In a forthcoming book --titled "Jawbreaker"--decorated career CIA officer Gary Berntsen criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.)
That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members.
The CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. ["Other commanders"....Hmmm, I wonder who]
Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora--intelligence operatives had tracked him--and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK.
During the 2004 presidential campaign..., Kerry charged, that the administration "didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of Al Qaeda. The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.
[Oh, What a Big Liar - and to boot, he broke the 9th Commandment of the King James Bible!!]
Berntsen's book gives... a heroic portrayal of CIA activities at Tora Bora and in the war on terror. Ironically, he has sued the agency over what he calls unacceptable delays in approving his book.... "They're just holding the book." [Now, who would do a thing like that?]