Clinton, Bush, and the hunt for bin Laden
The national commission wrote that Clarke was also frustrated by Rice's restructuring of the NTSC's counterterrorism policy so that Clarke no longer reported directly to the principals committee as he had under Clinton but, as with all other committees, reported to the principals through the deputies.
But the commission said that Clarke worried that "reporting through the Deputies Committee would slow decision making on counterterrorism." Clarke felt he had been demoted, because he had under Clinton acted as a de facto principal, the commission said. He also did not enjoy the same level of access to Bush as he did to Clinton.
"In the first months of the Bush administration, Rice and Clarke were ships passing in the night," says Daniel Marcus, the former general counsel of the 9/11 commission.
"Clarke felt cut out and that necessary decisions were not being made. Rice felt that Clarke did not appreciate the need to develop a comprehensive new policy to replace what she viewed as a 'tit for tat' approach of the Clinton administration." Clarke declined to be interviewed for this story.
As this bitter power struggle at the NSC emerged, so also did the armed Predator, in the inky California sky, as a series of tests commenced under Positive Plot. The technicians at Big Safari built a replica of the home that bin Laden lived in at Tarnak Farms, a square, squat building whose structure and density the technicians approximated with satellite imagery provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
The goal was to fire Hellfires into the house to see how effective the warheads were.
Big Safari conducted somewhere in the vicinity of 20 test shots. In the early tests, because there was so much time pressure, the technicians filled the farmhouse replica with pumpkins that were filling in, so to speak, for bin Laden, to make a rough judgment on the lethality of the warheads. Later, as the CIA provided more funds and the testing became more sophisticated, the technicians installed sensors in the corners of the house and placed plywood "fragmentation boards," or "witness panels," smooth plywood panels installed on walls, that would capture the warhead fragments, to accurately measure their density and dispersion, the official told U.S. News.
But the early tests were not encouraging. The Hellfire missiles typically are equipped with two types of warheads–blast fragmentation, or "blast frag," warheads, and armor-piercing rounds. The technicians discovered that the latter, while good at penetrating tanks, would set off only a small blast and create very few fragments.
"It did not give us a high enough probability of kill," this official said, "inside the room." So the Air Force went with the "blast frag" missile and later attempted to improve the warhead, to increase its lethality, the official said.
Even as the debate continued at a furious pace as to whether the warheads would kill bin Laden, the action shifted from the Mojave Desert back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., where, in June 2001, U.S. officials at the assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary level were taken through a tabletop war game, which has not previously been disclosed. It was a dramatic session. The officials were shown the Predator videos of bin Laden from the previous fall, walking around Tarnak Farms, talking to people, visiting the mosque. They were asked whether, if they were informed that an armed Predator had shot the pictures, would they recommend pulling the trigger? The officials unanimously said yes, according to the former military official. That approval at the NSC policy coordination committee level was to be passed on to the deputies committee and to the principals committee. But Clarke continued to struggle to get a principals meeting arranged.
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