allies ever will capture bin Laden? GARY SCHROEN: I'm convinced we will. And if we can get -Pakistani support, I think we can get him in, in the next few months. TED KOPPEL: Describe for me very quickly, what you would do. If you were running the operation, what, what, what needs to be done? GARY SCHROEN: You need to get the Pakistanis to put people on the ground, and to allow CIA officers to operate fairly openly in Bajuram (PH), Diran (PH), Moman (PH), to create, recruit sources, and to develop the kind of intelligence that we need to pin this guy down. TED KOPPEL: Think that's going to happen? GARY SCHROEN: God, I hope so. TED KOPPEL: Gary Schroen, thanks very much. A fascinating story. And I appreciate you coming in. GARY SCHROEN: Thank you, Ted. A pleasure to be here. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. 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