Washington : United States helicopters descended out of darkness Sunday night on the most important counter-terrorism mission in American history. It was an operation so secret that only a select few US officials knew what was about to happen. The location was a fortified compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan and target was Osama bin Laden.
US intelligence officials discovered the compound in August while monitoring an al-Qaeda courier. CIA had been hunting that courier for years, ever since detainees told interrogators that the courier was so trusted by bin Laden that he might very well be living with the al-Qaeda leader, a media report said.
Nestled in an affluent neighborhood, the compound was surrounded by walls as high as 5.5 metres, topped with barbed wire. Two security gates guarded the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a seven-foot privacy wall. No phone lines or internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection. Intelligence officials believed million-dollar compound had been built five years ago to protect a major terrorist figure. The question was, who?
CIA asked itself again and again who might be living behind those walls. Each time, they concluded it was almost certainly bin Laden, according to the report. US President Barack Obama described the operation in broad strokes on Sunday night. Details were provided in interviews with counter-terrorismand intelligence authorities, senior administration officials and other US officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.
By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to "pursue an aggressive course of action", a senior administration official said. Over next two-and-a-half months, Obama led five meetings of National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and, if so, how to get him, official said.
Normally, US shares its counterterrorism intelligence widely with trusted allies in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. US normally does not carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration with Pakistani intelligence. But this mission was "too important and too secretive."
On April 29, Obama approved an operation to kill bin Laden. It required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by sophisticated Predator drones. To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of US navy's elite SEAL Team Six and put them under command of CIA Director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar. Panetta was directly in charge of team, a USofficial said, and his conference room was transformed into a command centre.
Details of exactly how the raid unfolded remain murky, but al-Qaeda courier, his brother and one of bin Laden's sons were killed. No Americans were injured. Senior administration officials will only saythat bin Laden "resisted". And then the man behind the worst terrorist attack on US soil died from an American bullet to his head. It was mid-afternoon in Virginia when Panetta and his team received word that bin Laden was dead. PPI
