NATO's Secret Findings: Kunduz Affair Report Puts German Defense Minister Under Pressure

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The pilots, who felt that the Germans' instructions were odd, remained skeptical and suggested obtaining the approval of the higher-ranked US Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar on the Persian Gulf, so that both sides would be in the clear.

Red Baron's response was unambiguous. He told the pilots that he had the "approval" of Klein, who happened to be sitting next to him, for the strike to proceed, but that the bombs should only hit the sandbar and not the area along the riverbank.

There are strict rules of engagement within NATO, and the pilots were under the impression that a number of these rules were about to be violated. Once again, they repeated their request to be allowed to fly at low altitude over the river as a deterrent. The response from the German base was clear: "Negative. ... I want you to strike directly."

At 1:46 a.m., the American pilots asked the Germans one more time whether the people on the ground truly constituted an "imminent threat." Under the NATO rules of engagement, only an imminent threat justified an attack. Absent such a threat, the pilots would have been required to leave the area. But Klein was apparently intent on having the airstrike go forward, and his forward air controller, acting on Klein's orders, replied: "Yes, those pax (people) are an imminent threat." He said that the insurgents were trying to tap the gasoline from the trucks, and when they had finished, they would "regroup and we have intelligence information about current operations" and they would probably be "attacking Camp Kunduz."

It was apparently a white lie. The investigation report soberly concludes that there was no "specific information" or "hard intelligence" to indicate the Taliban "were either preparing or had a plan for attacking" the German forces that night. Based on everything the Bundeswehr and the Americans now know, the Taliban originally planned to take the trucks to a nearby village and, when the tankers became stuck on the sandbar, they decided to strip the vehicles instead. The report concludes that it was an "act of opportunity."

False Information to Obtain US Air Support

One of the US pilots later told the investigative commission that he had had an "uneasy feeling about everything." According to the NATO investigators, such cases lead to the ultimate question between forces on the ground and in the air, which is precisely the essence of what happened here.

One of the pilots told the investigators that he even considered abandoning the operation altogether, because he and the other Americans were under the impression that Colonel Klein, the ground commander, "was really pushing to go kinetic (editor's note: to bomb)". But when the forward air controller confirmed that there was indeed an imminent threat, the pilot set aside his concerns.

Perhaps the most important witness the NATO commission interviewed was Klein himself. During his questioning in Kunduz on Sept. 26, Klein said that he had asked "at least seven times that night" whether there were civilians at the scene, and that he had consistently been told that there weren't. To be on the safe side, he told the commission, he had reduced the number of bombs from six to two. But Klein also admitted that he had deliberately used false information to obtain the US air support. He described the quandary he was in after the US air operations center decided not to send any additional aircraft after a first jet had been ordered to leave the area. Without the fighter jets, there would have been no mission, and the Taliban would have escaped, possibly taking the tanker trucks with them.

Klein wanted to prevent this from happening at all costs, and he reasoned that he had only one option. He had to create the impression that there were German "troops in contact," or TIC. According to the NATO report's summary of Klein's interrogation, "his problem was that he knew that they did not have a TIC in reality. ... He believed that by declaring a 'TIC' he would get the air support he wanted," even though everyone knew that Klein's TIC claims were in fact untrue. One untruth led to another. Klein knew that if there was no contact with the enemy, then there was no imminent threat, either.

Against the background of Klein's statements, it is difficult to understand how Defense Minister Guttenberg could have justified telling the Bundestag on Dec. 3 that Klein had "undoubtedly acted to the best of his knowledge and belief."

In its investigation, NATO was clearly critical of the Germans' lack of professionalism and pointed out their lack of experience. According to the report, the forward air controller was apparently trained at a German-French aviation school and, as of the end of March 2009, had directed between 40 and 50 air missions. Nevertheless, the report continued, "a lack of understanding" of compliance with certain targeting procedures combined with the inexperience of the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) commander -- Klein -- resulted in behavior during targeting "that was inconsistent with ISAF dynamic targeting procedures and directives."

The NATO report Guttenberg had at his disposal when he characterized the airstrike as "militarily appropriate" on Nov. 6 contains all of the details that the minister claims his team withheld from him. Why then was his assessment so off the mark that he was forced to radically revise it four weeks later? This is the key question the members of the parliamentary investigative committee want to have answered.

'He Was Targeting the People'

Defense Minister Guttenberg changed his assessment in late November after the German tabloid Bild published internal Bundeswehr documents. The minister then demanded the resignations of his state secretary, Peter Wichert, and Bundeswehr Chief of Staff Wolfgang Schneiderhan, arguing that they had not kept him sufficiently informed. On Dec. 3, he admitted to the Bundestag that his initial assessment of the airstrike had been wrong.

According to members of his staff, the minister had based his reassessment primarily on a brief statement by Klein, which the colonel had sent to Germany back in early September. Guttenberg insists that he did not receive the Klein statement until the end of November, on the day after the resignations of Wichert and Schneiderhan. In the first paragraph, Klein admits that he had intended to "destroy" both the fuel tankers and the insurgents at the site.

Guttenberg's staff insists that the minister was deeply affected by Klein's admission, and that he completely reevaluated the incident after realizing that Klein had in fact deliberately intended to kill people. But Klein's motives are clearly outlined in the NATO report that Guttenberg allegedly read two weeks earlier. Moreover, they were not hidden somewhere at the end of the report, but are clearly described in the summary on page 7, which reads: "When challenged by the aircrew, the JTAC stated that he was targeting the people, not the vehicles."

When questioned by the NATO officials, Klein stated that his intention was to "eliminate the fuel tankers (to prevent the movement of the tankers) and the people who hijacked them." In other words, the Klein document that supposedly led to the minister's change of heart essentially contained the same information as the NATO report, with which Guttenberg was already familiar. The only thing that changed was the public's perception.

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• Part 1: Kunduz Affair Report Puts German Defense Minister Under Pressure
• Part 2: 'I Want You to Strike Directly'