AI
Monday, May 02, 2011 6:07:28 PM
Timeline: The Intelligence Work Behind Bin Laden’s Death
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 2, 2011, 5:37 am
A timeline of the events and intelligence work that led to President Obama’s dramatic late-night announcement on Sunday of the capture and killing [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html ] of Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
Four Years Ago: American intelligence for the first time uncovers the name of Bin Laden’s trusted courier but cannot locate him.
Two Years Ago: American intelligence identifies areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother have operated but cannot pinpoint exactly where they live.
August 2010: American intelligence locates the brothers’ residence, a compound about 35 miles north of Islamabad in the city of Abbottabad. The compound is so large, secluded and secured that analysts conclude it must shelter a higher-value target than a courier.
September 2010: The Central Intelligence Agency begins to work with President Obama on assessments that lead them to believe that Bin Laden may be located at the compound.
Mid-February 2011: United States government authorities determine that there was a sound intelligence basis to pursue this direction aggressively and develop courses of action.
March 14: Mr. Obama begins a series of National Security Council meetings to develop options for capturing or killing Bin Laden.
March 29: Mr. Obama convenes the council’s second meeting on the operation.
April 12: Mr. Obama convenes the third meeting.
April 19: Mr. Obama convenes the fourth meeting.
April 28: Mr. Obama convenes the fifth meeting.
April 29: Mr. Obama authorizes the operation before flying to Alabama to inspect tornado damage.
May 1:
2 p.m.: Mr. Obama meets with his national security team to review preparations.
3:50 p.m.: Mr. Obama told that Bin Laden had been tentatively identified.
7:01 p.m.: Mr. Obama told that it was a “high probability” that Bin Laden had been killed.
11:35 p.m.: In a televised address, Mr. Obama announces Bin Laden’s death [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is-killed.html ].
SOURCE: Administration officials briefing reporters on condition of anonymity under White House ground rules.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/timeline-the-intelligence-work-behind-bin-ladens-death/ [with comments]
===
One Unwary Phone Call Led US to Bin Laden Doorstep
An exclusive look inside the Pakistani mansion where Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 2, 2011.
ABC News/AP Photo
By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO Associated Press
WASHINGTON May 2, 2011 (AP)
When one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world's most wanted terrorist.
That phone call, recounted Monday by a U.S. official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden's personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led U.S. intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death.
The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden's vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaida foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.
In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden's couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.
One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.
If they could find that courier, they'd find bin Laden.
The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA's so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.
"We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day," said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.
It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier's real name, which officials are not disclosing. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA's sources didn't know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.
Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. The courier was located somewhere away from bin Laden's hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch him.
In August 2010, the courier unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.
In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.
Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials realized this could represent the best chance ever to get to bin Laden. They decided not to share the information with anyone, including staunch counterterrorism allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia.
By mid-February, the officials were convinced a "high-value target" was hiding in the compound. President Barack Obama wanted to take action.
"They were confident and their confidence was growing: 'This is different. This intelligence case is different. What we see in this compound is different than anything we've ever seen before,'" John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, said Monday. "I was confident that we had the basis to take action."
Options were limited. The compound was in a residential neighborhood in a sovereign country. If Obama ordered an airstrike and bin Laden was not in the compound, it would be a huge diplomatic problem. Even if Obama was right, obliterating the compound might make it nearly impossible to confirm bin Laden's death.
Said Brennan: "The president had to evaluate the strength of that information, and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory."
Obama tapped two dozen members of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six to carry out a raid with surgical accuracy.
Before dawn Monday morning, a pair of helicopters left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The choppers entered Pakistani airspace using sophisticated technology intended to evade that country's radar systems, a U.S. official said.
Officially, it was a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender. But it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering, two U.S. officials said.
The helicopters lowered into the compound, dropping the SEALs behind the walls. No shots were fired, but shortly after the team hit the ground, one of the helicopters came crashing down and rolled onto its side for reasons the government has yet to explain. None of the SEALs was injured, however, and the mission continued uninterrupted.
With the CIA and White House monitoring the situation in real time — presumably by live satellite feed or video carried by the SEALs — the team stormed the compound.
