Missing Bin Laden
By Larry Johnson on October 8, 2008 at 8:01 AM in Current Affairs
A retired Delta Force Major writing under the name of Dalton Fury (not his real name) provides further corroboration that the Bush Administration failed to support military units and intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had cornered Osama Bin Laden. 
Fury’s book, Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man, corroborates Gary Berntsen’s account published two years ago, Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander.
Back when NoQuarter was attracting only about 1500 individual visits a day (December 2005) I wrote the following about Berntsen’s book:
The book the CIA didn’t want you to read, JAWBREAKER by Gary Berntsen, is out and it kills. I’ve sent Gary a nasty note because his story kept me up till 4 am today. Just couldn’t put it down. Gary spent most of this year battling CIA censors, who were refusing to release the book. They insisted on excising parts of the story that have already appeared in other books about CIA operations in Afghanistan written by Steve Coll and another CIA veteran, Gary Schroen.
Gary Berntsen was the second CIA officer sent to Afghanistan and put in charge of directing the destruction of Al Qaeda and the hunt for Bin Laden. He arrived in the fall of 2001, replacing veteran officer Gary Schroen, who had led the first CIA element into Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Gary 2, i.e., Berntsen, built on Schroen’s foundation and played a critical role in directing the offensive that broke the back of the Taliban and scattered Al Qaeda.
The key news from Gary’s book is that we had Bin Laden in our sights but Tommy Franks and JSOC Commander, Dell Dailey, dilly dallied and did not deploy U.S. troops requested by Berntsen to the battle at Tora Bora. We could of had him; we should of had him; but we let Bin Laden get away.
You can read the rest here. I sent Gary a note Sunday night after watching some of the 60 Minutes piece featuring Daulton Fury. I asked Gary, is this guy legit. Gary replied:
Dalton Fury is the JSOC Ground Force Commander that joined my men in Tora Bora. We ultimately turned the battlefield over to him and he was extremely brave and competent. He is very fine man. I am glad someone got to put the details out where the Agency blocked me. I guess this sort of settles who knew what and when. How about JSOC and CENTCOM refusing to allow him to come in from the back side and refusing to let him drop mines.
Some people tried to paint me as not truthful when I wrote Jawbreaker.
I am thrilled that he has accurately finished the story
If you missed the 60 Minutes story it is now up on YouTube.
A story in the Army Times by Sean Naylor last February gave the public a heads up on Fury’s tale:
The Delta Force officer who commanded U.S. ground forces hunting Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001 will publish a book in October that he promises will explain how the al-Qaida leader managed to slip through the grasp of the United States.
But the author’s plans have put him on a collision course with U.S. Special Operations Command, which he says is threatening to take him to court for revealing classified information.
The author, who spoke on the condition his identity not be revealed, wrote the book under the pseudonym Dalton Fury. At the time of the hunt for bin Laden in the mountainous region of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, Fury was a major commanding a Delta Force troop, and was placed in charge of an additional Delta troop (for a total of about 40 Delta operators) plus assorted other special operations elements at Tora Bora.
It is now generally accepted that bin Laden was present at Tora Bora after fleeing Jalalabad ahead of the allied advance that toppled the Taliban government, but escaped the assault on his mountain stronghold, despite a massive bombing campaign and attacks from allied Afghan militias and U.S. and British special operators. The failure to capture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora later became a focus for critics of the Bush administration’s handling of the war against al-Qaida.
Fury, who had prior enlisted service as an infantryman, retired in 2005 as a major and decided to write a book about Tora Bora, motivated by a desire to honor the troops who served with him there “and to tell the truth.”
“There have been so many Democratic jabs about it being done with proxy forces, with just maybe U.S. forces advising,” Fury said. “No one has ever really talked about [how] it was the U.S. Delta Force and the SBS [the British Special Boat Service] that were actually in the mountains when the Afghans were leaving every night … So you left Americans behind the lines by themselves.”
Fury said he told his troops when they left Tora Bora, “this is going to become a big deal in the future.”
“Of course everybody looked at me like, ‘No it’s not,’” he recalled. “We all assumed at the time that bin Laden would be caught in a week, a month, a year, and [Tora Bora] would be a minor footnote. But it’s become [so symbolic] of major strategic failure… that I thought the operational positives and the tactical success that we had needed to be told … to the public.”
Fury said the book will also explain how bin Laden managed to escape.
“From my perspective as the ground force commander and what I’ve learned since then, I think we have a pretty good handle on the steps, the missteps, the decisions made and the actual actions that were taken that led him to get out of there,” he said.
The book, which Fury has already written, is tentatively titled Kill bin Laden and will be published by St. Martin’s Press.
George Bush leaves office soon with his reputation in tatters. After the most devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil George Bush failed to make capturing and killing Bin Laden a priority. Fury’s book is just another brick in the wall of facts that is disclosing how foolish Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were in their failure to press the war against the Islamic extremists. But Fury honors the men who went behind enemy lines and put their own lives at risk. So there is a silver lining.
I encourage you to buy the book using the Amazon link above. First, the book is worth your time and money. Second, NoQuarter gets a small pittance from Amazon and it helps defray the costs of the blog.
by Ronald Scott
* More novels by 
* 
(
)
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
