American Expat, is in SE
Asia, but won't
provide any additional information, so the photo can't be confirmed as
the real deal.
Details Of Raid -- Shootout, No
Surrender
David Gardner
is reporting that almost ten years after the horror of 9/11, Osama
bin Laden must have thought he was safe. He had moved from the
remote, barren mountains on Afghanistan’s inhospitable border to a
comfortable $1 million mansion in one of Pakistan’s most picturesque and
affluent cities, Abbottabad -- named after James Abbott, the British
major who founded the town in 1853 -- has such a pleasant climate that
it is a major hub for tourists visiting the region. And the
former home of the Gurkhas is still a major military base, so locals
have no reason to feel threatened.
Behind the walls of his
sprawling compound about 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital of
Islamabad, Bin Laden had every reason to believe he was way beyond the
searching eyes of the Americans he had taunted for so long. His
family was with him and a parade of couriers would bring him everything
he needed from the city outside of more than a million people. So
confident was he that the huge three-storey house he was living in was
eight times larger than most other homes in the area, hardly a
low-profile hideaway for the most wanted man in the world.
But,
according to U.S. intelligence sources, Bin Laden was taken completely
by surprise by the special forces who had spent the best part of a
decade stalking him. He had, after all, survived two wars launched
with the aim of capturing him and his followers.
The last time
the Americans and the British got as close -- a few months after the
attacks on New York and Washington -- Bin Laden managed to elude them on
horseback through the caves and gullies in the White Mountains of
eastern Afghanistan.
For most of the past ten years, Bin Laden
lived up to the nickname of "Elvis" he had been given by the CIA because
there had been so many bogus and fanciful sightings. But as long ago as
last August, Obama was told in an intelligence briefing that there was a
possible lead that Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad.
It took eight months for U.S. and Pakistani agents to confirm for
certain that the information was accurate.
Deserted: Nestled among trees and in
the shadow of Pakistan's mountains, Bin Laden's hideaway stands
empty today after a helicopter raid by U.S. troops that killed the
terror chief yesterday.
Hideout: A large sheet covers the U.S.
helicopter that crashed in the grounds of the compound where Bin
Laden lived with his youngest wife and his trusted aides.
After several
run-throughs and the diplomatic blessing of the Pakistani government, a
small special forces team of U.S. Navy SEALS landed in the compound
grounds yesterday with the explicit instruction -- get Osama bin Laden,
dead or alive.
The raid on the compound, which was just 100
yards from a Pakistani military academy, was launched at about 1.15 am
in the morning, according to witnesses. Four U.S. helicopters took off
from the Ghazi air base in northwest Pakistan. Bin Laden's guards opened
fire from the roof and one of the helicopters crashed.
During an
operation that took just 40 minutes from start to finish, Bin Laden was
shot in the head in a firefight as he tried to evade capture. Three of
his men were also killed along with a woman they tried to use as a human
shield. One of Bin Laden's eleven sons was said to be among the dead.
Near miss: One of the U.S. helicopters
crashed over a wall within the compound after coming under heavy
fire from rocket propelled grenades. However, all special
forces troops escaped safely
Clean up: The remains of the U.S. helicopter that crashed during the
mission are driven away on a tractor through Abbottabad today.
No Americans were hurt in the mission, but it didn’t go without
a hitch.
The helicopter they used to breach the mansion
walls suffered a mechanical breakdown and couldn’t fly the
soldiers out. The SEALS burned the helicopter and had to carry
Bin Laden’s body out on foot, an ignominious ending for the
terrorist chief after one of history’s biggest manhunts. It was
also a major triumph for a special CIA and special forces team
of up to 100 whose mission since September 11 has been to find
and kill Bin Laden.
For years, they have had to brave the
jibes aimed at both the Bush and Obama administrations over the
failure to track down the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.
Stormed: The image below from Geo TV shows flames from the compound
where terror mastermind Bin Laden was shot
They worked closely with the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service
for whom many CIA officials have a deep mistrust because of the agency’s
traditional ties with the Pashtuns of Waziristan, who were believed to
have harbored Bin Laden for some of his years on the run. After he
evaded capture in mid-December 1991, there were precious few credible
leads of his whereabouts. But about four years ago, CIA agents managed
to identify one of his most trusted couriers after a detainee at
Guantanamo Bay gave them his nickname.