Thanks to sophisticated satellite monitoring, U.S. forces knew they'd likely find bin Laden's family on the second and third floors of one of the buildings on the property, officials said. The SEALs secured the rest of the property first, then proceeded to the the room where bin Laden was hiding. In the ensuing firefight, Brennan said, bin Laden used a woman as a human shield.
The SEALs killed bin Laden with a bullet to the head.
Bin Laden's body was immediately identifiable, but the U.S. also conducted DNA testing that identified him with near 100 percent certainty, senior administration officials said. Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation on site by a woman believed to be bin Laden's wife, and matching physical features such as bin Laden's height all helped confirm the identification. At the White House, there was no doubt.
"I think the accomplishment that very brave personnel from the United States government were able to realize yesterday is a defining moment in the war against al-Qaida, the war on terrorism, by decapitating the head of the snake known as al-Qaida," Brennan said.
U.S. forces searched the compound and flew away with documents, hard drives and DVDs that could provide valuable intelligence about al-Qaida, a U.S. official said. The entire operation took about 40 minutes, officials said.
Bin Laden's body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian sea, a senior defense official said. There, aboard a U.S. warship, officials conducted a traditional Islamic burial ritual. Bin Laden's body was washed and placed in a white sheet. He was placed in a weighted bag that, after religious remarks by a military officer, was slipped into the sea about 2 a.m. EDT Monday.
Said the president: "I think we can all agree this is a good day for America."
Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Ben Feller in Washington and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Pakistan contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press (emphasis added)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13512344 [with comments]
===
40 minutes of battle, and two shots to the head
The compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Photograph: Reuters
Osama bin Laden's death was the denouement of a decade-long search for America's public enemy number one
Declan Walsh, Esther Addley, Ewen MacAskill
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 21.29 BST
The helicopters swooped in the dead of night, flying in formation across the lower ranges of the Himalayas, then dropping precipitously on their target, a three- storey house on an acre of land in a wealthy suburb of Abbottabad, the training ground of Pakistan's powerful military officer corps.
In one of the houses nearby Omar Nazeer, a 30-year-old official at Pakistan's petroleum ministry, was up late, working on his laptop. As the MH-60 Black Hawks thundered overhead he gave a start, spilling coffee on to the keyboard. "Our windows were shivering because the helicopters were so close," he said.
The aircraft – three or four, according to different reports – carried soldiers from the US navy's elite Seal Team Six, a highly secretive counter-terrorism unit that works closely with the CIA. One hovered over the target house; al-Qaida militants fired on it with a rocket-propelled grenade. Then disaster struck: the chopper stalled and slumped towards the ground.
Thousands of miles away in the US, officials watching on live video feeds had a heart-stopping moment. Some thought of "Black Hawk Down" – the infamous 1993 debacle in Somalia that precipitated America's withdrawal from that country. But the pilot put his craft down safely and the Seals tumbled out, pressing towards their target, the 54-year-old Saudi fugitive who had eluded them for over a decade, now closer than ever.
The Americans had been led there by one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted men: a courier, first identified by detainees at Guantánamo Bay through his nom de guerre. He was said to be protege of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged architect of the 9/11 attack. The Americans discovered his name four years ago, and discovered that he lived in the Abbottabad region with his brother two years ago.
Last August they narrowed his location to this compound in Abbottabad, an affluent military town about 35 miles north of Islamabad named after its first deputy commissioner, the British officer Major James Abbott. At first the Americans were puzzled: the compound, built in 2005 and valued at $1m (£600,000), was no ordinary home. Perimeter walls up to six metres (18ft) high were topped with barbed wire, there was no internet or telephone connection and few windows. Oddly, the inhabitants burned their rubbish inside the compound instead of leaving it outside.
The neighbours knew the owners of the house – the courier and his brother, described as ethnic Pashtuns – as secretive types. They dispatched children to buy food at local shops, and although they regularly prayed at a local mosque, they didn't engage in small talk.
Salman Riaz, a film actor, said that five months ago he and a crew tried to do some filming next to the house but were told to stop by two men who came out. "They told me that this is haram [forbidden] in Islam," he said. He did not know that he had stumbled across a bespoke terrorist hideaway "custom-built to hide someone of significance", according to a US official.
Monitoring the house with satellite technology and other spy tools, the CIA determined that a family was living in the house with the two men. Last February the CIA determined "with high probability" that it was Bin Laden and his clan. Officials scrambled to formulate a plan to kill him.
