Raiders, White House knew secret bin Laden raid was a one-shot deal
By KIMBERLY DOZIER AP Intelligence Writer WASHINGTON Those who planned the secret mission to get Osama bin Laden in Pakistan knew it was a one-shot deal, and it nearly went terribly wrong. The U.S. deliberately hid the operation from Pakistan, and predicted that national outrage over the breach of Pakistani sovereignty would make it impossible to try again if the raid on bin Laden's suspected redoubt came up dry. Once the raiders reached their target, things started to go awry almost immediately, officials briefed on the operation said. Adding exclusive new details to the account of the assault on bin Laden's hideout, officials described just how the SEAL raiders loudly ditched a foundering helicopter right outside bin Laden's door, ruining the plan for a surprise assault. That forced them to abandon plans to run a squeeze play on bin Laden — simultaneously entering the house stealthily from the roof and the ground floor. Instead, they busted into the ground floor and began a floor-by-floor storming of the house, working up to the top level where they had assumed bin Laden — if he was in the house — would be. They were right. The raiders came face-to-face with bin Laden in a hallway outside his bedroom, and three of the Americans stormed in after him, U.S. officials briefed on the operation told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a classified operation. U.S. officials believe Pakistani intelligence continues to support militants who attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and actively undermine U.S. intelligence operations to go after al-Qaida inside Pakistan. The level of distrust is such that keeping Pakistan in the dark was a major factor in planning the raid, and led to using the high-tech but sometimes unpredictable helicopter technology that nearly unhinged the mission. Pakistan's government has since condemned the action, and threatened to open fire if U.S. forces enter again. On Monday, the two partners attempted to patch up relations, agreeing to pursue high-value targets jointly. The decision to launch on that particular moonless night in May came largely because too many American officials had been briefed on the plan. U.S. officials feared if it leaked to the press, bin Laden would disappear for another decade. U.S. special operations forces have made approximately four forays into Pakistani territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, though this one, some 90 miles inside Pakistan, was unlike any other, the officials say. The job was given to a SEAL Team 6 unit, just back from Afghanistan, one official said. This elite branch of SEALs had been hunting bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan since 2001. Five aircraft flew from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with three school-bus-size Chinook helicopters landing in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way to bin Laden's compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, two of the officials explained. Aboard two Black Hawk helicopters were 23 SEALs, an interpreter and a tracking dog named Cairo. Nineteen SEALs would enter the compound, and three of them would find bin Laden, one official said, providing the exact numbers for the first time. Aboard the Chinooks were two dozen more SEALs, as backup. The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound, two officials said. The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the ounce, with weather factored in. The night of the mission, it was hotter than expected. The Black Hawks were to drop the SEALs and depart in less than two minutes, in hopes locals would assume they were Pakistani aircraft visiting the nearby military academy. One Black Hawk was to hover above the compound, with SEALs sliding down ropes into the open courtyard. The second was to hover above the roof to drop SEALs there, then land more SEALs outside — plus an interpreter and the dog, who would track anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces. If troops appeared, the plan was to hunker down in the compound, avoiding armed confrontation with the Pakistanis while officials in Washington negotiated their passage out. The two SEAL teams inside would work toward each other, in a simultaneous attack from above and below, their weapons silenced, guaranteeing surprise, one of the officials said. They would have stormed the building in a matter of minutes, as they'd done time and again in two training models of the compound. The plan unraveled as the first helicopter tried to hover over the compound. The Black Hawk skittered around uncontrollably in the heat-thinned air, forcing the pilot to land. As he did, the tail and rotor got caught on one of the compound's 12-foot walls. The pilot quickly buried the aircraft's nose in the dirt to keep it from tipping over, and the SEALs clambered out into an outer courtyard. The other aircraft did not even attempt hovering, landing its SEALs outside the compound. Now, the raiders were outside, and they'd lost the element of surprise. They had trained for this, and started blowing their way in with explosives, through walls and doors, working their way up the three-level house from the bottom. They had to blow their way through barriers at each stair landing, firing back, as one of the men in the house fired at them. They shot three men as well as one woman, whom U.S. officials