US orchestrating secret raids

WASHINGTON - The US military since 2004 has used broad secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere, according to senior US officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in spring 2004 at the direction of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack Al Qaeda anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants' compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top CIA official. Officials watched the entire mission - captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft - in real time at the agency's headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.

Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the CIA, according to senior US officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of CIA-directed operations, senior US officials said.

But as many as a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years, often to the dismay of military commanders, senior military officials said. They said senior administration officials had decided in these cases that the missions were too risky, were too diplomatically explosive, or relied on evidence not sufficient enough to justify an attack.

More than a half-dozen officials, including current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers, described details of the 2004 military order on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature. Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department, and the military declined to comment.

Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the US officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan, and other countries. They made clear that there had been no raids into Iran using that authority, but they suggested that US forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using different classified directives.

According to a senior administration official, the authority was spelled out in a classified document called "Al Qaeda Network Exord," or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones.

Where in the past the Pentagon needed to obtain approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the order specified a way for Pentagon planners to receive permission for a mission far more quickly, the official said.