It took another two
years for them to discover the area where the courier and his brother
were operating. By January this year, they found out that the courier
and his brother were living in a mansion that appeared to be much larger
than anything they could afford. Suspicions were raised further by the
thick walls around the compound. While other homes in the area put
rubbish out to be collected, the trash was burned in the ground of the
mansion, which did not have a telephone or internet service. By
February, U.S. intelligence officials were confident that Bin Laden and
his family were living there and by March, Obama was convening top
secret meeting with his senior security staff.
The CIA believe
that for many years before settling in Abbottabad, Bin Laden moved from
village to village in Waziristan. He communicated only about once a
month and never used a telephone. When he reached a village with his
bodyguards he would request a meeting with the local tribal leader and a
substantial bribe would be paid. Bin Laden would then be the guest of
the village, where under Pashtun custom, he must be protected.
The main obstacle in finding him was that even if someone wanted to
betray him and collect the $25 million reward -- there was no one to
turn to. The local police would know Bin Laden was there and if anyone
tried to report his presence they would quite likely be killed. One
local mullah from Waziristan agreed to send information about Bin
Laden’s movements and his beheaded body was found several weeks later
with a message that his was the fate of spies.
While Operation
Enduring Freedom was successful in liberating Afghanistan from Taliban
control after 9/11, there was no doubt that the real prize was Bin Laden
himself. But the Al Qaeda chief had chosen his first redoubt with care.
For several years before 2001, he had developed an intricate network of
caves and dwellings 14,000ft up in the settlement known as Tora Bora.
The impenetrable mountains not only made it difficult for anybody to
track him, they were also just a few miles from Pakistan, allowing him
to escape easily as western troops moved in. The commander of one U.S.
military force told the ’60 Minutes’ news show how soldiers under his
command found Bin Laden -- but let him slip through their fingers.
The commander, calling himself Dalton Fury, expressed his
frustration at having known where Bin Laden was, but feeling he was
powerless to do anything.
At one point, he said, his forces were
closing in on Bin Laden's men -- but he decided to abort the mission
because he did not have support from Afghan troops. And in another
incident Delta soldiers actually saw a tall man dressed in camouflage
that they believed was Bin Laden -- only to have the Al Qaeda leader
escape their bombing campaign in the mountains. Fury talked about a book
he has written entitled "Kill Bin Laden," detailing his memories of the
campaign in Tora Bora in 2001.
"Our job was to go find him,
capture or kill him, and we knew the writing on the wall was to kill him
because nobody wanted to bring Osama bin Laden back to stand trial in
the United States somewhere," the mission commander told his
interviewer. He said the administration's strategy was to let Afghans do
most of the fighting, however. Using radio intercepts and other
intelligence, he said, the CIA pinpointed Bin Laden's location in the
Tora Bora mountains near Pakistan.
Fury's Delta team joined
the CIA and Afghan fighters and piled into pick-up trucks. He claimed
their orders were to kill Bin Laden and leave the body with the Afghans,
keeping an Afghan face on the war. However an audacious plan to come at
Bin Laden from the back door was vetoed higher-up -- Fury claimed he was
never sure who.
And a second plan to drop hundreds of landmines
over any escape route into Pakistan was also vetoed, with Fury claiming
he had no idea why.
The only option left was a frontal assault.
Fury said he had 50 men in Delta force up against Bin Laden's 1,000 --
support from the Afghan forces was needed. But, he claimed, many of the
Afghan soldiers were not on board -- seeing Bin Laden as a hero.
One night -- alone without his Afghan allies -- Fury said he was told
Bin Laden was two kilometres away. Faced with overwhelming odds, he
elected to stay away. But the decision always nagged him. He wrote in
his book:
"My decision to abort that effort to kill or capture
Bin Laden when we might have been within 2,000 metres of him, about
2,000 yards, still bothers me. It leaves me with a feeling of somehow
letting down our nation at a critical time." But, he added, it wasn't
worth the risk.
