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Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man

Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man
By Dalton Fury

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The mission was to kill the most wanted man in the world--an operation of such magnitude that it couldn’t be handled by just any military or intelligence force. The best America had to offer was needed. As such, the task was handed to roughly forty members of America’s supersecret counterterrorist unit formerly known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta; more popularly, the elite and mysterious unit Delta Force.
The American generals were flexible. A swatch of hair, a drop of blood, or simply a severed finger wrapped in plastic would be sufficient. Delta's orders were to go into harm's way and prove to the world bin Laden had been terminated.
These Delta warriors had help: a dozen of the British Queen’s elite commandos, another dozen or so Army Green Berets, and six intelligence operatives from the CIA who laid the groundwork by providing cash, guns, bullets, intelligence, and interrogation skills to this clandestine military force. Together, this team waged modern siege of epic proportions against bin Laden and his seemingly impenetrable cave sanctuary burrowed deep inside the Spin Ghar Mountain range in eastern Afghanistan.
Over the years, since the battle ended, scores of news stories have surfaced offering tidbits of information about what actually happened in Tora Bora. Most of it is conjecture and speculation.
This is the real story of the operation, the first eyewitness account of the Battle of Tora Bora, and the first book to detail just how close Delta Force came to capturing bin Laden, how close U.S. bombers and fighter aircraft came to killing him, and exactly why he slipped through our fingers. Lastly, this is an extremely rare inside look at the shadowy world of Delta Force and a detailed account of these warriors in battle.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #66315 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-10-06
  • Released on: 2008-10-06
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 352 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mr. President if you had let these guys run this war it would have been over by now. Read this book now, all of you. [Kill Bin Laden is] the best book ever written by a special operations insider. This guy Fury’s men are the real-deal Delta Force operators. You need to know what happened at Tora Bora, and this great book will tell you." --Colonel David Hunt, U.S. Army (Ret.), New York Times bestselling author of They Just Don’t Get It and On The Hunt, and FOX News Special Ops and Counterterrorism Analyst
 
"Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta is without doubt one of the most fearsome military units ever assembled, with many camp followers seeking with only limited success to record its deeds. There is only one way to know what really happened in any Delta mission, and that is to be there. Delta officer Dalton Fury didn't just take part in the battle of Tora Bora, he commanded all the special operations troops, both U.S. and British, who were there. Kill Bin Laden is a proud, riveting, warts-and-all account of that battle, one of the most important special operations missions of all time." --Michael Smith, author of KILLER ELITE: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team
 
“An important, must-read book about real warriors. A story that so positively reflects what on-the-ground decision making, professional acceptance of risk, and maximizing interagency cooperation can do. Dalton Fury shows us with amazing detail and insight what highly trained and motivated special operators can accomplish successfully in combat out of all proportion to their numbers.” --Cofer Black, former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Counter Terrorist Center

About the Author

Dalton Fury was the senior ranking military officer at the Battle of Tora Bora. As a Delta troop commander he commanded ninety-one other Western special operations commandos and support personnel and helped author, along with some of Delta’s most talented sergeants, the tactical concept of operation to hunt and kill bin Laden.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Unfinished Business

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

T . S . E L I O T

By December 2001, only three months after America was attacked on September 11, Delta Force was already on the ground in enemy territory, an elite group of American commandos cutting their teeth in this new war on terror by rampaging from cave to cave in Afghanistan’s snow-covered Tora Bora Mountains, hot on the heels of Usama bin Laden and laying waste to scores of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

The vicious fighting did not last long, however, and by December 17, our frustrating allies, the Afghan mujahideen, felt they had done and seen enough to publicly declare victory. The muhj looted some conquered caves, pillaged the dead terrorists, and came down from the rugged mountains for a triumphant return to the ancient city of Jalalabad, where they licked their wounds and took stock of their hard-earned treasure.

Of course, the main objective of the attack had been to kill or capture bin Laden, and despite the optimistic claims of the muhj, we were not sure that had been accomplished. His body had not been recovered from the rubble in the mountains after the fighting. Could he have been buried alive in one of several hundred caves? Did his most loyal fighters secretly remove his remains from the area?

