In its initial conception, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA program was seen mainly as an effort to assemble teams capable of carrying out targeted killings. But officials have said that it went through multiple "iterations."
Most recently, the program's focus had shifted toward intelligence collection, officials said, the latest in a series of efforts toward the end of the George W. Bush administration to find Bin Laden.
In that respect, some officials thought the program could replicate on a small scale the successful formula that the U.S. military had employed as part of the "surge" in Iraq, carrying out raids, exploiting the information gathered, and launching follow-up operations in swift succession.
However, different objectives brought different challenges, officials said, including how to get the right mix of personnel that could operate in the badlands of Pakistan without being captured or exposed.
Former officials declined to say whether the CIA had ever held discussions with Pakistan about setting up hybrid teams with members of the Pakistani military or its main spy service, Inter-Services Intelligence. But one former official said that few officials thought the initiative could succeed solely with U.S. personnel.
"If you're born in Kansas, you're always from Kansas," the former official said. "I don't care you long you grow your beard, you're still from Kansas."
The CIA has sought to carry out assassinations at various times in its history, most notably during the 1960s when it launched a series of botched attempts to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
The agency has traditionally had paramilitary capabilities as part of its Special Activities Division, which swelled in size after the Sept. 11 attacks and is made up mainly of former members of U.S. military special operations forces.
But carrying out close-range killings "is something they don't really have a capacity for," said a former senior CIA official. "There really isn't Jason Bourne walking around doing stuff like this. The paramilitary guys are mostly retired forces; they're more for training and working with the Kurds (an ethnic group in northern Iraq) and things like that."
The commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks cited a series of botched attempts to kill Bin Laden in the late 1990s. The CIA's struggles with the secret program show that "the practical obstacles of setting this up are formidable," said Philip Zelikow, who was staff director of the commission.
Citing the contrast with depictions in Hollywood, Zelikow said the agency's efforts served as "one of the more spectacular demonstrations of the real world versus the imagined world of government omnipotence."
--
greg.miller@latimes.com
