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DESPERATELY SEEKING OSAMA
Tagging along with the Green Berets
BY SETH GITELL

With the release of two audiotapes last week, Osama bin Laden, number one on America’s most-wanted list, burst back into the public consciousness. The timing of the latest bin Laden threats against the US — just as the White House is preparing for war against Iraq — pushes into the spotlight a new book called The Hunt for bin Laden: Task Force Dagger (Random House) by 77-year-old Robin Moore.

When we last checked in with Moore two years ago at his Concord home, he had just finished co-writing a novel about the Vatican, The Accidental Pope (Griffin, 2001), with former Boston mayor Raymond Flynn (see " The Blue Collar and the Blue Blood, " News and Features, January 25, 2001). Now Moore, who arranged to train with the then-new Green Berets at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1964, and to observe their early fighting in Vietnam to research his 1965 novel The Green Berets, returns to those roots. Moore is not exactly a journalist. He himself eschews that label. ( " I was [in Afghanistan] as a ‘friend of the Special Forces,’ " he explains.) Nevertheless, he was one of the few non-military individuals given access to America’s secret warriors as they fought Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Stricken with Parkinson’s disease, Moore made his way among the Special Forces with the help of a cane filled with 12 ounces of whiskey. Many of the American fighters there had read his most famous book, and some of them — or their fathers — knew of Moore from his days in Vietnam.

Moore was in Afghanistan for much of the heaviest fighting in December 2001. The Hunt for bin Laden chronicles the series of battles that led to the fall of Kabul and the Battle of Tora Bora. Under embargo until the March 4 release date, the book includes several stories that have never been told. One of them, Moore says, concerns a clash between two groups of Afghan warriors, each assisted by its own American advisers. Both warring factions had their eyes on a strategic location — a city that controlled Kabul’s water system. " They didn’t know they were fighting with rival warlords, " Moore recalls. " It was two [American Special Forces] teams fighting each other. They call it ‘Green-on-Green.’ " Moore says the American soldiers realized what was happening just before both factions met in open battle.

And what of bin Laden? Moore recounts how a warlord, whom the United States thought it had bought off, helped bin Laden escape to Pakistan. Now, bin Laden is on the loose. " I think he’s in Somalia. That’s the safest place he had, " says Moore. The author emphasizes that this is only his opinion, and he won’t reveal his sources for the information that underlies it.

But as much as it was a reporting mission, his work in Afghanistan was also a personal quest for Moore. " A lot of the guys, I knew their fathers in Vietnam and their family, " he says. " The best Christmas of my life was with them. "

Issue Date: February 20 - 27, 2003
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