This is not conspiracy theory. In the aftermath of 9/11, Gary Berntsen was the commander of the combined CIA-Special Forces team at Tora Bora. He had led his team and their Northern Alliance allies on a successful advance through the Shomali Plains and on into Kabul. He was a much-decorated and highly regarded CIA commander. His attitude was, "Instead of writing pithy intelligence reports… I wanted my reports to read 'Target captured and rendered to justice' " [Jawbreaker, Gary Berntsen, p 31] .
His Wikipedia entry:
Gary Berntsen is a decorated former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) career officer who served in the Directorate of Operations between October 1982 and June 2005. During his time at the CIA, he served as a CIA Station Chief on three separate occasions and led several of CIA’s most important counterterrorism deployments including the United States’ response to the East Africa Embassy bombings and the 9/11 attacks. He was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal in 2000 and the Intelligence Star in 2004. He ran for the US Senate in 2010 for Chuck Schumer's seat, but lost the Republican primary to Jay Townsend, who in turn lost the general election.
The Afghan troops who were supposed to be assisting Berntsen at Tora Bora were beset with conflicting loyalties. Some had even been ordered by their local religious leader to allow the Taliban to escape. [Jawbreaker, p. 275] It was clear to Berntsen, at the time, that these forces were insufficient, and he sent out urgent requests for 800 Army Rangers. "I repeated to anyone at headquarters who would listen, 'We need Rangers now!'" [Jawbreaker, p. 278,291] This account is corroborated by one of our very own Kossacks, Fokozatos siker:
We could have gotten Bin Laden at Tora Bora (I wasn't there, but I know folks who were.) They had him nailed down within a five mile radius. All we needed was a Ranger battalion near the Pakistani border. But Washington wouldn't do it.
Is it possible that Berntsen's urgent pleas got lost in the bureaucracy? No. An Oval Office meeting on this subject was chronicled in Ron Suskind's “The One Percent Doctrine” In that meeting, Bush and Cheney were briefed in detail on the situation at Tora Bora. They were told: ”we are going to lose our prey if we are not careful” and strongly urged to get US troops on the scene. Bush specifically asked whether the Afghan forces were "up to the job", and was told, "Definitely not". Yet the urgently sought help never materialized. Per Detroit Mark's comment below, The Bush administration side of the story appears in a report was written by Foreign Senate Relations Chair, John Kerry:
The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan.
DM adds:
I appreciate Kerry's dedication to keeping the name of a US president out of the muck. But Donald Rumsfeld was working for GW Bush,
... and this supposed new policy of minimizing the U.S. presence to avoid a backlash hardly squares with the subsequent "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq. To complete our narrative: Berntsen had a reputation for getting his man. Perhaps he might have succeeded, even without the Rangers. We will never know, because he was relieved of his command at the height of the battle. Why? Had he committed some misconduct? Here is what he was told, "We've selected a permanent chief, which will allow you to return to your post in South America…we all think you've done a remarkable job, You've seized control of almost the entire country …" [ Jawbreaker, , p 297]. All except bin Laden. When, in the history of warfare, has a successful and respected commander ever been relieved of his position in the midst of winning a crucial battle?
Added 2018:
My stepson, a Ranger, was there when they were closing in on Bin Laden. Not only did they refuse to send more Rangers, they pulled his unit out and sent them to a base for redeployment. He was livid.