Fury had a second chance: Later, a Delta force
named Jackal radioed they had Bin Laden in sight. He wrote: "The
operation Jackal team observed 50 men moving into a cave that they
hadn't seen before." The mujahideen said they saw an individual, a
taller fellow, wearing a camouflage jacket. Everybody put two and two
together, "okay, that's got to be Osama bin Laden egressing from the
battlefield."
Patrols: Soldiers drive through Abbottabad where the
Al Qaeda leader was living in a mansion
"They called up every available bomb in the air, took control of the
airspace. And they dropped several hours of bombs on the cave he went
into. We believe, it was our opinion at the time, that he died inside
that cave."
Later, however, he was proven wrong, when American
forces were unable to find Bin Laden's body and the Al Qaeda leader
began releasing radio and video footage again. Fury told 60 Minutes he
believes he knows what happened. He said Bin Laden was wounded in the
shoulder by shrapnel from an American bomb, and was then hidden a town
next to the Al Qaeda cemetery.
'We believe a gentleman brought
him in -- a gentleman, him and his family were supporting Al Qaeda
during the battle. They were providing food, ammo, water. We think he
went to that house, received medical attention for a few days then, and
then we believe they put him in a vehicle and moved him back across the
pass."
Obama
For Barack Obama, it is the image that he might want to define
his presidency more than any other -- the grim-faced leader and his
security team captured at the moment of the riskiest gamble of his
administration.
It could be a scene from political drama The West Wing. Indeed,
it took place in the White House’s west wing. But this was not fiction. From halfway around the world, Obama and members of
the National Security Council huddled in front of a video screen on
Sunday afternoon to follow the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistan
compound as it happened.
Their faces, racked by tension, looked set in stone -- hardly
surprising, given what was at stake.
Tension: President Obama took 16 hours to
decide whether to go with the mission. Hilary Clinton watches the
dramatic moment unfold with apparent shock
Geronimo, the codename for Bin Laden, was the redoubtable
Apache chief who famously evaded capture by American forces. But it is
also the battlecry one shouts when making a brave leap, and this was
certainly one of those.
Aides said there hadn’t been an intelligence meeting in
previous weeks where someone did not mention the Iran hostages debacle
in 1980 or Black Hawk Down, the film about the disastrous U.S.
helicopter-borne attempt to seize a Somali leader in 1993.
There had been deep disagreement among the security team, with
half of them -- reportedly mainly the politicians -- opposing the assault,
instead favouring waiting until they could be sure Bin Laden was
definitely in the compound, or mounting a less risky bombing raid.
Presidential aides have given
countless briefings presenting Barack Obama as a decisive
commander in chief with a studied calm and steely resolve since
Bin Laden was killed.
But fresh details emerged last night that it actually
took 16 hours for him to decide that the world’s most wanted
terrorist should be taken out.
Far from making his mind up quickly, Mr Obama kept his
top military officials waiting overnight before finally telling
them: ‘It’s a go.’
Presented with the latest intelligence last Friday, Mr
Obama could only muster silence before telling his top military
staff: ‘I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now -- I’m
going to go back and think about it some more. I’m going to make
a decision soon.’
The following morning, a full 16 hours later, four
senior aides were summoned to the White House Diplomatic Room to
be told the operation could go ahead.
The delay meant that, in part due to bad weather, the
earliest the attack could be carried out was Sunday.
Former vice president Dick Cheney said it would be ‘a
tragedy’ to spend so much time ‘patting ourselves on the back’
that we miss the next attack.
But he added: ‘The administration clearly deserves
credit for the success of the operation.’
Mr Obama received extensive praise from the EU
anti-terror chief, who went as far as saying he hoped the
killing would lead to a second term for him.
Gilles de Kerchove said: ‘I hope that this will help
him be re-elected.’
But Obama took the decision to go in with the Navy SEALs after
deliberating for 16 hours.
Officials said the photo, taken by the White House photographer
in the building’s high-tech Situation Room communications nerve centre,
was not choreographed.
But you can see why they chose to release this particular one.
It shows a leader, who has been derided for his unemotive, overly
detached demeanour, instead looking every inch the concerned
commander-in-chief, his attention riveted on the fate of the men he has
sent into battle.
It is possible to miss Barack Obama at first glance, his tall
frame hunched in the corner in his golfing clothes (he had just played
that Sunday morning), his trademark bottle of mineral water on the table
in front of him.
