Today in Manhunting History -- May 6, 1998: A Plan to Capture Bin Laden

As early as 1997 the CIA had developed a plan for a group of Afghan tribal elements to capture Osama bin Laden and hand him over for trial either in the United States or in an Arab country.  By the spring of 1998, this plan centered on a propopsed raid on Tarnak Farms, bin Laden's compound on the outskirts of Kandahar comprising about 80 concrete or mud-brick buildings surrounded by a ten-foot high wall.  One team of Afghans would enter the compound through a drainage ditch that ran under the fence while another team would sneak through the front gate, using silenced pistols to eliminate the guards.  When they found bin Laden, they would hold him a provisioned cave thirty miles away until the Americans could take cusotdy. 

In a May 6, 1998, cable to CIA headquarters, the Islamabad station chief, Gary Schroen (who after 9/11 would led the first CIA paramilitary team, a.k.a. "Jawbreaker," into Afghanistan) declared the Afghans’ planning “almost as professional and detailed . . . as would be done by any U.S. military special operations element.”  He and the other officers who had worked through the plan with the Afghans judged it “about as good as can be.”

(Years later, Schroen told the 9/11 Commission he meant that the chance of capturing or killing bin Laden was about 40 percent).