The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [253]
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