Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-41% $15.20$15.20
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: travis_textbooks
$9.96$9.96
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: ZBK Wholesale
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man Hardcover – October 6, 2008
Purchase options and add-ons
The mission was to kill the most wanted man in the world--an operation of such magnitude that it couldn’t be handled by just any military or intelligence force. The best America had to offer was needed. As such, the task was handed to roughly forty members of America’s supersecret counterterrorist unit formerly known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta; more popularly, the elite and mysterious unit Delta Force.
The American generals were flexible. A swatch of hair, a drop of blood, or simply a severed finger wrapped in plastic would be sufficient. Delta's orders were to go into harm's way and prove to the world bin Laden had been terminated.
These Delta warriors had help: a dozen of the British Queen’s elite commandos, another dozen or so Army Green Berets, and six intelligence operatives from the CIA who laid the groundwork by providing cash, guns, bullets, intelligence, and interrogation skills to this clandestine military force. Together, this team waged modern siege of epic proportions against bin Laden and his seemingly impenetrable cave sanctuary burrowed deep inside the Spin Ghar Mountain range in eastern Afghanistan.
Over the years, since the battle ended, scores of news stories have surfaced offering tidbits of information about what actually happened in Tora Bora. Most of it is conjecture and speculation.
This is the real story of the operation, the first eyewitness account of the Battle of Tora Bora, and the first book to detail just how close Delta Force came to capturing bin Laden, how close U.S. bombers and fighter aircraft came to killing him, and exactly why he slipped through our fingers. Lastly, this is an extremely rare inside look at the shadowy world of Delta Force and a detailed account of these warriors in battle.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateOctober 6, 2008
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100312384394
- ISBN-13978-0312384395
Books with Buzz
Discover the latest buzz-worthy books, from mysteries and romance to humor and nonfiction. Explore more
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Mr. President if you had let these guys run this war it would have been over by now. Read this book now, all of you. [Kill Bin Laden is] the best book ever written by a special operations insider. This guy Fury’s men are the real-deal Delta Force operators. You need to know what happened at Tora Bora, and this great book will tell you." --Colonel David Hunt, U.S. Army (Ret.), New York Times bestselling author of They Just Don’t Get It and On The Hunt, and FOX News Special Ops and Counterterrorism Analyst
"Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta is without doubt one of the most fearsome military units ever assembled, with many camp followers seeking with only limited success to record its deeds. There is only one way to know what really happened in any Delta mission, and that is to be there. Delta officer Dalton Fury didn't just take part in the battle of Tora Bora, he commanded all the special operations troops, both U.S. and British, who were there. Kill Bin Laden is a proud, riveting, warts-and-all account of that battle, one of the most important special operations missions of all time." --Michael Smith, author of KILLER ELITE: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team
“An important, must-read book about real warriors. A story that so positively reflects what on-the-ground decision making, professional acceptance of risk, and maximizing interagency cooperation can do. Dalton Fury shows us with amazing detail and insight what highly trained and motivated special operators can accomplish successfully in combat out of all proportion to their numbers.” --Cofer Black, former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Counter Terrorist Center
About the Author
Dalton Fury was the senior ranking military officer at the Battle of Tora Bora. As a Delta troop commander he commanded ninety-one other Western special operations commandos and support personnel and helped author, along with some of Delta’s most talented sergeants, the tactical concept of operation to hunt and kill bin Laden.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press; First Edition (October 6, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0312384394
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312384395
- Item Weight : 1.3 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #259,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
The New York Times bestselling author of Kill Bin Laden, and the Military Advisor to Call of Duty's MW3 and ADVANCED WARFARE, created a new Delta Force thriller series chronicling the good and bad calls of Kolt "Racer" Raynor - a disgraced Delta Force operator with issues. BLACK SITE started us off in early 2012, followed by TIER ONE WILD, FULL ASSAULT MODE, and ONE KILLER FORCE. In 2017, the series' first eBook hits, followed by a few months later by Book 5. All the support is very much appreciated.
Dalton Fury retired from the military after more than twenty years of service. He served fifteen of those years in Special Operations Forces where he had the distinct honor of serving with some of the finest human beings in the world. Simply by chance, as a Delta Force troop commander, he served as the Ground Force Commander during the Battle of Tora Bora.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Fury's account of his hunt for the then-most wanted man in the world is loaded with information, spectacle and bittersweet "what-ifs." His unique position as the commander of the Delta Force operators leading the way in the Battle of Tora Bora gives him incredible insight into the nuances of the operation and definitive authority on its proceedings. It's a "no frills" sort of story and Fury endeavors to give much of the credit to his men. Indeed, he spends much more time detailing their adventures than his own and extols their virtues throughout the tale. It's obvious he has a huge amount of respect and admiration for the men under his command who accomplished so much under such insane conditions.
