Intelligence, Secrecy Drove bin Laden Operation
(May 3, 2011) |
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WASHINGTON, May 2, 2011 – In the early morning hours of
darkness yesterday, about 35 miles northeast of Islamabad,
Pakistan, dozens of U.S. special operations members and CIA
agents readied themselves aboard military helicopters for
the operation of a lifetime.
U.S. intelligence
officers had been gathering evidence since August that
al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was not in a cave along the
U.S.-Pakistan border, as had become lore, but was living
comfortably with his family and others in a $1 million
compound in Abbottabad, a suburb of the Pakistani capital,
Defense Department and CIA officials who spoke on background
about the operation at the Pentagon said today.
Intelligence officers spent the next eight months gathering
information, which flowed heavily early this year, in part
from detained fighters with the Afghanistan insurgency, they
said. “The intelligence on the compound was shared with no
one outside the U.S. government, and only a small number
inside,” an intelligence official said.
President
Barack Obama “pushed this to an actionable level,” a senior
defense official said, holding numerous meetings with his
national security team to consider all possible scenarios.
The special operations team, meanwhile, used its
intelligence information to train for the operation,
including developing contingency plans for anything they
could think of that might not go as planned. With no one
other than a small group of U.S. national security officials
aware of the operation, officials said, the team was flown
in to take bin Laden dead or alive.
Officials would
not say how the forces got inside the compound, which has
walls that range from 10 to 18 feet high around the
perimeter, are topped with barbed wire and cover an acre of
land. Once inside the triangular-shaped fortress, the team
engaged in a firefight that killed two men who lived there
in separate, smaller homes outside the three-story home of
bin Laden and his family, officials said. The men are
believed to have been brothers; one owned the property and
was a courier for bin Laden, deputy national security
advisor John O. Brennan said later at a White House
briefing.
As expected, officials said, bin Laden
resisted capture and was killed in the firefight with U.S.
forces on the third floor of the home. Bin Laden's adult son
and a woman believed to be his wife also were killed in the
shootout, and two women were wounded, they added.
U.S. forces were in the compound for about 40 minutes and
took no casualties, officials said. During that time, they
also seized numerous items that are being investigated, they
said.
Obama and his national security team anxiously
monitored the operation in real time, Brennan said.
“The minutes passed like days,” he said. “The president was
very concerned about the security of our personnel. Clearly,
it was very tense. A lot of people were holding their
breath, and there was a fair degree of silence as we got the
updates.” Technical problems with one of the helicopters
added to the tension, he said.
After the U.S. team
was safely out of the country, officials said, Obama and
other members of the national security team began calling
government leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan and members
of Congress.
“The accomplishment that these very
brave personnel from the U.S. government were able to do
yesterday is very significant” to the broader effort against
terrorism, Brennan said. “This is decapitating the head of
the snake. This is something we've been after for 15 years.
We are going to try to take advantage of this opportunity we
have to demonstrate to the Pakistani people and others that
al-Qaida is a thing of the past.”
An intelligence
official who spoke to Pentagon reporters on background said
the operation demonstrated “the tremendous partnership
between the CIA and the U.S. military since 9/11.”
As
intelligence allowed them to piece together details of the
compound and its occupants, he said, it became clear bin
Laden “was more or less living in plain sight” while
al-Qaida's lower level operatives “are living in dire
conditions.”
“You have to wonder what they think
today when they see that their leader was living high on the
hog,” he said. |
By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2011 |
President Barack Obama's Address
about The Death of Osama bin Laden |
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