connections, making it impossible for the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations going on inside. CIA officials, who had set up a monitoring base nearby, watched the Kuwaiti travel ninety minutes outside the compound before even putting a battery into his phone to make a call.
It was clear that someone important was in the compound, but was it bin Laden? Estimates given to President Obama ranged from 40 percent to 80 percent likelihood, and different options for how to proceed were presented to him. One was to use missiles to destroy the compound and kill the inhabitants—as had been done in November 2001 with the hideout of Abu Hafs al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s then military commander. One downside of such a plan was that it would be hard to confirm whether bin Laden was indeed in the compound and had been killed.
A second option would be to send U.S. Special Operations Forces into the compound to either capture or kill its inhabitants. That brought up memories of Black Hawk Down.
Plans for both options were drawn up: B-2 bombers, with their two-thousand-pound bombs, were put on standby, and Navy vice admiral William H. McRaven—the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)— assigned a team of elite Navy SEALs, Team 6, to train for a possible mission. At 8:20 AM on Friday, April 29, 2011, President Obama approved the ground force option. “It’s a go,” he ordered. The next evening he donned his tuxedo and headed to the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, delivering his lines without giving away what was really on his mind.
On Monday, May 2, conditions were determined suitable for the mission, and two Black Hawk helicopters carrying the SEALs took off from Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. En route, one of the helicopters stalled over the compound’s walls, forcing a hard landing. Those inside got out safely, but the helicopter was rendered unusable—so the SEALs destroyed it.
The entire raid lasted less than forty minutes. Bin Laden, one of his sons, and some aides were killed. Among the dead was Abu Ahmed, the courier. Upon exiting, the SEALs took with them computer drives and other hard evidence, and bin Laden’s dead body, and flew away in the one still-functioning helicopter.
After it was confirmed that the body was indeed bin Laden’s, the White House alerted media outlets that President Obama would be making a big announcement that evening. Rumors soon began circulating that bin Laden had been killed, and impromptu crowds gathered outside the White House, at ground zero, and at other significant locations to celebrate the news. Euphoria, as well as a sense of relief, filled the air.
I was at home with my wife, Heather, putting our newborn twins to sleep, when old colleagues—both from U.S. government agencies and services across the world—called, texted, and e-mailed to celebrate the historic moment. Some recalled my 1998 memo, and others the pivotal interrogations of 2002.
“Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children,” President Obama told an estimated 57 million Americans who watched him speak from a podium in the East Room of the White House.
The investigation into bin Laden that had begun in 1996—when FBI special agent Dan Coleman opened a case on him—was closed. An era of my life was over, too: following bin Laden had been a hobby in the early 1990s, and then turned into a mission when I joined the FBI in the mid-1990s. It had been almost twenty years of my life.
It was fitting that the man who motivated so many to commit violent acts by preaching that America was weak and would flee when attacked was killed in his home in Pakistan by American forces. It wasn’t America that had been in retreat and hiding. The al-Qaeda leader had essentially been a prisoner in his compound for the final years of his life, able to communicate with the outside world only through couriers who brought him information on thumb drives. Videos meant for dissemination found in the compound showed him practicing, and often messing up, his lines.
Bin Laden’s body was wrapped in a
The same day, backers of coercive interrogation techniques began claiming that their use had led investigators to bin Laden. Similar false claims had been made following the capture of other al-Qaeda members, such as KSM, Khallad, and Jose Padilla. The great British prime minister Winston Churchill once remarked that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on,” and that was true in this instance, too.
The American people soon learned that when KSM was waterboarded in 2003, and when al-Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Liby, was subjected to coercive techniques (but not waterboarding) in 2005, they were asked about Abu Ahmed. They denied knowing his true identity and downplayed his significance in al-Qaeda. This denial, which was patently false, was “proof” for defenders of EITs that the Kuwaiti was important to al- Qaeda, and their “proof” that EITs work.
We already knew in 2002—through the use of traditional interrogation methods with detainees—that the Kuwaiti was important. And the fact that KSM and Abu Faraj lied about knowing him showed yet again that the EITs
Not only did KSM know Abu Ahmed, the Kuwaiti was the 9/11 mastermind’s protege. They had similar backgrounds, and KSM entrusted him with management of the al-Qaeda guesthouse in Karachi, Pakistan: it was through that guesthouse that key al-Qaeda operatives and many of those involved in 9/11 passed, including Hambali, Khallad, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and Ammar al-Baluchi. They also went through the EIT program and didn’t reveal valuable information about the Kuwaiti either. Abu Ahmed was the perfect operative for KSM and bin Laden to use: he was an Arab and spoke the local language, understood the culture, and blended in easily.
More details about the Kuwaiti came from the Pakistani al-Qaeda operative Hassan Ghul, who was questioned by the CIA in July 2004. Senator Diane Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Ghul gave up the information
A question I was asked after bin Laden’s death was: why did it take so long to get him? We had the first important clue in 2002; why did we only get to him in 2011?
The reason is that professional interrogators, intelligence operatives, and investigators were marginalized, and instead of tried and tested methods being used, faith was placed in EITs. The highest-ranking al-Qaeda detainees in U.S. custody—the likes of KSM, Nashiri, and Khallad—all of whom would most likely have known Abu Ahmed and other couriers, or would themselves be in communication with bin Laden, were given to the EIT users to question.
Things only really changed when CIA director Leon Panetta completely ended the coercive interrogation program and closed down the black sites. It’s not without coincidence that the eventual death of bin Laden came after the traditional methods of intelligence and investigation were resumed. The professionals were put back in control. We just lost important years, and knowledge and skills, in the years in between.
With bin Laden at the compound, and in the room with him during his final moments of life, was his Yemeni wife. It was the same wife whom Guantanamo detainee No. 37, the Yemeni al-Qaeda operative named al-Batar, knew well. He had helped facilitate her five-thousand-dollar dowry from bin Laden. Salim Hamdan had advised al- Batar to cooperate with me, and he had agreed—on condition that, like Hamdan, he be allowed to phone his family to let them know he was okay.
CITF and FBI commanders at Gitmo requested permission from General Miller, the head of the base, but he refused, saying he wouldn’t allow it without permission from Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary of defense. When that approval never came, we pleaded again for permission, telling him that bin Laden’s Yemeni wife could probably lead us to bin Laden. Our pleas were ignored.
Bin Laden’s death followed the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, during which citizens of countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Algeria, and Syria challenged their rulers. I was in the Middle East during that period, and one of the most striking things about the protests was the absence of al-Qaeda rhetoric among the demonstrators.
Al-Qaeda differs from many other Islamic extremist groups in that its leaders urge people to focus on the United States (the far enemy) rather than the rulers of their own countries (the near enemy). Bin Laden had been very successful in convincing other groups to ally with al-Qaeda and focus on the United States—claiming that was the best way to topple the regimes they opposed. But the Arab Spring showed that, contrary to al-Qaeda’s narrative, hated rulers can be toppled peacefully without engaging the United States. In fact, people saw the United