I do have a few quibbles about the book. I felt like I never had a clear picture in my mind of the other operators, and perhaps this was by design, but I forgot several times who was who and doing what. Some of them stood out very well, but some others faded into the background. The way Fury writes dialogue also comes off a little stiff, too grammatically correct perhaps, but I sometimes had trouble imagining people saying it that way. Lastly, and this is a common problem of most nonfiction, the end of the story seems to come out of nowhere. By this, I mean it doesn't feel like the soldiers are anywhere close to finished and then - BAM - it's over. Obviously, this is how it happened and I'm not saying he should have lied to make it more dramatic, this is simply an observation of how I felt reading it. Still, these are minor criticisms that in no way diminished my enjoyment of "Kill Bin Laden."
So why did it leave me satisfied? Simple. The Delta boys put such a hurting on Bin Laden that he was forced to live in hiding for nearly another decade before ST6 caught up with him. They showed him as the coward he was, tore down what was thought to be an impregnable fortress and did it under the most austere conditions imaginable. This was Bin Laden's end - the end of his power, capabilities and status. Maybe they didn't kill or capture him, but Fury and his commandos did one heck of a job, hamstrung by the higher-ups and all.
As I understand it, Dalton Fury received Persona Non Grata status in Delta Force for publishing this book without receiving clearance. In his intro and other writings he's published (regarding "No Easy Day" author Mark Owen) it seems he's okay with this. He felt the story needed to be told and I agree. It's important that the American public understand not only what happens during wartime, but why and how (to a degree; OPSEC and all that). If I could, I would personally thank Mr. Dalton Fury for his service and his willingness to share one small part of it; and I'd buy him a beer (or five). After reading this, it's obvious he deserves it.
Fury has written an interesting book that "primarily" details Delta Forces 10 day involvement in the Tora Bora battle from December 7th up to the December 16th surrender of only a couple dozen remaining AQ fighters (also includes some of Detla's pre-planning and post assessments). Fury tells us that he is compelled to write this book because of "misinformation" about the Tora Bora battle; however, Fury's story is "basically" in line with much of the mainstream media's reporting including articles in Time (December 2001), Christian Science Monitor (March 2002), Washington Post (April 2002), Newsweek (August 2002), Knight Ridder (October 2002), The Atlantic (October 2004), and the New York Times (September 2005). The primary difference between Fury and the media is that this author estimates 1,500 to 3,000 AQ fighters at the battle while most of the articles estimate 1,000 to 2,000, with most erring to the lower end estimate. In addition, several of the articles had OBL possibly leaving Tora Bora in the first week of December while Fury thinks OBL escaped around December 15th. Lastly, Fury's team actually joins the battle at a relatively late stage and this book does not cover a lot of the critical battle and intelligence information before that time.
Fury's first hand account of the battle provides attention grabbing detail and describes some of the interesting interactions between a highly trained elite fighting unit and the undisciplined pay-as-you-go Afghan hired guns who felt it necessary to give up their positions each day so they can go back to celebrate their Ramadan dinner (iftar) at sunset. If it was not for the disgusting and unacceptable fact that OBL and about 1,000 other AQ's escaped from Tora Bora because of some of these problems, these cultural and communication problems would actually be kind of funny. Unfortunately, OBL's escape from Tora Bora is not a laughing matter; however, this perpetual war was doomed from the beginning and OBL's "miraculous" escape from Tora Bora was assured long before Delta Force showed up there on December 7th. Like Keane and Hamilton claimed in their book about the 9/11 Commission, Fury was set-up to fail, and this is what this book ultimately implies.
Like a good and obedient soldier, Fury only mentions what critics have said are the "three spectacular military blunders" that led to the failure to capture OBL and other AQ leaders:
1. No real American ground troops were provided (there were more journalists in Tora Bora than American soldiers).
2. The US relied on Afghan proxies, many of whom were sympathetic to OBL / AQ, to carry out the critical ground war while relying on American bombing from 30,000 feet.
3. The US relied on Pakistan to seal off the Afghanistan / Pakistan border.
Although this book does not necessarily critique the above decisions, it does show from a military perspective how the many failures at Tora Bora, including OBL's escape, resulted from these dreadful decisions. By the time the Afghanistan war started the Bush Administration was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was OBL and his al-Qaeda organization that was responsible for 3,000 Americans lives, $30+ billion of physical damage, and potentially hundreds of billions of economic loss. For the attack on the significantly under-manned and under-armed Taliban and AQ forces not to have included for the capture or killing of the individuals believed to be responsible for this atrocity should be incomprehensible, especially when these individuals were handed to the US military on a golden platter in the hills of Tora Bora.
