Pentagon says victims of missile strike probably `not innocents'

WASHINGTON - Credit card applications and airline schedules were found at the site of a U.S. missile attack in Afghanistan, indicating that the victims of the strike were not innocent civilians, a top Pentagon official said. <br> <br> Some Afghans have claimed that the Feb. 4 attack from a CIA-operated spy drone killed civilians rather than members of the Taliban or al-Qaida. More than 50 U.S. soldiers searched the site over the weekend and found evidence that &#34;would seem to say that these are not peasant people up there farming,&#34; Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said Monday. <br> <br> In Afghanistan on Tuesday, a U.S. Army soldier was injured in a land mine explosion about 1½ miles south of the Kandahar airport, U.S. Central Command headquarters announced. The soldier&#39;s name was not released. Officials said his injuries were not life threatening. <br> <br> Besides the English-language documents, the searchers also found ammunition and an empty box for a hand-held radio, said Stufflebeem, deputy operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The soldiers also found bits of human remains and evidence the site had been disturbed by animals or other people before the American team arrived, Stufflebeem said. <br> <br> The team also checked in nearby caves and villages and talked with locals before leaving the area Monday, he said. <br> <br> Based on initial indications from these efforts, U.S. officials are &#34;in a comfort zone&#34; about the attack, he said. &#34;These were not innocents,&#34; he told reporters, while acknowledging that their identities are not known. <br> <br> Villagers told a Washington Post reporter that the victims were three peasants who were gathering scrap metal from the war when a Hellfire missile launched from a pilotless aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency shrieked out of the sky last Monday and killed the men. <br> <br> Responding to that report, Victoria Clarke, chief spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said, &#34;We haven&#39;t seen or heard anything that leads us to believe that it was anything other than what we thought the target was.&#34; <br> <br> Stufflebeem, however, stressed that the attack was carried out by the CIA with no direct participation by U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for all U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. <br> <br> Stufflebeem said he could not talk about targeting methods used by the CIA. In some instances Central Command works closely with the CIA on military actions; in other cases the CIA operates on its own, he said. <br> <br> &#34;This was an agency mission,&#34; Stufflebeem said. &#34;This was a case where Central Command was not actively participating or coordinated with this particular strike.&#34; Afterward the U.S. military entered the picture by dispatching soldiers to the strike site to investigate, he added. <br> <br> That differs from the description offered by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he was asked about the Hellfire strike during a Pentagon news conference last Friday. <br> <br> &#34;There were lots of discussions among Central Command and other folks on the target, and it was concluded that it was a valid target and it was struck,&#34; Myers said. He never mentioned the CIA by name. <br> <br> In a telephone interview Monday, Central Command&#39;s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said CIA and Central Command officers had &#34;compared notes&#34; before the decision was made by the CIA to launch the attack. Central Command officials did not object to the decision to fire, Quigley said. <br> <br> &#34;We think this was a good call,&#34; he said. <br> <br> Other senior Defense Department officials have been unwilling to publicly discuss the CIA&#39;s role in offensive military operations in Afghanistan. Stufflebeem, however, offered new insights into its actions. He said the Pentagon and CIA work closely together on &#34;just about everything&#34; happening in Afghanistan. <br> <br> But there are times when the CIA has its own objectives and pursues them without asking for support from the Pentagon -- and in some cases, apparently without informing Central Command. <br> <br> &#34;Because of the time sensitivity to it, we may not even be totally aware of all those actions that are going on,&#34; Stufflebeem said. <br> <br> Quigley said that even in cases where Central Command is consulted in advance by the CIA, it cannot veto an agency decision to attack. <br> <br> The U.S. military personnel who went to the strike site retrieved for study the bits of human remains found there, Stufflebeem said. He said DNA from remains recovered at this and other attack sites is being catalogued for identification purposes. <br> <br> The only way DNA would be useful for identification of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is if the United States already had a bin Laden DNA sample with which to compare. That could be either a sample from bin Laden himself or from a relative on his mother&#39;s side of his family.<br>

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