That said, it is impossible not to recognise his intense gaze
as, jaw clenched, he watched live video feeds of the attack.
Reinforcing the reported blokey informality of which his fans
are proud, he has given up the padded leather presidential chair for a
uniformed underling, perhaps so Brigadier General Marshall ‘Brad’ Webb
-- the most junior man in the room -- can have space at the conference table
to use his Hewlett Packard laptop.
Indeed, the usual rules whereby National Security Council
members sit closest to the President in strict order of seniority appear
to have been junked in the crisis. Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, has
drawn up a chair between that of the President and Hillary Clinton, the
Secretary of State.
In her tweed jacket, Mrs. Clinton would look her usual composed
self if it wasn’t for the hand covering her mouth in apparent shock.
Across the table, Vice President Joe Biden looks more relaxed
in his open collar but out of shot are the rosary beads that the
staunchly Roman Catholic was playing with during the ordeal.
Others dealt with the tension in different ways, several pacing
around the room. But Mr Obama barely moved, looking ‘stone faced’
throughout, according to an aide.
The Situation Room, a highly secure suite of rooms on the
ground floor of the White House’s west wing, was created in 1961 to
address President Kennedy’s complaints about the supposed poor
‘real-time’ information failures which hampered another U.S. surprise
strike -- the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
On Sunday, officials had cancelled all White House tours to
avoid the possibility of a tourist or visiting celebrity accidentally
running into the security officials and their tense work.
The group gathered at noon without the President. A member of
staff went to Costco, a local grocery, and returned with lunch -- turkey
in pita bread wraps, prawns, crisps and fizzy drinks.
They spent the next two hours watching video and audio feeds
from the CIA whose director, Leon Panetta, was connected to the
Situation Room via a video link to his office at Langley, Virginia.
Just after 2pm, Mr Panetta outlined the raid for a last time
and, within an hour, began talking them through the operation. And then,
‘They’re in Pakistan,’ he announced simply.
The raid lasted 40 nail-biting minutes. ‘It was probably one of
the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the
people who were assembled here. The minutes passed like days,’ said John
Brennan, Mr Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor, who was standing
behind Mrs Clinton during the operation. Both Mr Panetta and Mr Brennan
had supported the ground strike over waiting.
The President, he said, was ‘very concerned’ about the safety
of the U.S. troops -- ‘That was what was on his mind throughout.’ The
watchers had an early jolt of fear on that front when one of the
helicopters crashed over the compound, although all its occupants were
safe.
The atmosphere was ‘very tense, a lot of people holding their
breath’, Mr Brennan added. Nobody dared speak for fear of talking over
one of the regular updates from Mr Panetta.
Minutes passed before Mr Panetta came on air again to say: ‘We
have a visual on Geronimo.’
It took a few more nerve-racking minutes before he was on the
line again. ‘Geronimo EKIA [Enemy Killed in Action],’ he said.
Minutes after the successful mission Barack
Obama tells to the world the good news at The White House
Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad
where he was killed on Sunday night had a seven foot wall on one
side where the terrorist mastermind could walk around
Pakistani Army soldiers secure the compound
where Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbotabad, Pakistan
Confirmation that the Seals had found their quarry was greeted
with a ‘tremendous sigh of relief’, said Mr Brennan. There was silence
in the room. ‘We got him,’ said Mr Obama.
But the ordeal was not over. Another stomach-lurching moment
came when the Pakistanis scrambled jets after discovering the
unauthorised helicopters in their airspace. Fortunately, the troops were
over the border before there was any military contact.
Andy Card, the chief of staff to George Bush who was the first
to tell him about the 9/11 attacks, spoke of the extreme tension his
successors would have been under in that room.
‘You try to plan for every contingency,’ he told the BBC
yesterday.
‘It’s easy to plan for optimism. I would
always try to make sure there were some sceptics in the room to ask
challenging questions of those that were making the plans.’
‘But then you watch with bated breath as the plan is
implemented. I am sure there were some quiet prayers that this would go
well -- there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong in this
raid.’
He added: ‘There’s a lot of tension and ultimately the
President’s decision is a lonely decision.’
