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Bush Gives CIA Green Signal to Kill Bin Laden
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. President George Bush has reportedly asked the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to hunt down and kill Saudi-born Osama Bin Laden and destroy his al Qa'eda network, news agencies reported.
The Bush order directs the CIA to attack Osama's security set-up with the express objective of eliminating him, according to
The Washington Post report in its Sunday edition.
The CIA has also been given an extra $ 1 billion to fund covert operations and received an unprecedented order to work more closely with elite commando units.
The order, signed by Bush last month but disclosed now for the first time, was described as the most sweeping since the founding of the agency in 1947.
The report, written by senior investigative reporter Bob Woodward, quoted a senior official as saying, "The gloves are off. The President has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-September 11 are now underway."
Previously, Bush said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive." An impatient Bush is said to have signed an official order last month seeking Bin Laden's elimination, the paper reported.
An official ban on assassinations of foreign heads-of-state by the CIA had been observed since the presidency of Gerald R. Ford. Previously, the agency had been involved in several unsuccessful attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Cuban President Fidel Castro.
The ban remains intact, but U.S. officials have said bin Laden does not have similar protection under the restriction because he is not recognized as a foreign head-of-state.
"Still, the CIA move is rich in delicious irony since it was the agency that reared him in the first place and had links with him throughout the 1980s," the paper said.
The two turned hostile against each other after the 1991 Gulf War when bin Laden opposed the continued presence of U.S. troops in his native Saudi Arabia.
"Since 1996, the CIA has had a special "Bin Laden station" at its Langley, Virginia headquarters devoted to tracking him 24 [hours] 7 [days per week] 365 [days per year]."
The Post account report says Washington missed a chance to attack bin Laden last spring when it obtained a high quality live video of him surrounded by a large entourage at one of his known locations in Afghanistan.
But at that time, the Bush Administration did not have the means to attack him via missile or any other weapon at him while he was being filmed.
Officials say the technology has since been developed to attack Bin Laden. But the Saudi-born has not been sighted since.
A Taliban official released a statement Sunday saying that Bin Laden and his companions were "living in complete safety".
According to BBC's online services "the Americans are clearly determined to continue waging the war against Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban on all fronts now, having displayed their ability to stage commando raids too."
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