The first idea was to bomb the house using B2 stealth bombers dropping 2,000-pound JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions), according to ABC News. But Barack Obama rejected it, saying he wanted definitive proof that the Saudi was inside. "The helicopter raid was riskier," said one US official. "[But] he didn't just want to leave a pile of rubble."
An air assault plan was formulated. The Seal Team Six, officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group and based in Virginia, held rehearsals on a specially constructed compound in early April. Meanwhile Obama officials engaged in regular meetings, chaired by national security adviser, Tom Donilon, and counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, to determine when – and how – to strike.
On 28 April, shortly after he nominated CIA director, Leon Panetta, to replace Robert Gates as defence secretary, Obama held a final meeting. In the secrecy of the White House situation room, he listened to recommendations from all sides, but reserved the final decision. Finally last Friday morning, with the eyes of the world glued on the royal wedding in London, he signed off on the air assault.
Only a tiny handful of people within the administration were aware of the operation. US officials say that no other country including Pakistan – as far as some were concerned, especially Pakistan – was informed, even though the US helicopters would essentially be invading Pakistani airspace. Pakistani officials agreed on Monday that they knew nothing.
"Not a thing," said an official with the ISI spy agency.
But there are signs that statement may be untrue: some reports on the strike, sourced in Washington, suggest the Seals took off from Ghazi airforce base at nearby Tarbela Dam. If true, that suggests a convenient contrivance so that Pakistan could avoid ownership of an operation certain to rankle with the notoriously anti-American public.
Obama handed control of the assault to Panetta – still CIA director until July – who transformed the conference room at its headquarters into a command centre from where could be in constant contact with the Seal leaders – an unusual case of a civilian spy leading a military team.
Saturday came, the day of the planned assault, but bad weather conspired against the Americans. On Sunday, Obama spent part of his day on the golf course, but cut short his round to return to the White House for a meeting where he and top aides reviewed final preparations. Hours later the Seals took off – probably from Jalalabad or Bagram airbases in Afghanistan, the ISI official said – and entered Pakistani airspace.
What happened next is subject to the American account only. Local residents reported three large blasts shortly after the helicopters passed overhead. The al-Qaida fighters holed up inside fought back, trading gunfire for nearly 40 minutes, as the US troops cleared the compound floor by floor, Pentagon officials said.
The Pashtun courier – he has not been identified – and his brother were killed, as was one of Bin Laden's adult sons, possibly Hamza, who was a senior al-Qaida member. One woman reportedly died and two others were injured.
The Americans then reached Bin Laden – the man with a $25m bounty, the embodiment of the national terrorist nightmare, the subject of greater American passions and frustrations than perhaps any other figure of the past decade.
According to the Pentagon he was identified by name by one of his own wives. As the raiding party closed in on the last unsecured room in the compound, Bin Laden himself seized a gun and started firing back.
US officials say – and there is no independent verification of this fact – he was shot twice in the head. "Done in by a double tap – boom boom – to the left side of his face," wrote Marc Ambinder of the National Journal, a beltway insider's journal. Word of the kill went up the chain of command. Thousands of miles away, at the CIA in Virginia and at the White House, cheers erupted.
The Americans scoured the house for intelligence, took photos of the body, using facial recognition technology to compare it with pictures. It was him. Before withdrawing, the Seals blew up the wreckage of the helicopter. An orange fireball lit up the night sky over Abbottabad.
Bin Laden's body was taken to the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the Arabian Gulf. Back in Abbottabad, the wounded were taken to the Combined Military hospital in Abbottabad. Omar Nazeer, the government official cowering in his house, said six children and three women had been wounded. He knew, he said, because his brother, a military official, worked at the hospital.
Hours later, Bin Laden's body was wrapped in white cloth, and – after, it is said, the administration of Islamic burial rites – it was weighted and dropped from a plank into the sea. The location was not revealed. "We don't want a bunch of people going to the shrine for ever," an official told the Washington Post.
Obama called former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to inform them of the news. Keith Urbahn, the former chief of staff to Bush's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted. "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."
