MSNBC

US troops seize intelligence in raid

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

Oct. 20 — In a night parachute raid, more than 100 U.S. special operations forces seized intelligence from a complex in Afghanistan where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar lived, U.S. officials said Saturday. While other Taliban command posts were bombed during two weeks of airstrikes, this one had been untouched by bombardment and viewed by the U.S. military as a potential stash of valuable information.

THE UNITED STATES has targeted the Taliban for harboring Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, which America blames for orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

In a tactical operation, special forces parachuted into southern Afghanistan near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar to hit two targets selected mainly for their intelligence value — a remote airfield and the Taliban complex. U.S. Army Rangers were thought to have participated in the raid; it was not clear if other special units also were involved.

At a Pentagon briefing Saturday, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. mission “overall was successful” even though a helicoper standing by for a possible rescue mission crashed in an accident, killing two soldiers.

Myers said U.S. forces faced only light resistance and inflicted some casualties; he did not offer precise numbers. A cache of rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and ammunition was destroyed at the airfield, and at both locations the commandos “gathered intelligence items” such as documents, Myers said. Such items could shed light on the whereabouts of the leaders of the Taliban and the al-Qaida terror network.

“We have two primary goals in Afghanistan: One is to eliminate the support to al-Qaida, primarily the Taliban, and the other is to eliminate al-Qaida,” Myers said bluntly.

Another U.S. defense official, without commenting on what intelligence was actually seized in the raid, said the troops probably searched for items such as maps, documents, correspondence, ledgers, arms, computer disks and communications equipment.

“The type of information that could lead to some intelligence value,” the official said. “All you are picking up is raw stuff, which has to go back and be assessed,” he said on condition of anonymity.

NO LEADERS KILLED OR CAPTURED

No top leaders of al-Qaida or the Taliban were killed or captured, defense officials said. But the mission was termed a success because the special forces extracted intelligence from the complex that could be analyzed, they said.

“We did not expect to find significant Taliban leadership at these locations. We, of course, were hoping we would, but we did not expect it, and we did not find senior Taliban or al-Qaida leadership,” Myers said.

The troops also likely destroyed buildings at the two targets, “They weren’t there to wash the windows,” said one defense official.

The special operations forces, including Army Rangers, were flown in on helicopters based on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Pakistan, and on Combat Talon transport aircraft based in Oman, U.S. officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity. AC-130 gunships flew cover for the commandos, the officials said.

After removing the intelligence items, the raiders destroyed buildings at the two sites, including underground facilities, officials said. The U.S. troops left Afghanistan by helicopter a few hours after the operation began, sources told NBC News.

Taliban sources, meanwhile, issued conflicting accounts of the raid — with one version saying that the U.S. commandos met no resistance and another saying that they were repulsed by Taliban defenders. The varying accounts could reflect the fact that the raids were directed at two targets.

HELICOPTER CRASH KILLS 2 The Taliban also contended its forces had shot down the U.S. helicopter that went down in Pakistan. U.S. defense officials, however, insisted that the crash was an accident, not the result of hostile fire. “Any claims that they shot this helicopter down are absolutely false,” Myers said. Victims of the crash were not immediately identified.

The MH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter had been in the air, its crew ready to provide assistance if needed during the raid, officials said. A local official told Reuters that the helicopter crashed near an airbase in Dalbandin, 37 miles from the Afghan border in southwest Pakistan. The United States has put troops and helicopters at Dalbandin and two other bases inside Pakistan since the beginning of fighting in Afghanistan.

Reports suggested that the helicopter kicked up sand and dust during an attempt to land, causing the crew members to lose their frame of reference, Pentagon sources told NBC News. Myers sketched out a similar scenario during Saturday’s news briefing.

Three people were injured in the crash, and two Army Rangers were injured in the parachute jump that kicked off Saturday’s raid, Myers said. PRESIDENT BUSH REACTS

President Bush, who was attending an economic summit in China, said he grieved for the soldiers who died and their families.

“The important thing for me to tell the American people is that these soldiers will not have died in vain,” Bush said. “This is a just cause.”

The president said Americans were prepared for the casualties that come with war. “They understand there will be sacrifices,” he said.

Bush refused to comment on the raid but said U.S. forces are “circling the terrorists so we can bring them to justice.” Sources told NBC that other covert operations were under way inside Afghanistan. Myers declined to provide public confirmation of such reports, saying he would refrain from discussing any operational details. But he said some U.S. military missions in Afghanistan would be “visible” while others would be “invisible.”

Air strikes on Afghanistan continued during the day Saturday, with U.S. pilots concentrating on Taliban tanks and troops in rural areas, the air commander on the USS Theodore Roosevelt said.

The pilots were feeling increasingly comfortable because the Taliban’s air defenses can’t reach the planes, Capt. Stephen Voetsch told The Associated Press.

“They are military targets, they are not in the cities, they are in the outskirts. The type of terrain I have seen reminds me a lot of Fallon, Nev., where we practice,” Voetsch said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Afghan source told MSNBC.com that three or four explosions were heard around Kandahar on Saturday. Reuters reported that an aircraft was heard flying low over Kabul and that Taliban tanks moved through the streets of the capital. Those two cities — along with the eastern city of Jalalabad, thought to be a key area for bin Laden — have been the focus of most strikes since military action began two weeks ago.

On Friday, some 100 planes struck 15 planned target areas including anti-aircraft sites, Myers said; four C-17s dropped 68,000 humanitarian rations. So far, 575,000 meals have been dropped in western Afghanistan and Northern Alliance territory.

RUMSFELD: A PROTRACTED WAR U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld indicated Friday that the struggle to uproot bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and its Taliban protectors would be a protracted one, warning that it was “unwise to think the outcome is determined. It is not.” That view was echoed by Talat Masoud, security adviser to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. “The attack will certainly last until March or April of next year,” Talat Masoud was quoted as saying Saturday by Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper. He said U.S. forces would have to use commando operations rather than conventional military tactics to fight the Taliban guerrillas.

Rumsfeld suggested the best way to beat the Taliban was to persuade large numbers of the rank and file to defect.

To help in that effort, U.S. planes dropped transistor radios Friday to Taliban troops on the ground so they could pick up the latest U.S. broadcast, which carried the message: “Surrender now, and we allow you to live.”

Rumsfeld also said that the opposition forces, the Northern Alliance, have asked for and received U.S. aid, including ammunition or money to buy it.

The Northern Alliance is currently locked in a fierce battle for control of Mazar-e-Sharif, a vital crossroads for Taliban supply lines and a strategically important airport close to the Uzbekistan border.

But the United States, under pressure from Pakistan, doesn’t want the Northern Alliance taking power on its own. It wants a broad-based government, even including moderate elements of the Taliban, running Afghanistan.

-- Anonymous, October 20, 2001