If bin Laden survived, nobody was saying so. Maybe a helicopter belonging to the unreliable Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence, a longtime Taliban supporter, had scooped him up and ferried him across the border. Perhaps he put on a woman’s burkha and slid into the back of a taxicab for a drive southwest to his old stomping grounds in Khost? Or did he ride bareback on a white stallion through the high mountain passes and trot safely into Pakistan? Did he just sling his AK-47 comfortably over his shoulder and simply walk out under his own power, helped by nothing more advanced than a wooden cane? And if bin Laden did happen to survive, was he wounded? If so, how bad? Was there a doctor who tended his battle wounds? A lot of questions and no answers. No one knew.

As the months slowly passed, Usama bin Laden’s disposition–dead or alive–remained a mystery to even the most advanced intelligence services. Not a single acronymed agency could say for sure. The CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, DOD, DOJ, MI5, and MI6 knew little more than the general public. No videos or authentic audiotapes of bin Laden had been released during that crucial time, and every possibility was examined at one time or another in scores of newspapers, magazines and online postings from all corners of the globe. In the absence of proof, it was all complete speculation.

So a year later, as the winter of 2002 approached, Delta theorized that the answers to the unanswered questions might lie in retracing our steps in Tora Bora, where someone still in the area might be holding the secret to how he escaped. Maybe by backtracking, we could finally put the jigsaw puzzle together and provide some actionable intelligence. Someone still in the area might be holding the secret that would provide us with some clue, some trace of bin Laden.

Delta Force had never left Afghanistan, and less than a year after the original battle in the mountains, our squadron found itself rotating back into the country, just in time to hunt the elusive, ghostlike leadership of the Taliban and al Qaeda during the Christmas and New Year holidays. If we could not be with our families for that special season, what possible better alternative was there to being in a war zone with Delta teammates? To a man, we were proud to be there.

Unfortunately, the operational pace had not improved much from the previous year, because intelligence was still so scarce on our high-value targets. Usama bin Laden remained HVT no. 1, and his right-hand man, the Egyptian terrorist Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, was HVT no. 2. Unfortunately, both still wear those designations at the time of this writing, and continue thumbing their noses at the international community.

We spent many days and nights looking for a golden nugget. For countless hours, we studied satellite imagery of suspected bad-guy compounds, patiently watched hour after hour of live video from the Predator drone aircraft, and analyzed stacks of classi.ed military intelligence reports or CIA cable traffic. Everything required close attention if we hoped to discover some inkling or HVT signature that would show that our targets were indeed down there.

That was not enough, because if we found something, we had to be ready to move instantly. We spent long stints on the local pistol and rifle ranges and worked out hard in a gym that looked like a circus tent, where we pumped iron and burned calories on the treadmills. To hone the fine edge that Delta demands, we repeatedly rehearsed various mission profiles with the expert .yboys from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). Some of what little time was left over was spent doing things like enjoying DVD miniseries movies like The Sopranos and Band of Brothers.

Finally, a nugget was turned up through hard work by the CIA and a bunch of rough-and-tumble, tobacco-chewing good ole boys with thick beards, Green Berets with a Special Forces Group of the Alabama National Guard.

The neighbors of an Afghan gentleman whom we will call Gul Ahmed had dimed him out to CIA assets. He lived in the large Agam Valley, a dry and rocky riverbed that sprawled along a north-south axis thousands of feet below and to the east of bin Laden’s Tora Bora sanctuary. A single-lane road had been cut through the valley by the bulldozers and earthmovers of the construction company owned by Usama bin Laden’s family in Saudi Arabia during the jihad against the Soviet Union. Legend had it that a young bin Laden himself rolled up his sleeves and worked that land from the seat of a bulldozer.

The suspect, Ahmed, was not only a well-known local supporter of al Qaeda, but also managed an elaborate weapons cache operation up and down the strategic valley that leads directly across the border and into Pakistan.

Besides his propensity for dealing arms to terrorists, insurgents, and the highest bidders among area tribes, the dossier said, Gul Ahmed also was a key figure during the previous year’s fighting, which took place almost within earshot of his backyard. The turncoat neighbors said that Ahmed and his sons provided logistical support—food, water, medical supplies, firewood, and ammunition—to al Qaeda during the battle.

These acts alone made him a personality worth targeting, but not necessarily important enough that the gig had to be executed by Delta. The Green Berets from Alabama were more than capable of rounding up Gul Ahmed and his relatives. However, there was something special about this cat.