Then Obama gave a press conference, and gave the news to the rest of the world. "No matter how long it takes," he said. "Justice will be done."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/02/osama-bin-laden-killed-abbottabad-raid
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 2, 2011, 5:37 am
A timeline of the events and intelligence work that led to President Obama’s dramatic late-night announcement on Sunday of the capture and killing [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html ] of Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
Four Years Ago: American intelligence for the first time uncovers the name of Bin Laden’s trusted courier but cannot locate him.
Two Years Ago: American intelligence identifies areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother have operated but cannot pinpoint exactly where they live.
August 2010: American intelligence locates the brothers’ residence, a compound about 35 miles north of Islamabad in the city of Abbottabad. The compound is so large, secluded and secured that analysts conclude it must shelter a higher-value target than a courier.
September 2010: The Central Intelligence Agency begins to work with President Obama on assessments that lead them to believe that Bin Laden may be located at the compound.
Mid-February 2011: United States government authorities determine that there was a sound intelligence basis to pursue this direction aggressively and develop courses of action.
March 14: Mr. Obama begins a series of National Security Council meetings to develop options for capturing or killing Bin Laden.
March 29: Mr. Obama convenes the council’s second meeting on the operation.
April 12: Mr. Obama convenes the third meeting.
April 19: Mr. Obama convenes the fourth meeting.
April 28: Mr. Obama convenes the fifth meeting.
April 29: Mr. Obama authorizes the operation before flying to Alabama to inspect tornado damage.
May 1:
2 p.m.: Mr. Obama meets with his national security team to review preparations.
3:50 p.m.: Mr. Obama told that Bin Laden had been tentatively identified.
7:01 p.m.: Mr. Obama told that it was a “high probability” that Bin Laden had been killed.
11:35 p.m.: In a televised address, Mr. Obama announces Bin Laden’s death [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is-killed.html ].
SOURCE: Administration officials briefing reporters on condition of anonymity under White House ground rules.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/timeline-the-intelligence-work-behind-bin-ladens-death/ [with comments]
===
One Unwary Phone Call Led US to Bin Laden Doorstep
An exclusive look inside the Pakistani mansion where Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 2, 2011.
ABC News/AP Photo
By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO Associated Press
WASHINGTON May 2, 2011 (AP)
When one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world's most wanted terrorist.
That phone call, recounted Monday by a U.S. official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden's personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led U.S. intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death.
The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden's vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaida foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.
In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden's couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.
One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.
If they could find that courier, they'd find bin Laden.
The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA's so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.
"We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day," said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.
It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier's real name, which officials are not disclosing. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA's sources didn't know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.
Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. The courier was located somewhere away from bin Laden's hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch him.
In August 2010, the courier unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.
In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.
Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials realized this could represent the best chance ever to get to bin Laden. They decided not to share the information with anyone, including staunch counterterrorism allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia.
By mid-February, the officials were convinced a "high-value target" was hiding in the compound. President Barack Obama wanted to take action.
"They were confident and their confidence was growing: 'This is different. This intelligence case is different. What we see in this compound is different than anything we've ever seen before,'" John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, said Monday. "I was confident that we had the basis to take action."
Options were limited. The compound was in a residential neighborhood in a sovereign country. If Obama ordered an airstrike and bin Laden was not in the compound, it would be a huge diplomatic problem. Even if Obama was right, obliterating the compound might make it nearly impossible to confirm bin Laden's death.
Said Brennan: "The president had to evaluate the strength of that information, and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory."
Obama tapped two dozen members of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six to carry out a raid with surgical accuracy.
Before dawn Monday morning, a pair of helicopters left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The choppers entered Pakistani airspace using sophisticated technology intended to evade that country's radar systems, a U.S. official said.
Officially, it was a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender. But it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering, two U.S. officials said.
The helicopters lowered into the compound, dropping the SEALs behind the walls. No shots were fired, but shortly after the team hit the ground, one of the helicopters came crashing down and rolled onto its side for reasons the government has yet to explain. None of the SEALs was injured, however, and the mission continued uninterrupted.
With the CIA and White House monitoring the situation in real time — presumably by live satellite feed or video carried by the SEALs — the team stormed the compound.
Thanks to sophisticated satellite monitoring, U.S. forces knew they'd likely find bin Laden's family on the second and third floors of one of the buildings on the property, officials said. The SEALs secured the rest of the property first, then proceeded to the the room where bin Laden was hiding. In the ensuing firefight, Brennan said, bin Laden used a woman as a human shield.
