U.S. OK'd Troop Terror Hunts in Pakistan

American military vehicles patrol a stretch of road near Khost area, 1 mile from the Pakistani border, in this April 4, 2004 file photo about 100 miles southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan where U.S troops searched the porous and mountainous border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan for al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File) (Emilio Morenatti - AP)

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said this week he could not comment. "As a policy we don't talk about rules of engagement, certainly not about current rules in place for any operations in Afghanistan, Iraq or any other operation," he said.

The 2004 documents were included among 1,100 pages of investigative documents generated by the Army's probe into the death of NFL player-turned-Ranger Pat Tillman, whose platoon was operating in the region at the time.

E-mail exchanges between Ranger officers in the documents make no mention of a requirement to inform Pakistan in advance of strikes into that country.

However, one summary mentions a chain of required notifications, which resulted in Pakistan being apprised _ apparently after the fact. One rule says "joint task force commander must inform CENTCOM immediately" and ensure the "Mil Liaison team" in Islamabad was notified.

Operations officers had a hot line to that liaison office, which would in turn inform Pakistani officials, according to a U.S. officer who served in the region and is knowledgable about operations within Afghanistan during that mid-2004 period. On some occasions, the officer said, Pakistanis would detect ground or air incursions and request explanations from the Americans, who would open inquiries.

Interviews with officers in the field, and the public statements of top U.S. commanders, indicate similar guidelines remain in place today.

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., asked Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, "Do we have to have the approval of the Pakistani government in hot pursuit across the border?"

No, Lute replied. If U.S. forces spot so much as a "hostile intent" against them and chase the threat toward the border, "then we have all the authorities we need to pursue, either with fires or on the ground, across the border," he said.

Even a surveillance report of enemy fighters setting up a rocket and pointing it west into Afghanistan is enough to trigger a unilateral military response, said Lute, then the chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now President Bush's deputy national security adviser _ the "war czar" on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Capt. Scott Horrigan, a former company commander at Camp Tillman, an outpost about a mile inside Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province, told the AP earlier this year that rules of engagement allowed U.S. forces on the ground to travel up to a kilometer, a little more than half a mile, into Pakistani territory if they had "eyes on" insurgents, not just terrorist leaders.

Horrigan said that pursuit would require the approval of Pakistani authorities or Horrigan's brigade commander. It wasn't clear whether the brigade commander was required to consult with Pakistani officials before such an incursion. Through a spokesman at Fort Drum, where he is currently stationed, Horrigan declined to comment this week.

Horrigan also said in the earlier interview that U.S. aircraft could penetrate up to 10 kilometers into Pakistan, but must seek permission first. And he said his soldiers had fired from Afghanistan into Pakistan "two or three times." With fire coming from Pakistan, "usually I can fire back," he said, citing "an inherent right to self-defense."