Phone call by Kuwaiti courier led to bin Laden Associated PressWASHINGTON - 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 monitored 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.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA's secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden. After the CIA captured al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida.
Then in 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden's personal courier.
"Hassan Ghul was the linchpin," a U.S. official said.
Finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida.
If they could find the man known as al-Kuwaiti, 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 discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him 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 before the CIA identified the courier's real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. 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.
Ahmed was identified by detainees as a mid-level operative who helped al-Qaida members and their families find safe havens. But his whereabouts were such a mystery to U.S. intelligence that, according to Guantanamo Bay documents, one detainee said Ahmed was wounded while fleeing U.S. forces during the invasion of Afghanistan and later died in the arms of the detainee.
But in the middle of last year, Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone 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. Ahmed 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 Ahmed.
In August 2010, Ahmed 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.
Team Six headshot headshots unlikely to appear in emailBy Lewis Page, The Register
This just in from the FBI's department of the bleedin' obvious: if someone emails you with pictures of Osama bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse*, this is probably an attempt to compromise your computer rather than a public-spirited effort intended to confirm that he really is dead.
According to the FBI
announcement, which seems to be pitched very much at the sort of people who would need such advice:
This content could be a virus that could damage your computer. This malicious software, or "malware", can embed itself in computers and spread to users’ contact lists, thereby infecting the systems of associates, friends, and family members. These viruses are often programmed to steal your personally identifiable information.
As of publication the US says it has photos of bin Laden's body, but describes them as "gruesome" – he was apparently shot in the head** – and none have been publicly released.
There are Geneva Convention prohibitions on exhibiting images of dead enemy
service personnel; that is, uniformed national troops belonging to a an enemy nation which has also signed the Convention. Such prohibitions would not apply to bin Laden, but nonetheless there would doubtless be criticism for the US should pictures of his body be published. On the other hand, not publishing them appears to be stoking conspiracy theories to the effect that the al-Qaeda mastermind is not actually dead.
Practically speaking, bin Laden had been effectively dead for years: he was almost totally cut off from communication in order to evade US tracking (his villa had no phone or internet connections) and what limited control he could exert was confined to the remnant central al-Qaeda operation, a few scores of fighters lurking deep in the Afghan-Pakistan border mountains.
Nonetheless his death is a terrifically powerful event, both for Americans who have so long sought vengeance for 9/11 and for jihadis worldwide who saw bin Laden as a symbol if not as a useful operational commander. The latter seem about as likely to be convinced that their idol is really dead as diehard Elvis spotters, so the US would be unlikely to convince them by releasing pictures – and malware artists will no doubt continue to exploit the knowledge that such pictures exist.
In an effort to placate Muslim sentiment, the US forces – having recovered bin Laden's body to an aircraft carrier offshore, avoiding any chance that the Pakistanis might demand custody of it – buried it swiftly, as is required by Muslim custom: in this case at sea. This will probably draw more criticism and stoke conspiracy theories further, but (the US planners hope) will result in less anger than would have resulted from keeping the body unburied. ®
Bootnotes*Just in case you have actually been in a cave since last Friday – as it turns out Mr bin Laden was, in fact, not – the United States finally caught up with the fugitive terrorist kingpin at his capacious villa outside Islamabad at the weekend. He was shot dead at the scene by elite "Tier One" special-forces operatives from the unit known officially as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) or under its former name SEAL Team Six (it was renamed some time back following apparent irregularities with the unit accounts).
Team Six may have been chosen as it has been loosely assigned as the "Tier One" spec-ops cover for Afghanistan while the rival Delta Force (drawing its recruits mainly from the US Army Rangers, while Team Six recruits from the Navy SEAL teams) covers Iraq.
Alternatively Team Six may have been selected on the grounds that, if they are sent in, one can be fairly sure that the target of the operation will wind up dead even if nobody has specified that this should be the case – or indeed, sometimes even if the SEALs have been
specifically told not to kill their primary target.
**Rumour suggests that in recent times spec-ops troops have modified their standard oldtime gunfighting tactic of the "double tap", which called for two shots to an enemy's "centre of mass" – ie the lower chest – to be repeated if necessary until the target goes down.
Nowadays, on some operations anyway, the initial central double-tap – which remains the fastest and surest way to incapacitate an enemy – is apparently followed by a headshot as a standard drill. This can be justified tactically as it allows an operative to then move on more swiftly to another target, being sure that his enemy is dead, as compared to continuing with body shots. The difficulty of actually hitting someone in the head – which would probably be too high in the case of an enemy still untouched, active and moving – is reduced to acceptable levels, at least in the case of an intensively trained specwar operative, by the initial double-tap, which incapacitates though it may not kill outright.
Such tactics are also thought to be in use by the British special forces on occasion, including the Special Boat Service (SBS), which left Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah
dead in 2007 with two bullets through the body and one through the head in much the same fashion as Team Six seems to have despatched bin Laden.
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