The former official spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity to describe the classified order.
A senior U.S. military official last week also confirmed that a special forces attack had taken place about a mile across Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because the internal debate over the U.S. response to rising violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border includes discussion of classified intelligence.
The former official told The Associated Press that Mr. Bush signed an order over the summer giving new authority to U.S. special operations forces to target suspected terrorists in the dangerous area along the Afghanistan border. More recently, the administration secretly gave conventional ground troops new authority to pursue militants across the Afghan border into Pakistan, the former official said.
Like this on 12 June 2008: Pakistan had lodged a strong protest with the coalition called it a “cowardly” US air strike that killed 11 Pakistani troops including a Major on Wednesday. Also said that it could jeopardize co-operation in the “war on terror”.