David Gardner
is reporting that almost ten years after the horror of 9/11, Osama
bin Laden must have thought he was safe. He had moved from the
remote, barren mountains on Afghanistan’s inhospitable border to a
comfortable $1 million mansion in one of Pakistan’s most picturesque and
affluent cities, Abbottabad -- named after James Abbott, the British
major who founded the town in 1853 -- has such a pleasant climate that
it is a major hub for tourists visiting the region. And the former
home of the Gurkhas is still a major military base, so locals have no
reason to feel threatened.
Behind the walls of his sprawling
compound about 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Bin
Laden had every reason to believe he was way beyond the searching eyes
of the Americans he had taunted for so long. His family was with
him and a parade of couriers would bring him everything he needed from
the city outside of more than a million people. So confident was
he that the huge three-storey house he was living in was eight times
larger than most other homes in the area, hardly a low-profile hideaway
for the most wanted man in the world.
But, according to U.S.
intelligence sources, Bin Laden was taken completely by surprise by the
special forces who had spent the best part of a decade stalking him.
He had, after all, survived two wars launched with the aim of capturing
him and his followers.
The last time the Americans and the
British got as close -- a few months after the attacks on New York and
Washington -- Bin Laden managed to elude them on horseback through the
caves and gullies in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
For most of the past ten years, Bin Laden lived up to the nickname of
"Elvis" he had been given by the CIA because there had been so many
bogus and fanciful sightings. But as long ago as last August,
Obama was told in an intelligence briefing that there was a possible
lead that Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad.
It took eight months for U.S. and Pakistani
agents to confirm for certain that the information was accurate.
After several run-throughs and the diplomatic
blessing of the Pakistani government, a small special forces team of
U.S. Navy Seals landed in the compound grounds yesterday with the
explicit instruction -- get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.
Kimbrly Dozier and David Espo are reporting
that Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and architect of the
September 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite
American forces Monday, then quickly buried at sea in a stunning finale
to a furtive decade on the run.
Long believed to be hiding in
caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a costly, custom-built hideout not
far from a Pakistani military academy.
"Justice has been done,"
Barack Obama said in a dramatic announcement at the White House while a
crowd cheered outside and hundreds more gathered at ground zero in
Manhattan to celebrate the news.
The military operation took mere
minutes.
U.S. helicopters ferrying elite counter-terrorism troops
-- Navy SEALS -- into the compound identified by the CIA as bin Laden's
hideout -- and back out again in less than 40 minutes. Bin Laden
was shot in the head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards
resisted the assault.
Three adult males were also killed in the
raid, including one of bin Laden's sons, whom officials did not name.
One of bin Laden's sons, Hamza, is a senior member of al-Qaida.
U.S. officials also said one woman was killed when she was used as a
shield by a male combatant, and two other women were injured.
The
U.S. official who disclosed the burial at sea said it would have been
difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. Obama said
the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which
requires speedy burial.
"I heard a thundering sound, followed by
heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering,
then a big blast," said Mohammad Haroon Rasheed, a resident of
Abbottobad, Pakistan, after the choppers had swooped in and then out
again.
Ulsterman says Obama was ultimately overridden
by senior military and intelligence officials to finally take out
terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
Newsflavor
Note: This communication came from our long time D.C. Insider
and details previous and ongoing conflicts surrounding the decision to
assassinate terrorist Osama Bin Laden. This has been reproduced
here as originally communicated to us.
Please get this out ASAP. Want
specific people to know we know.
RE Osama Bin Laden.
Significant push to take him out months ago. Senior WH staff
resisted. This was cause of much strain between Hillary
Clinton (HC) and Obama/Jarrett. HC and Leon Panetta (LP) were
in constant communication over matter -- both attempted to convince
administration to act. Administration feared failure and
resulting negative impact on president. Intel disgusted over
politics over national security. Staff resigned/left.
Check timeline to corroborate.
Now Intel already leaking to
media facts surrounding how info obtained. Namely from
enhanced interrogation efforts via GITMO prisoners. Obama
administration placed in corner on this. Some media aware of
danger to president RE this and attempting protection. Others
looking for further investigation. We are pushing for them to
follow through and already meeting with some access.
Point
of determination made FOR Obama not BY Obama. Will clarify as
details become more clear. Very clear divide between Military
and WH. Jarrett marginalized 100% on decision to take out OBL.
