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General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was asked on Meet the Press in 2010 whether it was now less necessary to capture bin Laden. “I think,” he replied, “capturing or killing bin Laden is still a very, very important task for all of those who are engaged in counterterrorism around the world.”

For those who doubted that bin Laden was still alive, late fall 2010 brought two new bin Laden audio messages. There had been intercepts of al Qaeda communications, CIA officials told The New York Times, indicating that he still shaped strategy. Then, within weeks, CNN was quoting a “senior NATO official” as saying that bin Laden and his deputy Zawahiri were believed to be hiding not far from each other in northwest Pakistan, and not “in a cave.” The same day, the New York Daily News quoted a source with “access to all reporting on bin Laden” as having spoken of two “sightings considered credible” in recent years—and even of “a grainy photo of bin Laden inside a truck.” The sources were vague, though, as to where bin Laden might have been. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for his part, was at pains in an ABC interview to suggest that it had been “years” since any hard intelligence had been received on bin Laden’s likely location.

In late March 2011, out of Hong Kong, came a story suggesting that the CIA had “launched a series of secret operations in the high mountains of the Hindu Kush … consistent reports have established that Osama bin Laden has been on the move through the region in recent weeks.”

It is a fair guess that much if not all of this was disinformation, planted to suggest to the quarry that U.S. intelligence had lost the scent, had no strong lead as to where precisely bin Laden might be, and had no plan for an imminent strike against him.

At 10:24 P.M. on the night of Sunday, May 1, 2011—an improbable hour—this bulletin came over the wires:

Breaking News Alert: White House says Obama to make late-night statement on an undisclosed topic.

Soon after, there was this from The Washington Post:

Osama bin Laden has been killed in a CIA operation in Pakistan, President Obama will announce from the White House, according to multiple sources.

At 11:35 P.M., the President appeared on television screens across the globe to say:

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.…

The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory.… And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly three thousand citizens taken from us.…

Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the border into Pakistan.… Shortly after taking office I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of the war against al Qaeda.… Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.… I met repeatedly with my security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action.…

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation.… A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage.… No Americans were harmed.… After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

It was a momentous victory. Jubilant Americans thronged in front of the White House, in Times Square, and at Ground Zero. For many days, there was wall-to-wall coverage in