One key piece of information threw the ball into Delta’s court. Ahmed allegedly had hidden a severely weakened and wounded Usama bin Laden in his home for three days the previous year, while hundreds of mujahideen and forty or so Western commandos painstakingly searched the mountains for the al Qaeda leader. The intelligence packet also claimed that toward the end of the battle, Gul Ahmed’s hospitality and tribal contacts were reported to have been good enough to smuggle the terrorist mastermind through a snow-swathed mountain pass that was just seven miles to the south, and out of our reach.

Well, well. That changed things a little bit and made it a little more personal. Mr. Ahmed was given the moniker of a "known al Qaeda supporter," a designation normally accompanied by a mission statement of "kill or capture." Again, that alone was no big deal, but pulling it off would have a rather pleasant spin that would make the assault troops tighten our

Customer Reviews

Enlightening read that should make you angry.5
I thought we'd learned some expensive lessons in Vietnam. Apparently I'm wrong, and the proof of that is the book Kill bin laden (lower case intentional) by Dalton Fury (not the real name) and Col. David Hunt. In Vietnam there was constant interference by Washington in the conducting of operations in the field. I thought we'd learned to turn command of combat operations over to field commanders, define, in advance, the rules of engagement and then step out of the way and let them go. I also thought we'd learned that international borders couldn't always be respected, especially when those borders provide aid and comfort to foreign fighters. This is especially true when the host government knows they are providing cover for these fighters and takes no steps, or weak ones at best, to put an end to that cover. Boy, was I wrong. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

Fury was the leader of an elite Delta Force unit inserted into Afghanistan with the sole mission of finding bin laden and then killing him. Not an easy mission but certainly clear enough. No ambiguity here. As Dalton and Hunt point out, not only was there interference from up the chain of command in disallowing mission options, but the Delta Force was paired with Afghan fighters that were very thin in their commitment of finding bin laden. It is a paradox that the mission seemed doomed almost from the start and yet came very close to succeeding. Dalton maintains that they may have come within a few meters of actually killing b. l. The cave the team thought b. l. was in was targeted and successfully bombed. Later, teams searched the area for b.l. body parts but none was ever found. After reading Kill bin laden, one has to wonder whether our leaders really wanted b. l. found and dispensed with.

Kill bin laden is well written. Why shouldn't it be? The man who wrote it was there.

As a veteran, I've never doubted that the U. S. military is the finest in the world. There's not another soldier in the world that can stand toe to toe with the American fighting man. Our combined forces are simply the best. However, it seems clear that even after the hard lessons learned in the past, we seem doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. Will we ever learn?

Dalton and Hunt deliver a masterfully written inside story about the failed attempt to get b. l. Kill bin laden is not a partisan read but it is one that should make you angry.

I highly recommend.

Semper Fi

An exceptional, superb, first hand account by the team leader of US Army Special Forces Detachment Delta5
It is rare that readers are provided a first hand, accurate, contemporary, non politically constrained account of a major special operation by US Army Special Forces Detachment Delta. Many organizations claim the title, "special operations;" it takes more than a title. Major Dalton Fury's book explains in complete detail what real special operations are about. Readers may pound the book on the table as they learn that Fury, the team leader, was given the mission but not provided the total command dexterity needed to get bin Laden. Higher echelons unexplainably constrained his alternatives. When will we learn? Nevertheless, Fury writes a lucid description of this most special operation. The understandably unanswered question is why were other alternatives requested by Fury not permitted? Our nation is privileged to have leaders, men, and a unit like this in its military. The continued strong relationship between SAS and Delta is obvious. The book is a great read for active and retired military of all ranks and services, civilians, and academic readers alike. It will be a case history for future generations of special operators. Thank you to Major Fury and your team for trying and for writing the book.

Over-Hyped by Marketing, Excellent for Students of SOF4
This book has been very heavily over-sold by the publisher and will disappoint those who are expecting something other than a professional account of a professional mission with all its warts.

This is a very fine first person account with ample detail that I for one found very rewarding and worthy of both my time and money (the book is very reasonably priced). The reader will benefit from first reading the reviews of the books I list at the end--one would never know from this account that Rumsfeld gave the Pakistani's an air corridor to evacuate 3000 Taliban overnight from Tora Bora, that the Navy was certain they killed Bin Laden, or that General Franks refused to put a battalion of Rangers on the back door (the author does tell us of his understanding that President Bush personally ruled that the back door belonged to the "trusted" Pakistanis).

