NYT : Trump's Syria Troop Withdrawal Complicated Plans for al-Baghdadi Raid

[Celerity]

President Trump’s abrupt decision to pull forces from northern Syria forced the Pentagon to press ahead with a risky night operation that killed the ISIS leader, military officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/politics/baghdadi-isis-leader-trump.html

WASHINGTON — President Trump knew the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Operations commandos were zeroing in on the location for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, when he ordered American troops to withdraw from northern Syria earlier this month, intelligence, military and counterterrorism officials said on Sunday. For months, intelligence officials had kept Mr. Trump apprised of what he had set as a top priority, the hunt for Mr. al-Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted terrorist.

But Mr. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal order three weeks ago disrupted the meticulous planning underway and forced Pentagon officials to speed up the plan for the risky night raid before their ability to control troops, spies and reconnaissance aircraft disappeared with the pullout, the officials said. Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death in the raid on Saturday, they said, occurred largely in spite of, and not because of, Mr. Trump’s actions.

It is unclear how much Mr. Trump considered the intelligence on Mr. al-Baghdadi’s location when he made the surprise decision to withdraw the American troops during a telephone call on Oct. 6 with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. What is clear, military officials said, is that it put commanders on the ground under even more pressure to carry out the complicated operation. More than a half-dozen Pentagon, military, intelligence and counterterrorism officials — along with Mr. Trump, who gave an account during a White House news conference on Sunday — provided a chronology of the raid.

The planning for the raid began this past summer, when the C.I.A. first got surprising information about Mr. al-Baghdadi’s general location in a village deep inside a part of northwestern Syria controlled by rival Qaeda groups. The information came after the arrest and interrogation of one of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s wives and a courier, two American officials said. Armed with that initial tip, the C.I.A. worked closely with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officials in Iraq and Syria to identify more precisely Mr. al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts and to put spies in place to monitor his periodic movements. American officials said the Kurds continued to provide information to the C.I.A. on Mr. al-Baghdadi’s location even after Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the American troops left the Syrian Kurds to confront a Turkish offensive alone.

The Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, one official said, provided more intelligence for the raid than any single country.

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Video discussing this

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/trump-s-syria-pullout-nearly-disrupted-mission-nyt-72164421595