The biggest operation in US military history began with the sound of military choppers flying over the skies of Pakistan. By the time the fight was over some 40 minutes later, Osama bin Laden — man behind the worst terrorist attack on US soil — was dead from an American bullet to his left eye.
Bin Laden’s location — a fortified compound in an affluent town just two hours outside Islamabad — was something US forces had been working on for nearly a year.
Intelligence officials discovered the compound in August while monitoring an al Qaeda courier.
The 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.
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Nestled in an affluent neighborhood, the compound was surrounded by 18-foot walls and 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 home.
The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection. Intelligence officials believed the million-dollar compound was built five years ago to protect a major terrorist figure.
The question was, who? The CIA asked itself again and again who might be living behind those walls. Each time, they concluded it was almost certainly bin Laden.
President Obama described the operation broadly in an address on Sunday night. Details were provided today in various interviews with counterterrorism and intelligence authorities, senior administration officials and other US officials.
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By February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to “pursue an aggressive course of action,” a senior administration official said.
Over the next two and a half months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and, if so, how to get him, the official said.
Typically, the United States shares its counterterrorism intelligence widely with trusted allies in Great Britain and Canada. The US normally does not carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration with Pakistani intelligence. But this mission was too important and too secretive.
“It wasn’t an accident that we didn’t allow the Pakistanis to know what was happening there, because they’re a divided nation,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “There is some indication that Pakistani intelligence helped us here. One hopes that the end of bin Laden would give the upper hand to those in the Pakistani government who tend to take our side and want to pursue the path of freedom, rather than fundamentalism and terrorism.”
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Last week, Obama approved an operation to kill bin Laden. It was a mission that required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by the government’s sophisticated Predator drones.
To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six and put them under the command of CIA Director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar. Panetta was directly in charge of the team, a US official said, and his conference room was transformed into a command center.
The al Qaeda courier, his brother and one of bin Laden’s sons were killed in the raid, officials said.
No Americans were injured, Obama said.
Fox News Channel, citing defense officials, said 24 Navy Seals “got out of Chinook and Blackhawk (helicopters) and raided the compound,” one source said.
“Lots of bullets were fired” and that bin Laden was asked to surrender, but ended up being shot dead, a source said.
One US helicopter had a “flight-control issue” and was unable to lift off again after landing. The aircraft was destroyed by the crew and the assault force. Crew members left the compound in a second helicopter.
“The assault team went ahead and raided the compound, even though they didn’t know if they would have a ride home,” an official told Politico.com.
The special forces placed bombs on the crippled chopper and blew it up, then lifted off in a reinforcement craft just before 4:15 p.m., officials told the site.
Senior administration officials will only say that bin Laden “resisted” as the operatives made their way inside the compound. A short time later, he was dead.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, bin Laden was taken completely by surprise, London’s Daily Mail reported today.
Bin Laden had survived two wars launched with the aim of capturing him dead or alive. The last time the Americans got as close — a few months after the 9/11 attacks — bin Laden managed to elude them on horseback through the caves of eastern Afghanistan.
It was mid-afternoon in Virginia when Panetta and his team received word that bin Laden was dead. At the same time, Obama and his staff monitored the events in the White House Situation Room. Cheers and applause broke out across the conference room.
Bin Laden was given religious rites aboard the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier before being buried at sea, senior US military officials said.
Hours after the successful raid, Obama delivered the news to the world. Bin Laden may be dead, but the fight against terrorism continues.
“Bin Laden is dead,” Panetta wrote in a memo to CIA staff. “Al Qaeda is not.”
With AP