88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (60 page)

(2) Being inducted into the Senior Intelligence Service by CIA’s then deputy director, George Tenet, in 1996.

(3) Matchbook advertising a $5 million reward for Osama bin Laden for distribution in Afghanistan, in 1999. The small Arabic print at the bottom of the cover reads: “Danger—Close cover before starting fire.”

(4) Our residence in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. It provided a wonderful view of the Margalla Hills to the north of the city.

(5) Pre-9/11 Pakistan. Hiking with Paula and Doug in the mountains of northern Pakistan near Chitral in the fall of 2000. The peaks of the Hindu Kush rise behind us.

(6) Director Tenet meeting in his Langley office with Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s storied—some would say infamous—intelligence service, the ISI, in March 2000. We would fail to gain his cooperation against bin Laden.

(7) My half of two Pakistani rupee notes torn by Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, the number two figure in the Taliban, at our meeting in Quetta on October 2, 2001. His portions of the bills were to serve as bona fides for any emissaries he might send me. They were never used.

(8) With Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in my station office after our meeting on November 4, 2001. To the left are Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith and Michele Sison, the deputy chief of mission in Islamabad.

(9) With Hamid Karzai—third from the right—and five of the six tribal elders who were part of his initial guerrilla force. We met on November 5, 2001, a day after CIA arranged for their evacuation by U.S. military helicopter from Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan, to a Pakistani airbase in Jacobabad. Fourth from the left is “Jeff,” my senior reports officer.

(10) A portion of Afghan tribal leader Gul Agha Shirzai’s anti-Taliban force immediately after crossing the Pakistan border into the Shin Naray Valley, Afghanistan, on November 14, 2001. Just over three weeks later, they would enter Kandahar City.

(11) At the Peiwar Kotal Pass on the Pak-Afghan border on November 28, 2001. With me are Maj. Gen. “Jafar Amin” of the ISI, fifth from the right; his aide, second from the right; and an escort from the Kurram Militia. Behind us are the Safed Koh Mountains, through which we anticipated bin Laden and his followers would flee the American bombing of Tora Bora.

(12) Fragment of a U.S. bomb which mistakenly fell on the Pakistani border post at Peiwar Kotal. It was given to me on November 28, 2001, as a souvenir by the
khassadar
—tribal policeman—who was nearly killed by it.

(13) “Dave,” my deputy, and me getting chummy with Senators John Warner and Carl Levin (on the phone), after providing a briefing on the progress of the war in December 2001. Moments later, Senator Levin would be complaining loudly after tearing his shirt on a weapons crate in the hallway.