State Dept. Losing a Top Figure In Terror War

By Robin WrightWashington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; Page A05

Henry A. "Hank" Crumpton, the chief of the State Department's counterterrorism office and a key strategist in the war in Afghanistan, will announce today that he is leaving government in the new year, a senior State Department official said yesterday.

Crumpton was a career covert CIA officer with a secret identity who stepped out of the shadows in August 2005 to take the State Department job. He gained almost mythical fame after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he headed the CIA's campaign in Afghanistan, crafting a strategy that partnered elite intelligence and military officers in teams that worked with Afghan opposition to oust the Taliban.

The novel and initially controversial approach worked to limit cost in human life and materiel -- and to avoid the kind of protracted U.S. ground war that the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan and that the United States is facing in Iraq.

Crumpton is the mysterious "Henry" in the Sept. 11 commission report, which notes that he repeatedly urged U.S. intelligence to do more in Afghanistan before the al-Qaeda attacks.

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