The author tries hard to be nice to intelligence, but his true bottom line is captured in his description of what they had for him:

1) It's winter in Afghanistan
2) Bin Laden can ride a horse

We all know they had more than that--even with a US Senator blowing the fact that we were listening to Bin Laden's cell phones and satellite phones--but the reality is that CIA could meet with the warlords but did not have actual people within the tribes and on the ground as the Pakistani ISI did.

The author also makes clear that it was just as hard to figure out the friendly situation as it was the enemy situation. From where I sit, "total battlefield awareness" is a pipe dream--a fraud--and it's time we started refocusing on humans that can live up to the Gunny Poole "Tiger's Way."

Here I my notes, ending with my conclusions and ten books I recommend in partnership with this one.

Early on the role of snipers, and the possible uses of snipers if we could get bureaucrats and politicians out of the way, impress me.

Small teams with a forward air controller that can go deep and stay for days impress me, very much. Unfortunately, we don't field them often enough (I only have read of use in Colombia, not generally, but SOF operates in over 150 countries so who knows).

Author reinforces the concept of Irregular Warfare as bottom-up thinking in which every person has a say, but takes pains to distinguish this from leadership, with the self-effacing comment that the leaders will decide after the enlisted personnel tell the leaders what they need to know.

Early on he laments to misplacing of the Special Operations "truths," the first one being "Humans are more important than hardware." Today privates are being selected for special operations right out of boot camp, and between private military contractors being allowed to loot the public treasury of both money and skilled manpower, and the complete dismissal of all standards, one can sense the author's thoughts between the lines: DELTA is the last vestige of "true" special forces (although I would include SEALs and some special air).

Air Force air strikes were not great--1 out of 3 hit the target, and the so-called super bomb, the BLU-82, did not explode as advertised.

Bin Laden's "order of battle" was surmised to be an inner circle of Saudis, Yemenis, and Egyptians, with an outer circle of Afghans, Algerians, Jordanians, Chechnyans, and Pakistanis.

Taliban liked to wear black on black...I could not help being reminded of the Viet-Cong.

Terrain blocked our radios. General Clark and others have made it clear that we are not trained, EQUIPPED, or organized for mountain operations, and between this point, and the personal knowledge I have of how few special Chinooks we have that can operate above 12,000 feet--and only because their CWO pilots have learned to fart into the fuel--it's clear the US is not serious about mountain or jungle warfare, and marginally competent as urban warfare.

After seven days they were out of batteries and water.

There was a "surrender" gambit when they got close, the primary purpose being to keep an Afghan warlord between Bin Laden and the Americans.

We still have total disconnect between ground troop use of grids on a map, and Air Force demand for latitude and longitude. The $150 GPS conversion is great, Navy and Air Force still not joint.

Lovely account of how they did a field hire of a seeming gift from heaven, a second translator who spoke English, only to learn later he also spoke Arabic and had been sent as a penetration. Sidebar on Pakistani penetration of the Afghan group they were with.

No mules. Very very tough to resupply in the mountains in winter. Even without loads, four kilometers on one occasion took five hours.

Bin Laden evidently wrote his will on the 14th of December, coincident with his rather desperate sounding call over the radio to all to arm their women and children.

We dropped 1100 "precision" bombs and $550 "dumb" bombs on Tora Bora, plus tens of thousands of rounds of other artillery and ammunition. I am so reminded of Viet-Nam, where what we paid for artillery shells being fired could have bought every Vietnamese a two-story cinderblock house with electricity and running water.

Author concludes that the CIA model of buying warlords DOES NOT WORK for specific objectives.

I learn for the first time that a visit was made to Tora Bora after the fact, a forensic visit. [He know from Bin Laden's later emergence that he did get out.]

The author is scathingly critical of the Army Center for Army Lessons Learned, which has exactly one hit on Tora Bora against thousands of documents visible via the web.

What I learned from this:

DELTA is over-trained and under-utilized.
Conventional Army leaders have no idea how to use special forces in advance of operations or deep behind enemy lines--they simply do not have the mind-set.
CIA paramilitary and some clandestine needs to be transferred into a new Active Measures Command that is the dark and dirty side of Irregular Warfare.

Fine book! See also:
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorist Unit
About Face: Odyssey of an American Warrior
Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
The Tunnels of Cu Chi
War Without Windows: A True Accout of a a Young Army Officer Trapped in an Intelligence Cover-Up in Vietnam.