Lahore: Task Force
121, a conglomerate of American intelligence agencies and
military personnel, infiltrate Pakistan and try to kill
or capture Osama Bin Laden if the flushing action pinpoints
Bin Laden, who is believed to be moving in the country’s
semi-autonomous tribal areas, a reliable source said THE
FACT. Task Force 121,
the secret man-hunting unit formed for the war on terrorism,
is a blend of warriors, aviators, Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) officers and deep-cover intelligence collectors who
nabbed Saddam Hussein and now hope to catch Bin Laden.“This
is tightening the sensor-to-shooter loop,” said a
source who intouch with americans. Source more said "All
the information under one roof.”The
Pentagon refuses to discuss the group’s makeup. Its
members avoid reporters. New information was obtained through
interviews with knowledgeable defence officials.
Elements of 121 have moved
from Iraq to Afghanistan for a US spring offensive, named
“Mountain Storm,” against Al Qaeda.
Task Force 121’s
composition includes four major following elements:
Grey Fox:
a deep-cover organisation based at Fort Belvoir in Northern
Virginia. Members specialise in spying and intercepting
communications. They carry hardware that can tap into
electronic-eavesdropping satellites and can splice fibre-optic
cables. Grey Fox maintains a fleet of aircraft at Baltimore-Washington
International Airport. On occasion, members enter countries
on “non-official cover” using assumed identities.
Created principally to combat international drug smugglers,
Grey Fox has turned out to be the perfect unit for Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s demand for “actionable
intelligence” to kill or capture Al Qaeda operatives
and other terrorists.The
army once maintained Grey Fox, but after September 11
the Pentagon shifted direct control to Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, NC. Ultimately, Grey Fox
reports to US Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla.
Although officials
still refer to the intelligence unit as Grey Fox, a source
said its code name was changed during the war on terrorism.
The source asked that the new designation not be reported.
Grey Fox has operated under a number of different code
words. In the early 1990s, for example, it was called
“Capacity Gear”.
JSOC:
This is the headquarters for an elite 800-member group
of Army Delta Force and Navy SEALs who specialise in counter-terrorism.
Left mostly on the shelf pre-September 11, JSOC is today
the most active it has ever been.JSOC
was the bulk of Task Force in Afghanistan that hunted
Bin Laden, Mulla Omar and other high-value targets. It
then reinvented itself as Task Force 121 in Iraq. Sources
say it’s likely the task force will take on a new
designating number now that it is back in Afghanistan.
JSOC and Grey Fox
make up the “black” world of special operations.
The “white” units — which operate more
publicly — include Green Berets and civil-affairs
officers.
CIA Special Activities
Division: These are CIA paramilitaries who can aid Task
Force 121 by setting up networks of sources in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and provide intelligence directly to the
warriors.
The 160th Special Operations
Aviation Regiment: This fleet of Black Hawk, Chinook and
AH-6 “Little Bird” helicopters ferries the
Delta Force and SEALs where they need to go, quickly,
at night, at low altitudes. Saddam was loaded onto a “Little
Bird” Dec. 13 and taken to Tikrit after Task Force
121 and a 4th Infantry Division unit found him hiding
in a hole on a farm.Task
Force 121 would not be the first joint operation between
the CIA and armed forces. In the Afghanistan war, the
Pentagon transferred scores of special operations troops
to the CIA’s Special Activities Division to infiltrate
the country and set up links to anti-Taliban forces.
Elements of Task Force 121 are moving
to the Afghanistan because of a planned spring offensive,
and because the military and CIA are picking up better
intelligence on bin Laden. President Musharraf has put
thousands of troops into border area with Afghanistan
against Al Qaeda. More boots on the ground means more
contacts with locals, who provide information.
Meanwhile, the CIA and the US-led coalition
task force based at Bagram, north of Kabul, has learned
lessons from the hunt for Saddam.
That search showed the value of “link-analysis”
— listing the names of every person who has contacts
with the target, or contacts with friends or family of
the target, and then finding them for questioning. The
result is that the US believes it knows areas where Bin
Laden has visited and to which he may return, said a defence
source.
US military officers in
Afghanistan have expressed growing confidence they will
catch Bin Laden by year’s end.