Although Fury's book does not break a lot of new ground relating to the above larger picture failures, it does provide some interesting facts that make a rational person think, "what the fu@! were our military and civilian leaders thinking?" Following is some of the new and important information Fury tells us about the Tora Bora battle:
1. Delta Force made several compelling recommendations which could have led to the capture of OBL, all meant to secure the known back door escape route to Pakistan. These recommendations included attacking OBL's position from the rear (south) or dropping mines on the likely escape routes to slow down any potential AQ escapees. All these recommendations were rejected by senior military and civilian officials (Fury feels the decisions may have gone as high as POTUS). According to Fury, it was very rare that Delta's recommendations were not approved by the chain of command, and during his five year tenure, the rejection of the Tora Bora recommendations were his first and only instances.
2. When Fury's Delta team arrived in Afghanistan, there were a couple hundred Army Rangers and another Delta team already in the theater which could have assisted Fury's team in the ground war. However, in what Fury referred to as a "silly deception plan dreamed up by parties unknown," the majority of these soldiers were sent home to try and fool OBL into thinking we were leaving the theater of operation so AQ would let down their guard. According to Fury, "the naivete' of that idea still boggles my mind today, why were we not pouring all available assets into Afghanistan rather than withdrawing our strength. "
3. Fury's team was not provided basic and readily available intelligence information like satellite photos, maps of cave entrances, etc., and the Delta team had to study much of the Tora Bora area from scratch (the CIA helped build many of the cave hideouts and Fury notes that Richard Clarke had these satellite maps in an exercise he conducted in 2000).
4. In the context of being micromanaged by "higher-up," Fury states that Delta was ordered to send "exact" grid coordinates of their teams to various folks in Washington. Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, but wouldn't Delta's exact grid coordinates have come in very handy for someone trying to escape from Tora Bora?
5. Fury recants the following from Ron Suskind's, "One Percent Doctrine." A senior CIA operative briefing Bush and Cheney displayed satellite imagery to prove Pakistan's military was not yet in place to accomplish the task of cutting off potential AQ escapees and that Pakistan could not be counted on to fulfill their promise of troops to secure the area. According to Suskind, Bush was not completely swayed and The Decider decided to trust Pakistan. Fury was clearly appalled that the back door remained open to AQ.
6. On December 14th Delta requested needed weapons and mortars from Army Rangers stationed at nearby Bagram airbase (80 miles north of Tora Bora), but for reasons that still elude Fury, that request was denied. Finally on December 16th, around the day OBL is expected to have escaped and the remaining AQ surrender, a directive came from Americans at Bagram to ask the Muj general Ali if he would accept a larger foreign presence on the battlefield, not just a few more Special Ops types, but a massive and overt buildup of American military forces. How do you say a day late and a dollar short in Pashto?
7. Fury definitively concludes that OBL was in Tora Bora during the fighting, there is no doubt in his mind. From alleged sightings to the radio intercepts to news reports from various countries to captured AQ prisoners, it was repeatedly confirmed that OBL was there.
Unfortunately, what this book is not clear in telling us is that Mr. Fury's Delta Force unit was actually one of the last teams to join the Tora Bora battle. Following is critical information that Fury does not disclose in his book but is important in understanding the entire dynamics of the Tora Bora battle:
1. Tora Bora was a well-known AQ stronghold, and had drawn some US military fire since the beginning of the Afghanistan war (along with nearby Jalalabad). Many of the Tora Bora bunkers were made with CIA assistance and it was a well known fact that Tora Bora provided an ideal escape route into Pakistan approximately 10 to 20 miles south.
2. In late October, US intelligence reports began noting that AQ fighters and leaders were moving into and around the nearby city of Jalalabad (approx 30 mi's north of Tora Bora). OBL gave a speech in Jalalabad on November 10th, and on November 13th a convoy of several hundred cars and 1,000 or more AQ and Taliban fighters fled to Tora Bora while the US bombed the Jalalabad airport but ignored the huge convoy.
3. On November 16th, the Tora Bora battle begins in earnest, with intensified US bombing of the mountainous stronghold. It's around this time that the two Afghan warlords are first recruited to wage America's ground war and by the end of the month they have gathered about 2,000 fighters.
4. On November 26th 1,200 marines arrive in Kandahar approximately 250 miles southwest of Tora Bora. Beforehand, CIA Deputy Director Hank Crumpton tells General Franks that the back door is open in Tora Bora and that these troops should go there instead, but Franks disagrees.
