DID TOM CLANCY NAME THE GUY? (via John Resnick):

The Hunt Heats Up (Michael Hirsh and John Barry, 3/15/04, Newsweek)

Today [William H. McRaven] is a rear admiral, and his new job is one that could not rank higher on President George W. Bush's to-do list in election year 2004: nailing Osama bin Laden. It is a job that will require much ruthlessness—a good deal more of that, perhaps, than personal honor. NEWSWEEK has learned that McRaven is heading up Task Force 121, a covert, miniature strike force with a command structure so secretive that McRaven's role hasn't even been reported until now.

Task Force 121, which also helped to capture Saddam Hussein under McRaven's command, represents something brand-new in warfare, a pure hybrid of civilian intelligence and military striking power. It is the most ambitious melding yet of CIA assets, Special Forces (mainly the Army's Delta Force) and the Air Force. Formed late last year as part of Joint Special Operations Command—the secret "black ops" under Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who until recently was deputy operations director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—it is designed to produce a lightning-fast reaction should intel locate bin Laden or any other "high-value targets" anywhere for a few hours. It's a work in progress: CIA Director George Tenet meets frequently with Gen. John Abizaid, the head of Central Command, to nurture the marriage.

McRaven has managed to bridge both the civilian and military worlds. While working at the National Security Council after 9/11, he was principal author of the White House strategy for combating terrorism. McRaven also literally wrote the book on Special Ops, a 1995 history of surgical strike teams from the Nazi rescue of Mussolini in 1943 to the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe. And his thesis at naval postgrad school is now mandatory reading for Special Ops commanders. "Bill is reputed to be the smartest SEAL that ever lived," says a former commander who knows McRaven well. "He is physically tough, compassionate and can drive a knife through your ribs in a nanosecond." According to his former boss at the White House, Gen. Wayne Downing, "if anybody is smart and cunning enough to get [bin Laden], McRaven and the Delta and SEAL Team Six guys he now commands will do it." [...]

If the hunters are getting closer to their prey, it's also thanks to a renewed effort by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to infiltrate the border regions sympathetic to Al Qaeda. On Saturday, the BBC reported that bin Laden narrowly escaped one such Pakistani raid, and NEWSWEEK confirmed that such an incident occurred. Within the past few weeks, some intelligence sources say, a U.S. Predator also spotted a suspect believed to be Al-Zawahiri somewhere in the border area. [...]

McRaven could be using psyop to flush bin Laden and others out of their hiding places. But the real key to success, the Task Force 121 commander knows, may be the "hammer and anvil" of converging U.S. Special Forces teams in Afghanistan and some 70,000 Pakistani forces in the border areas. In one recent operation in Waziristan, Pakistani security forces arrested several women married to foreign fighters, hoping for a lead on bin Laden. Similarly, they have destroyed the houses of tribesmen suspected of sheltering Qaeda fugitives. Pakistani officials said the tactic has worked, providing valuable information while apparently helping to drive Qaeda and Taliban fighters back across the Afghan border—into the hands, they hope, of Task Force 121. The standing U.S. offer of $25 million for bin Laden's head provides an extra incentive. "We now have all the ingredients in place for more effective operations in the days to come," says a senior Pakistani official. The man who's been tasked with blending those ingredients together, Bill McRaven, is betting on it.

The nanosecond bit we'll buy, but McRaven?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2004 11:28 PM