A report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee blames senior civilian and military leadership in the Pentagon for failure to kill or capture Osama bin Laden when they had a chance in December 2001. According to a Voice of America report, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the top military commander, refused to accept intelligence reports that combat units had cornered bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora Mountains. Rumsfeld and Franks approved an increase in air strikes to the area, rather than a hike in combat troops. Bin Laden is believed to have escaped into Pakistan.