have said lunged at the SEALs. Small knots of children were on every level, including the balcony of bin Laden's room. As three of the SEALs reached the top of the steps on the third floor, they saw bin Laden standing at the end of the hall. The Americans recognized him instantly, the officials said. Bin Laden also saw them, dimly outlined in the dark house, and ducked into his room. The three SEALs assumed he was going for a weapon, and one by one they rushed after him through the door, one official described. Two women were in front of bin Laden, yelling and trying to protect him, two officials said. The first SEAL grabbed the two women and shoved them away, fearing they might be wearing suicide bomb vests, they said. The SEAL behind him opened fire at bin Laden, putting one bullet in his chest, and one in his head. It was over in a matter of seconds. Back at the White House Situation Room, word was relayed that bin Laden had been found, signaled by the code word "Geronimo." That was not bin Laden's code name, but rather a representation of the letter "G." Each step of the mission was labeled alphabetically, and "Geronimo" meant that the raiders had reached step "G," the killing or capture of bin Laden, two officials said. As the SEALs began photographing the body for identification, the raiders found an AK-47 rifle and a Russian-made Makarov pistol on a shelf by the door they'd just run through. Bin Laden hadn't touched them. They were among a handful of weapons that were removed to be inventoried. It took approximately 15 minutes to reach bin Laden, one official said. The next 23 or so were spent blowing up the broken chopper, after rounding up nine women and 18 children to get them out of range of the blast. One of the waiting Chinooks flew in to pick up bin Laden's body, the raiders from the broken aircraft and the weapons, documents and other materials seized at the site. The helicopters flew back to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and the body was flown to a waiting U.S. Navy ship for bin Laden's burial at sea, ensuring no shrine would spring up around his grave. When the SEAL team met President Barack Obama, he did not ask who shot bin Laden. He simply thanked each member of the team, two officials said. In a few weeks, the team that killed bin Laden will go back to training, and in a couple months, back to work overseas. The Killing of Osama: Easy Operation as a result of Hard Intelligence The audacious operation that killed Osama Bin Laden was completed relatively shortly. It reaped the benefits of a careful intelligence operation that lasted months, if not years. By Professor Michael Clarke, Director General, RUSI The world is still agog at the exploits of the twenty-five men of the US Navy Seals Team Six that killed Osama Bin Laden on 1 May. In truth, the operation was, in the words of one prominent US General, 'a cakewalk; a simpler operation for the Special Forces than takes place week in, week out, in Afghanistan.' That is not to say that the operation was not daring, very dangerous, and expertly executed. But it came to fruition after nine months of intelligence gathering. The Seals had a specially built replica to train on, and they had every support they needed, with top politicians in Washington watching it unfold live on screen while they all held their breath. This was remarkable in its execution and success. More remarkable, however, is the intelligence operation that its success represented. It began in August 2010 from a tenuous lead that a suspected Al-Qa'ida courier had been coming and going regularly to the closed compound at Abbottabad. The arrest of Abu Faraj al-Libbi in 2005 convinced US intelligence officials that the 'courier-networks' were the most likely route to finding Bin Laden after the trail had gone cold with his escape from the Tora Bora cave complex in 2001. Al-Libbi was one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's key colleagues and a trusted intermediary for senior Al-Qa'ida leaders, and he was arrested while waiting to meet another courier - Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan. In July 2010, after years of fruitless network tracking, a white Suzuki vehicle was spotted near Peshawar and positively linked to a suspected courier who was then tracked coming and going to the Abbottabad complex. The man has since been named by CNN (but not confirmed officially) as a Kuwaiti - as was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - known as Abu Ahmad. Whether or not this was his true identity the man was evidently serving someone very important. Operation known to a select few The lead was then followed up for the next nine months by the full spectrum of US intelligence assets. The evidence that they could be looking at Osama Bin Laden's hideaway, in an urban area a mere 62 miles from Pakistan's capital, strengthened as the months went on, but it was never a confirmed fact. There was satellite imagery of a figure that might, or might not, have been Osama Bin Laden moving about the enclosed courtyard, but nothing specific. In the event, the operation was authorised by the President on the basis of a high probability, but nothing like certainty. As the conviction grew that this target might be 'Geronimo' - the big one, it is not surprising that the whole thing was kept a strictly national secret, and certainly not shared with the Pakistani government who are widely believed in Washington to be