In Hunt for Bin Laden, a New Approach

Most CIA case officers were restricted to Pakistani military bases in remote areas. Arthur Keller, a retired CIA officer who served in the tribal areas in 2006, said he had little freedom of movement. Pakistani liaison officers, he said, were more interested in keeping an eye on their CIA counterparts than in providing assistance.

"I couldn't go out myself -- blond-haired, blue-eyed me. I could do it in Austria, but not in Pakistan," Keller said. "It's all done at two removes. That's typical of how it works in a region where the Pakistanis aren't interested in helping out, which they definitely weren't."

Since then, the hunt for bin Laden and his deputies has also been hamstrung by a running dispute among U.S. officials over whether to send Special Forces units into Pakistan, despite an order from the Pakistani government prohibiting such operations.

U.S. officials said they have drafted several covert missions since 2005 that would have dispatched teams of Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force into Pakistan after receiving intelligence on individual al-Qaeda leaders, though not bin Laden. But most of the raids were canceled or failed to receive high-level approval because of doubts that they would work and concern over the fallout if U.S. commandos were killed or captured, the officials said.

"There were some really heated debates between the CIA and Special Forces about who should have authority to do what, and under what circumstances," said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official involved in the discussions. "Don't underestimate the friction that was caused by that."

The disagreements appear to have been resolved, at least for now.

Last week, in a covert raid, U.S. commandos crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan in helicopters and killed about 20 people in a suspected Taliban compound in South Waziristan.

Although it formally protests such actions as a violation of its sovereignty, the Pakistani government has generally looked the other way when the CIA has conducted Predator missions or U.S. troops respond to cross-border attacks by the Taliban. But some officials said ground incursions deep into Pakistani territory could provoke political upheaval.

"This has become incredibly complicated and messy," said a former senior British intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The Americans have been talking about inserting themselves militarily into the tribal areas since 2005, at least. But I think it would just complicate the whole issue by a very significant factor."

Michael Scheuer, a retired CIA officer and former chief of the agency's bin Laden unit, said there weren't many alternatives. "Our options are terrible," he said. "The new president will inherit a fish that is really starting to smell."

Ignoring Hearts and Minds

Pakistani officials said that if the U.S. government had really wanted to rout al-Qaeda, it should have tried harder to modernize Pakistan's impoverished tribal belt, instead of targeting it with missiles.

"We thought, and we still think so, that the American strategy should have been to stabilize the area rather than look for a needle in a haystack," said Mahmood Shah, a retired civilian security chief for the tribal regions.