The SEALs killed bin Laden with a bullet to the head.
Bin Laden's body was immediately identifiable, but the U.S. also conducted DNA testing that identified him with near 100 percent certainty, senior administration officials said. Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation on site by a woman believed to be bin Laden's wife, and matching physical features such as bin Laden's height all helped confirm the identification. At the White House, there was no doubt.
"I think the accomplishment that very brave personnel from the United States government were able to realize yesterday is a defining moment in the war against al-Qaida, the war on terrorism, by decapitating the head of the snake known as al-Qaida," Brennan said.
U.S. forces searched the compound and flew away with documents, hard drives and DVDs that could provide valuable intelligence about al-Qaida, a U.S. official said. The entire operation took about 40 minutes, officials said.
Bin Laden's body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian sea, a senior defense official said. There, aboard a U.S. warship, officials conducted a traditional Islamic burial ritual. Bin Laden's body was washed and placed in a white sheet. He was placed in a weighted bag that, after religious remarks by a military officer, was slipped into the sea about 2 a.m. EDT Monday.
Said the president: "I think we can all agree this is a good day for America."
Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Ben Feller in Washington and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Pakistan contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press (emphasis added)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13512344 [with comments]
===
40 minutes of battle, and two shots to the head
The compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Photograph: Reuters
Osama bin Laden's death was the denouement of a decade-long search for America's public enemy number one
Declan Walsh, Esther Addley, Ewen MacAskill
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 21.29 BST
The helicopters swooped in the dead of night, flying in formation across the lower ranges of the Himalayas, then dropping precipitously on their target, a three- storey house on an acre of land in a wealthy suburb of Abbottabad, the training ground of Pakistan's powerful military officer corps.
In one of the houses nearby Omar Nazeer, a 30-year-old official at Pakistan's petroleum ministry, was up late, working on his laptop. As the MH-60 Black Hawks thundered overhead he gave a start, spilling coffee on to the keyboard. "Our windows were shivering because the helicopters were so close," he said.
The aircraft – three or four, according to different reports – carried soldiers from the US navy's elite Seal Team Six, a highly secretive counter-terrorism unit that works closely with the CIA. One hovered over the target house; al-Qaida militants fired on it with a rocket-propelled grenade. Then disaster struck: the chopper stalled and slumped towards the ground.
Thousands of miles away in the US, officials watching on live video feeds had a heart-stopping moment. Some thought of "Black Hawk Down" – the infamous 1993 debacle in Somalia that precipitated America's withdrawal from that country. But the pilot put his craft down safely and the Seals tumbled out, pressing towards their target, the 54-year-old Saudi fugitive who had eluded them for over a decade, now closer than ever.
The Americans had been led there by one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted men: a courier, first identified by detainees at Guantánamo Bay through his nom de guerre. He was said to be protege of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged architect of the 9/11 attack. The Americans discovered his name four years ago, and discovered that he lived in the Abbottabad region with his brother two years ago.
Last August they narrowed his location to this compound in Abbottabad, an affluent military town about 35 miles north of Islamabad named after its first deputy commissioner, the British officer Major James Abbott. At first the Americans were puzzled: the compound, built in 2005 and valued at $1m (£600,000), was no ordinary home. Perimeter walls up to six metres (18ft) high were topped with barbed wire, there was no internet or telephone connection and few windows. Oddly, the inhabitants burned their rubbish inside the compound instead of leaving it outside.
The neighbours knew the owners of the house – the courier and his brother, described as ethnic Pashtuns – as secretive types. They dispatched children to buy food at local shops, and although they regularly prayed at a local mosque, they didn't engage in small talk.
Salman Riaz, a film actor, said that five months ago he and a crew tried to do some filming next to the house but were told to stop by two men who came out. "They told me that this is haram [forbidden] in Islam," he said. He did not know that he had stumbled across a bespoke terrorist hideaway "custom-built to hide someone of significance", according to a US official.
Monitoring the house with satellite technology and other spy tools, the CIA determined that a family was living in the house with the two men. Last February the CIA determined "with high probability" that it was Bin Laden and his clan. Officials scrambled to formulate a plan to kill him.
