Taliban File update: U.S. pressed Taliban to expel UBL over 30 times

Observation

The National Security Archive's Taliban File update states the U.S. pressed the Taliban to expel bin Laden over 30 times, with only three approaches in the first Bush year.

Interpretation

Diplomatic pre-history of H008. A drop in approaches is a pace fact; it is not, by itself, a stand-down on 11 September.

Source text

OBSERVATION (NSAEBB 97, The Taliban File, ed. Sajit Gandhi, 11 September 2003, with updates). Headline finding of the 30 January 2004 update: more than 30 U.S. approaches to the Taliban to expel bin Laden; only three in the first year of the Bush administration.

Other File updates on the same index: Pakistan provided millions of dollars, arms, and 'buses full of adolescent mujahid' to the Taliban in the 1990s (19 March 2004); Mullah Omar called Washington in 1998 (Part IV).

Underlying cables not OCR'd. The Archive's counted-approaches claim is the observation.

Hypothesis linkage

• H008weakly supportsseeded

  Diplomatic expulsion attempts and their 2001 drop are pre-history of the Afghan sanctuary, not day-of fusion failure.