extremely leaky with sensitive information. Rather more remarkable is the fact that none of this leaked out within Washington itself. According to official briefings, all the US intelligence agencies were involved for a prolonged period; special training facilities were built, squads were briefed for a high-value target, the Presidential top team - at least fourteen of them by April - were briefed with increasingly specific information. And no fewer than sixteen Congressional leaders were brought into the circle to maintain bi-partisan support - especially if the operation went wrong or turned out to be mis-identified. The growing conviction, as the months and weeks tipped towards a decision point that this could be the ope ration of the decade, had the effect of instilling a deepening shadow of secrecy on a widening circle of politicians and officials in a way that has genuinely surprised many Washington observers. Lengthy surveillance The lengthy period of surveillance has almost certainly created other important intelligence leads in the campaign against the Al-Qa'ida core organisation. Now that Bin Laden's presence is a confirmed fact, nine months of comings and goings, deliveries and passers-by, all become gold dust intelligence. All the more so as the Abbottabad villa deliberately had no mobile phones, landlines or internet connections. The Al-Qa'ida core network has long since fallen back on the safety of face-to-face communications and hand-delivered messages and equipment. But the corresponding weakness is that US national intelligence agencies should now know a great deal about who was providing the face-to-face contact with Bin Laden's staff over a long period. Not least, the violent part of the raid lasted less than 3 minutes from the landing of helicopters (even including the accident and destruction of one of the machines) to the killing of Osama Bin Laden himself. Two of the three other Al -Qa'ida members reported killed in the operation were also named as identified couriers, and they died within seconds of the helicopter landings. The next forty or so minutes were spent ransacking the key rooms for books, discs, hard drives, papers and records of any type. The US now has the best haul of all-source intelligence on the Al-Qa'ida core organisation that it has ever possessed, or ever will. It will be surprising if there are not follow-up operations of various types, from drone strikes in Pakistan to counter-terrorism arrests in western countries, over the coming months while this treasure-trove of intelligence remains hot. Challenges to future intelligence operations The Pakistani authorities, too, facing the biggest crisis in their relations with the US for over a decade, will want to be seen to act on their own counter-terrorism intelligence, such as it is. The political mood in Washington is coldly and explicitly angry with the government in Islamabad, to whom it has given around $18 billion in assistance since 2002. As the intelligence on Abbottabad built up over the months, the top of the Obama Administration had lots of time to confirm in its own collective mind that the government of Pakistan either had little effective control over its own intelligence operations and competence, or that it was passively complicit in a cover-up of intelligence that should have been pursued. Either way, the Pakistan authorities have either to face down US anger from an intrinsically weak position, or engage in some damage limitation that will almost certainly take the form of a new spike in terror-related arrests and more pressure on Pakistan Taleban groups. There will likely be some rough justice - and injustice - in the process that will not do the prospects for domestic stability across Pakistan any lasting good. US intelligence will enjoy a bounce in credibility and prestige as a result of this operation at a time when it could do with one, but there is a longer-term downside as well. As the 'Arab spring' sweeps across the Middle East region, US officials acknowledge that relations with some previously nasty governments - with whom they had quietly-productive intelligence relations - are changing rapidly. If the pattern of US relations with governments in the region is ultimately evolving for the better, one of the short-term costs may be in regional intelligence co-operation and a degree of blindness that US agencies will suffer as a result, particularly in the all-important area of human intelligence. An 'intelligence crisis' with Pakistan will only add to this blindness if it is not handled very carefully and the suspicions among regional intelligence agencies that the US is prepared to act high-handedly and unilaterally will exacerbate the trend. Political reactions throughout the Middle East to the US operation have been muted, or judiciously supportive. Reactions from intelligence agencies are always difficult to judge from the outside, but the intelligence ripples of reaction are likely to be as significant as the political ones. SOURCE: RUSI - The Killing of Osama: Easy Operation as a result of Hard Intelligence <http://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C4DC3A83C85EDE/> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-os...@yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor biso...@intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscr...@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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