The first idea was to bomb the house using B2 stealth bombers dropping 2,000-pound JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions), according to ABC News. But Barack Obama rejected it, saying he wanted definitive proof that the Saudi was inside. "The helicopter raid was riskier," said one US official. "[But] he didn't just want to leave a pile of rubble."
An air assault plan was formulated. The Seal Team Six, officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group and based in Virginia, held rehearsals on a specially constructed compound in early April. Meanwhile Obama officials engaged in regular meetings, chaired by national security adviser, Tom Donilon, and counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, to determine when – and how – to strike.
On 28 April, shortly after he nominated CIA director, Leon Panetta, to replace Robert Gates as defence secretary, Obama held a final meeting. In the secrecy of the White House situation room, he listened to recommendations from all sides, but reserved the final decision. Finally last Friday morning, with the eyes of the world glued on the royal wedding in London, he signed off on the air assault.
Only a tiny handful of people within the administration were aware of the operation. US officials say that no other country including Pakistan – as far as some were concerned, especially Pakistan – was informed, even though the US helicopters would essentially be invading Pakistani airspace. Pakistani officials agreed on Monday that they knew nothing.
"Not a thing," said an official with the ISI spy agency.
But there are signs that statement may be untrue: some reports on the strike, sourced in Washington, suggest the Seals took off from Ghazi airforce base at nearby Tarbela Dam. If true, that suggests a convenient contrivance so that Pakistan could avoid ownership of an operation certain to rankle with the notoriously anti-American public.
Obama handed control of the assault to Panetta – still CIA director until July – who transformed the conference room at its headquarters into a command centre from where could be in constant contact with the Seal leaders – an unusual case of a civilian spy leading a military team.
Saturday came, the day of the planned assault, but bad weather conspired against the Americans. On Sunday, Obama spent part of his day on the golf course, but cut short his round to return to the White House for a meeting where he and top aides reviewed final preparations. Hours later the Seals took off – probably from Jalalabad or Bagram airbases in Afghanistan, the ISI official said – and entered Pakistani airspace.
What happened next is subject to the American account only. Local residents reported three large blasts shortly after the helicopters passed overhead. The al-Qaida fighters holed up inside fought back, trading gunfire for nearly 40 minutes, as the US troops cleared the compound floor by floor, Pentagon officials said.
The Pashtun courier – he has not been identified – and his brother were killed, as was one of Bin Laden's adult sons, possibly Hamza, who was a senior al-Qaida member. One woman reportedly died and two others were injured.
The Americans then reached Bin Laden – the man with a $25m bounty, the embodiment of the national terrorist nightmare, the subject of greater American passions and frustrations than perhaps any other figure of the past decade.
According to the Pentagon he was identified by name by one of his own wives. As the raiding party closed in on the last unsecured room in the compound, Bin Laden himself seized a gun and started firing back.
US officials say – and there is no independent verification of this fact – he was shot twice in the head. "Done in by a double tap – boom boom – to the left side of his face," wrote Marc Ambinder of the National Journal, a beltway insider's journal. Word of the kill went up the chain of command. Thousands of miles away, at the CIA in Virginia and at the White House, cheers erupted.
The Americans scoured the house for intelligence, took photos of the body, using facial recognition technology to compare it with pictures. It was him. Before withdrawing, the Seals blew up the wreckage of the helicopter. An orange fireball lit up the night sky over Abbottabad.
Bin Laden's body was taken to the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the Arabian Gulf. Back in Abbottabad, the wounded were taken to the Combined Military hospital in Abbottabad. Omar Nazeer, the government official cowering in his house, said six children and three women had been wounded. He knew, he said, because his brother, a military official, worked at the hospital.
Hours later, Bin Laden's body was wrapped in white cloth, and – after, it is said, the administration of Islamic burial rites – it was weighted and dropped from a plank into the sea. The location was not revealed. "We don't want a bunch of people going to the shrine for ever," an official told the Washington Post.
Obama called former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to inform them of the news. Keith Urbahn, the former chief of staff to Bush's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted. "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."
Then Obama gave a press conference, and gave the news to the rest of the world. "No matter how long it takes," he said. "Justice will be done."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/02/osama-bin-laden-killed-abbottabad-raid
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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