XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SAT OCT 13, 2001 15:29:42 ET XXXXX

MAG: U.S. MILITARY FAILED TO KILL TALIBAN LEADER WHEN HE WAS IN SIGHT DURING FIRST NIGHT OF WAR; RUMSFELD FURIOUS

The U.S. military failed to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar when he was in its sights during the first night of the war, the NEW YORKER is planning to report on Monday.

According to publishing sources, Seymour Hersh has filed a story quoting top intelligence-community members claiming to be 'crestfallen' about the incident.

MORE

Reaction in Washington to the failure to strike immediately was fierce, Hersh reports.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors," one military official said.

An unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft operating in the Kabul area identified a convoy carrying Mullah Omar as he fled the capital.

The Predator is armed with two anti-tank missiles, but under the rules of engagement in effect Sunday night the C.I.A. could not order such a strike. Although the precise sequence of events could not be fully learned, Hersh reports, General Tommy R. Franks, the commander in charge at the United States Central Command in Florida reported that 'Judge Advocate General, a legal officer', doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire.'

It was decided to target a few cars in front of the building to perhaps scare Mullah Omar out of the building to take a look. Omar did leave the building, but not immediately. Soon after he left, Hersh reports, the building was targeted and destroyed by F-18s, too late to kill Omar.

Hersh also reports that a number of conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family that were electronically intercepted by the National Security Agency, beginning as early as 1994, "demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups."

MORE

The intercepts, Hersh writes, "depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country's religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wi

Current and former intelligence officials suggest, Hersh reports, that the instability of the Saudi regime is "the most immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the Middle East," and that "the Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront this reality." Impacting Monday...

END

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2001