She played no part. Bill Daley (BD) worked with LP and HC to
form coalition to force Commander in Chief (CiC) to engage.
IMPORTANT SPECIFIC: When 48 hour go order issued, CiC was
told, not requested. Administration scrambled to abort.
That order was overruled. This order did not originate from
CiC. Repeat -- this order did not originate from CiC. He
complied, but did not originate.
Independent military
contacts have confirmed. Stories corroborate one another.
This is legit.
The killing of Osama Bin Laden was in fact a
Coup within Obama WH.
Speaking with additional contacts RE
info.
Stay safe.
Update: Just released photo of the white
house "war room" during the Osama bin Laden assassination operation
showing a seemingly angry Barack Obama still wearing his golf attire and
Bill Daley, Hillary Clinton, and Robert Gates on opposite side of room.
This photo appears to further support the description of that day’s
events by insider.
Taiwanese View
Phone Call By Kuwaiti Courier Led To Bin
Laden
Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo are reporting
that 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.
SEAL Team Sixs
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.
Related:Meet "Seal Team 6" -- The
Bad-Asses Who Killed Osama Bin Laden
Related:ABC News Photos Inside the
Compound Where Osama Bin Laden Was Killed
Related:Obama Knew OBL’s Location Since August… Voted Present
Until May Related:EU official hopes bin Laden killing will help
Obama get re-elected
We All Went To The Rest Room
But that's not what Brennan said in his
Monday presser, and he was in the Situation Room with Team Obama:
"We were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the
operation from its commencement to its time on target to the
extraction of the remains and to then the egress off of the
target... We were able to monitor the situation in real time
and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had
real-time visibility into the progress of the operation. I’m
not going to go into details about what type of visuals we had or
what type of feeds that were there, but it was -- it gave us the
ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis."
Doesn't sound like Panetta's version of 25 minutes
of not knowing what was going on inside the compound.
Related:The video footage captured by
the "helmet cams" of the Navy SEALS who conducted the kill operation on
Osama bin Laden may be released, a source told ABC News.
Let Me Sleep On That
The Daily Mail
is reporting that Barack Obama
kept military commanders hanging by declaring he would "sleep on it"
before taking 16 hours to give the go-ahead to raid Bin Laden's
compound.
Hit squads of specialist Navy Seals -- who were not
even told who they were preparing to capture -- had practiced the
mission at two reconstructions of the terror chiefs sprawling compound.
The mission looked set to be given the all clear last Thursday when
analysts confirmed beyond doubt that Bin Laden was in busy town of
Abbottabad in northern Pakistan.
But Obama stunned
officials when he told a national security meeting that he wanted more
time to think -- and disappeared out of the room.
"I'm not going
to tell you what my decision is now -- I'm going to go back and think
about it some more," said Obama, according to the New York Times.
He then added "I'm going to make a decision soon."
The head of the CIA
and other senior intelligence officers who were keen to proceed were
left tense as they waited for Obama's decision.
But the
next morning after 16 hours, Obama summoned four top aides to the White
House Diplomatic Room. Before they could speak, Obama said it was a go.
Ulsterman has another message from the White
House Insider: Obama Hesitated -- Panetta issued order to kill Osama Bin
Laden.
Note: This update comes some 24 hours after our
longtime Washington D.C. Insider first outlined shocking details of an
Obama administration having been "overruled" by senior military and
intelligence officials leading up to the successful attack against
terrorist Osama Bin Laden. What follows is further clarification
of Insider’s insights surrounding that event.
Q: You stated that Obama was "overruled" by
military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in
military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound. Was
that accurate?
A: I was told -- in these exact
terms, "we overruled him." (Obama) I have since followed up
and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as
the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around Obama’s "persistent
hesitation to act." There appears NOT to have been an outright
overruling of any specific position by Obama, simply because there
was no specific position from him to do so. Obama was, in this
case, as in all others, working as an absentee president.
