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Wyane Edwards--US Navy--AFP Five U.S. Navy vessels fired as many as 60 of these cruise missiles, costing about $750,000 each, at camps under the sponsorship of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. If the Saudi tycoon had been hit, very few tears would have been shed in Washington [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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By Aug. 10, Berger had put together a small planning group led by Cohen, CIA Director George Tenet and General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two days later Shelton and Cohen laid out the Pentagon's plan for a strike against bin Laden. One target would be the Zhawar Kili al-Badr camp, 150 km south of Kabul, Afghanistan, where up to 600 people at a time were being trained in guerrilla warfare and the use of explosives. Also in the cross hairs was the Shifa pharmaceutical plant, a fenced and guarded facility in an industrial district on the edge of Khartoum. Washington claims the plant was producing key chemicals for nerve gases like the deadly VX, and that bin Laden has a financial interest in it. And then, the officials say, came the intelligence tidbit that may have set the timing of the U.S. response. Spy satellites had been observing an increase in movements in and out of the Zhawar Kili complex, and the CIA received reports that some top officials from bin Laden's network would be convening in the camp on Aug. 20. It looked to the planners like an opportunity to catch a lot of bad guys on the ground and also to derail what might be a planning session for future terrorist attacks. In any case, U.S. planners hoped to catch bin Laden at the camp. The mission was not specifically aimed at killing him, but if it happened, "nobody would have been choked up over it," says an Administration official. Washington takes the view that bin Laden and his fighters are military targets, not covered by the Executive Order forbidding assassinations. Even after the attack, when it appeared that bin Laden was safe, the officials said they believe he was in the complex during the missile raid. At week's end, the Pentagon wasn't sure how well it had done. The commanders were waiting for a full report, which was delayed because of cloudy weather. Still, officials were saying the strikes had damaged and, in some cases, destroyed the targets. "We have had some very preliminary information," said Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, "indicating that there was moderate-to-heavy damage to each of the targets."
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