Knocking on Osama's Cave Door

The book's release was stalled for more than four months by the CIA's publications review board, which vets manuscripts by active and retired employees. Berntsen took the CIA to court twice to release the manuscript. "Didn't they read my psychological profile?" he marvels, then spells out what it would say: "This guy is a risk-taker. And if he believes he's right, he's not gonna walk away. They just wanted me to go away."

The book dropped on Dec. 27, right into the black hole between Christmas and New Year's, which further irritated the author. But Berntsen found some advantage in the censorship: "Jawbreaker" is replete with blacked-out passages, after some of which he inserts stinging notes to the reader. Such as: "CIA censors redacted this section dealing with a bureaucratic tie-up at headquarters that had put our whole operation at risk."

A CIA spokesman, Tom Crispell, said that "as a rule" the review process is done within 30 days. "But a complicated manuscript can take longer" and negotiations between the author and the agency over redactions can further extend the process, he added. "We are legally obligated to protect sensitive intelligence information from disclosure."

Slipping the Noose

"Jawbreaker" is the latest in an expanding shelf of books from counterterrorism experts who fault politicians and CIA paper-pushers for not fully recognizing the threat of al Qaeda before 9/11. Berntsen's friend Michael Scheuer, who headed the agency's bin Laden task force and authored "Imperial Hubris," offered an astounding blurb:

"Read this heartbreaking book, keep it safe, and reread it after al-Qaeda detonates a nuclear device in America. You will then know who signed the death warrant for tens of thousands of your countrymen."

It's the second book by a Jawbreaker team leader. Last year agency veteran Gary C. Schroen, who preceded Berntsen into the battle, published "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan."

Schroen's memoir recounted instructions from Cofer Black, then director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center: "I want bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to be able to show bin Laden's head to the president."

Berntsen got the same sort of speech. If the Saudi's scalp eluded him, it wasn't for a lack of his shouting and cursing up the communication lines to get his small team the military backup he needed to grab bin Laden.

Berntsen says he knew exactly where the 1,000-man jihadist force had fallen back in the mountainous region near the Pakistani border. An Arabic-speaking Jawbreaker team member reported hearing bin Laden speaking on a radio taken from a dead al Qaeda fighter. The terrorist leader exhorted his followers to keep fighting and, at one point, apologized "for getting them trapped . . . and pounded by American airstrikes," Berntsen writes.

By his estimate, there were just 40 Special Operations soldiers and a dozen other Special Forces on hand to head off bin Laden's potential flight "across hundreds of miles of caves and mountain passes." The exclamation points come fast and furious in the book as Berntsen vents:

"We needed U.S. soldiers on the ground! . . . I'd sent my request for 800 U.S. Army Rangers and was still waiting for a response. I repeated to anyone at headquarters who would listen: We need Rangers now! The opportunity to get bin Laden and his men is slipping away!!"

He recalls shouting at an Army general in Kabul who had made it clear that ground troops would not be coming, for "fear of alienating our Afghan allies." "Screw that!" Berntsen retorted.