I was correct in stating there had been a push to
invade the compound for several weeks if not
months, primarily led by Leon Panetta, Hillary
Clinton, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and
Jim Clapper. The primary opposition to this plan originated from
Valerie Jarrett, and it was her opposition that was enough to create
uncertainty within Obama. Obama would meet with various components
of the pro-invasion faction, almost always with Jarrett present, and
then often fail to indicate his position. This situation continued
for some time, though the division between Jarrett/Obama and the rest
intensified more recently, most notably from Hillary Clinton. She
was livid over Obama’s failure to act, and her office began a campaign
of anonymous leaks to the media indicating such. As for Jarrett,
her concern rested on two primary fronts. One, that the military
action could fail and harm Obama’s already weakened standing with both
the American public and the world. Second, that the attack would
be viewed as an act of aggression against Muslims, and further
destabilize conditions in the Middle East.
Q: What changed Obama’s position and
enabled the attack against Osama Bin Laden to proceed?
A:
Nothing changed with Obama’s opinion -- he continued to avoid having
one. Every time military and intelligence officials appeared
to make progress in forming a position, Jarrett would intervene and
the stalling would begin again. Hillary started the ball
really rolling as far as pressuring Obama began, but it was Panetta
and Petraeus who ultimately pushed Obama to finally act -- sort of.
Sheikh or sheik, sometimes rendered
conservatively as shaykh, is a word or honorific term in the Arabic
language that literally means "elder." It is commonly used to designate
an elder of a tribe, a revered wise man, or an Islamic scholar.
Osama wasn't a
Muslim leader. Islam is a religion of peace. Maj. Nidal
Hasan wasn't a "Soldier of Allah." I am not a Muslim.
Please, Release Me!
Zip
is reporting Obama told 60 Minutes that he will not release the
photos of Osama bin Laden after he was killed. Said Obama:
"The
risks of release outweigh the benefits. Conspiracy theorists
around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and
there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to
inflame public opinion in the Middle East."
He added: "Imagine
how the American people would react if Al Qaida killed one of our troops
or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the internet [imagine].
Osama bin Laden is not a trophy -- he is dead and let’s now focus on
continuing the fight until Al Qaida has been eliminated."
The
real
dead guys -- click "volgende foto" to image 4, 5 and 6. Photos
1 through 3 are of the secret helicopter component left behind.
The concern is that the Pakis will sell the parts to the Chinese.
From Guys That Were There
Sources involved in the operation that
took down Usama bin Laden
told Fox News the terrorist leader acted "scared" and "completely
confused" in his final moments, "shoving his wife" at the Navy SEAL who
ultimately shot him.
The information helps clarify the
conflicting details about what exactly happened toward the end of the
40-minute raid on bin Laden's northern Pakistan compound. Sources,
who were part of the mission, said bin Laden acted in a
"cowardly manner" when confronted. Fox News has also learned that
while bin Laden was unarmed, he was standing near the door within reach
of two weapons -- an AK-47 and a Makarov handgun -- both are now in U.S.
custody. The handgun is a 9mm semi-automatic Russian pistol,
standard issue in the Russian military until 1991.
A senior U.S.
official also told Fox News that only one of the five people killed in
the raid was carrying a weapon and firing. The detail seemed at
first to diverge from White House accounts claiming the Navy SEALs
encountered resistance throughout the raid and were engaged in a
firefight during much of the 40-minute operation. However, the
scene was described as chaotic, with U.S. forces encountering barricades
and women in the compound screaming and attacking the men.
Another U.S. official said there were "at least a half-dozen weapons"
found at the compound. The first person the SEALs encountered at
the guest house "immediately opened fire" before being killed, the
official said. As the SEALs moved through the compound, bin
Laden's son Khaled rushed down from the third floor to the second floor
and confronted the SEALs, who killed him.
The U.S. team, in
their training, had anticipated that bin Laden had a suicide vest and
that the house was rigged. The official bristled at the notion
that the compound was somehow an easy target with reports that only one
person was armed.
"He was the one guy shot who had a gun in his
hand and was firing when he was shot -- other weapons were at the
scene," the official said. "When the SEALs reached the third
floor, after resistance and physical barricades, Usama bin Laden did not
immediately surrender. When someone like UBL who has said he wants
to kill as many Americans as possible, doesn't 150 percent surrender,
you have to assess as a threat."
Another source familiar with the
operation said the first shot fired at bin Laden, when he poked his head
out of his bedroom, missed. That detail was first revealed by Sen.
Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., based on information he got during a
classified briefing to members of Congress. Afterward, two
different SEALs fired on bin Laden, one hitting his chest and one
hitting his forehead.
By Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Justin
Fishel and Catherine Herridge
Stop Digging! Please!
John Hinderaker
says
someone needs to explain the First Rule of Holes to the Obama
administration. Military and intelligence professionals executed
an important mission brilliantly, carrying out their assigned task of
killing Osama bin Laden and dumping his body into the ocean. Ever
since, the administration has undercut the professionals' achievement
with a succession of now-inoperative accounts of the raid's climactic
moments.
First we had John Brennan spinning a tale about bin
Laden blazing away at the SEALs while using his wife -- now deceased --
as a human shield. Many details of that story turned out to be
false. Then the administration claimed that it looked as though
Osama was reaching for a gun, so the SEALs had to shoot him. Next,
the theory was that Osama was clothed, not naked, so he could have had a
bomb under his clothes and had to be shot. Another iteration
emerged this afternoon, as an administration official told AFP that guns
were found in the room where Obama was shot, so he was a threat to the
SEALs:
US Navy SEALs who led a raid on Osama bin
Laden's compound found an AK-47 and a pistol in his room, a US
official told AFP Thursday, offering more details about the
operation.
"He had weapons in his room, more than one," said
the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He was not
compliant. He did not surrender," the official said. ...
Given the possible threats, the gunfire from the courier and Bin
Laden's reputation, "the team made the right decision."
All of these narratives -- apart from the
disadvantage, in some instances, of being untrue -- share a common
defect. They assume that the SEALs are in the dock as accused
murderers, and need to be seen as acting in self-defense. This is
ridiculous. The SEALs may have acted in "national self defense,"
the doctrine that Eric Holder articulated to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. But in the immediate context of the raid on bin Laden's
compound, the SEALs were not defending themselves. They were on
the attack, as they needed to be to carry out their orders.
Whether bin Laden was shooting at them, reaching for a gun, clothed or
naked, or in the same room with a weapon is irrelevant. The SEALs
went into Pakistan to kill bin Laden, and succeeded brilliantly.
The administration needs to forget about self-defense and stand behind
the orders it gave the military.
Team Obama Releases Version 29 Of Osama
Raid
Jim Hoft
says, Good
Grief! We now have 29 different versions of the Osama Bin Laden raid in
Abbottabad by the Obama Administration.
This was number 27... The head of the CIA admitted this week that
there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's
compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.
The White House released this photo of the security team watching
the raid on the Osama compound in Abbottabad. Now we know the feed
was not working.
But now, days later, Bob Woodward of Cheney
assassination squad fame claims that the cameras were rolling the whole
time. That makes
version 29.
What incompetence.
Justice For Osama
Osama Bin
Laden Not Buried At Sea
RT.com
is reporting that the body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was
not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm
Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks.
Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the
body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and
then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda
[Maryland],” an email says.
The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was
killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an
undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony.
"If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph
Eichman like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi's ashes,"
Burton commented in another email. Eichman was one of the masterminds of
the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. He was captured by Mossad agents in
Argentina and, tried in Israel, found guilty and executed in 1962. His
body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea over the
Mediterranean.
"Eichmann was seen alive for many months on trial before being
sentenced to death and executed. No one wanted a monument to him so they
cremated him. But i dont know anyone who claimed he wasnt eicjhman
[sic]. No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance
to view him which i doubt happened [sic]," Stratfor CEO George
Friedman replied.
"The US Govt needs to make body pics available like the MX's do,
with OBL's pants pulled down, to shout down the lunatics like Alex Jones
and Glenn Beck," Burton says in another message.
In another missive Burton says Osama’s body “is a crime scene and
I don’t see the FBI nor DOJ letting that happen.”
WikiLeaks began publishing Stratfor emails in late February. The
archive was obtained by the hacker group Anonymous, which successfully
attacked one of the firm’s servers. More than 5 million emails were
apparently stolen.
Stratfor is a US-based intelligence firm called the “shadow CIA” by
some media. Among its clients are several US agencies and many big
companies. The company relies on paid tips from informants placed in
high circles of business, government and security all around the world.