5. In late November , Indian intelligence, along with several US intelligence officers, confirm that 3 - 5,000 people were flown out of Kundez, approximately 200 miles north of Tora Bora. Although most of these individuals were "suppose" to have been Pakistani "intelligence" operatives trapped in Afghanistan (some speculate that the Pakistani were supporting their friends the Taliban), there is speculation that many Taliban and AQ also escaped on those flights. It is believed that Rumsfeld personally approves these airlifts.
6. During the first week of December, Gary Bernsten, the CIA agent in charge at Tora Bora, makes a formal request for 800 troops to be deployed along the Pakistani border to prevent OBL's escape. Despite military and intelligence officials further warning Franks that the two main Afghan generals in Tora Bora cannot be trusted, Bernsten's request is denied.
7. By December 5th, 4,000 marines have now arrived in Afghanistan under the command of General James Mattis. Mattis is convinced that with these numbers he could have surrounded and sealed off OBL's lair, as well as deploy troops to the most sensitive portions of the largely unpatrolled border with Pakistan. Mattis argued strongly that he should be permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves, but he was turned down like everyone else.
The book covers the rest of the Tora Bora battle similarly to many of the other documented accounts of the events, including the "unapproved Delta" cease fire on December 12th, which is believed to have given OBL the breathing room he needed to escape, and the alleged sightings and radio intercepts of OBL over the next several days. Fury counted about 220 dead AQ's and another 52 captured, meaning that about 1,000+ AQ fighters along with OBL escaped the one month US / Mujh onslaught. Most escaped through Tora Bora's back door into Pakistan, the one route everyone knew would be used, including Dalton Fury.
Like the dozens of intelligence failures that led to the September 11th attacks, senior military and civilian officials failed to connect the logical dots at Tora Bora that would have allowed for the capture or killing of "the most" wanted man in the entire world and another 1,000+ of his closest friends. Also similar to the 9/11 attacks, not one single individual has been held accountable for the blatant and predictable failures at Tora Bora that led to OBL's escape. In fact, when the failures of the Tora Bora battle became a topic of the 2004 elections, Tommy Franks and Dick Cheney flat out lied when they said there was no proof Bin Laden was ever in Tora Bora in November / December 2001. I would think that Franks' and Cheney's blatant lies that run counter to Fury's own first hand conclusions are one of the things that motivated him to write this book. Consequently, Gary Bernsten's book "Jawbreaker" has been so heavily redacted that he is suing the CIA for excessive censorship of his book on the war and the Tora Bora battle. It is terrible that we live in a democracy where transparency and accountability can be ignored by a chosen few, but it is refreshing that Dalton Fury has done his part in trying to correct this injustice and to help clarify some of the events and errors of the Tora Bora battle.
Top reviews from other countries
Greed, betrayal, loyalty, sacrifice, extreme courage, incompetence, political interference, a well written easy to read account.
Well written, easy to read with maps to follow the narrative.
I can highly recommend this spell binding informative, well written book.
This book pulls no punches and gives credit where its due. A lot of people ask me a good read about the unit, afghanistan etc., and the first source I have pointed to is this masterpiece.
Thank you Dalton, for this great book and your service !
Nach einem kurzen Einstieg, der die Rahmenbedingungen der Operation schildert, steigt der Autor sehr schnell in die Haupthandlung des Buches ein. Mehrere Dutzend Angehörige US-amerikanischer und britischer Spezialeinheiten rücken unter der Hilfe von örtlichen Warlords in die Bergfestung Tora Bora vor, wohin sich Taliban- und Al-Qaida Elemente samt Führungspitze zurückgezogen haben, nachdem die Herrschaft der Taliban in großen Teilen Afghansitans beendet wurde. Jedoch provozieren die westlichen Einheiten nicht, in direkte Gefechte verwickelt zu werden, sondern dirigieren vom Boden aus, die massiven Bombenangriffe der US-Lufwaffe auf Ziele in Tora Bora. Scheinbar kamen die Angriffe bin Laden und Co. mehrmals gefährlich nahe, aber letztlich gelang der Al Qaida-Führung die Flucht nach Pakistan.
Das Buch ist sehr analytisch und kritisch geschrieben und beleuchtet die Fehler und Schwächen des eigenen Vorgehens sehr deutlich, wie auch politische Versäumnisse und das Versagen der pakistanischen "Verbündeten". Habe schon ein Vielzahl von Bücher über Spezialoperationen gelesen, aber dieses gehört für mich eindeutig in die absolute Spitze. Angenehm zu lesen, sehr interessant und spannend, analytisch, selbstkritisch - das Buch hat alles was man sich wünscht! Absolute Kaufempfehlung!!!!!