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Monday, May 02, 2011

How bin Laden Was Hunted Down

How the US tracked couriers to elaborate bin Laden compound

First intelligence of a courier, then an extraordinary house with high walls — and no telephone or Internet. Bin Laden and a son are among five killed in a firefight.

It started with an unnamed courier.

Senior White House officials said Monday that the trail that led to Osama bin Laden began before 9/11, before the terror attacks that brought bin Laden to prominence. The trail warmed up last fall, when U.S. intelligence discovered an elaborate compound in Pakistan.

"From the time that we first recognized bin Laden as a threat, the U.S. gathered information on people in bin Laden's circle, including his personal couriers," a senior official in the Obama administration said in a background briefing from the White House.

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "detainees gave us information on couriers. One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, his pseudonym, and also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden."

In 2007, the U.S. learned the man's name.

In 2009, "we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. They were very careful, reinforcing belief we were on the right track."

In August 2010, "we found their home in Abbottabad," not in a cave, not right along the Afghanistan border, but in an affluent suburb less than 40 miles from the capital.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The whole affair seem suspect to me. We have been told several times in the past that he was probably dead. We have also been told by President Bush 43, that UBL no longer mattered, and had in fact become irrelevant.

The Feds can't have it both ways. Why not ever the mention about UBL's involvement with the Mujahadeen in the 1980's against the Soviets. Admissions in the past that the man worked with (for?) CIA. These events and associations for UBL seem to be very relevant but are never even mentioned by American Media. Why?

Anonymous said...

Why not show the body? I don't believe it, buried at sea! Yeah, right.

Anonymous said...

Jeez,

I thought all along that Obama and Osama were listening to rap music in the White House and drinking beer when a Navy Seal walked by and saw the party and took out Osama.

Man was Obama p.o. about this and told him to dump the body in the Ocean; burried at Sea.