Justice has been done – bin Laden Killed
Marine veterans Mike Demo, center, and Bill Cortese, right, drove 30 minutes to New York's Ground Zero to celebrate the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Two of Cortese's cousins were killed in the Sept. 11, 2011, attack on the World Trade Center. Photo by Sgt. Randall Clinton
Department of Defense Special Report: The Demise of Osama bin Laden
A crowd cheers and chants in excitement at the corner of Vesey St. and Liberty St. next to Ground Zero after hearing that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Bin Laden planned the attacks, Sept 11, 2001 and has been hunted by American forces in the years since. He was killed by a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan near the country's capital. The Freedom Tower, the skyscraper being built where the World Trade Center towers once stood, is now 60 stories tall and was lit up and visible from the street. Eventually the Freedom Tower will be the tallest building in the country. Photo by Sgt. Randall ClintonSmall RSS Icon
In the early morning hours of darkness yesterday, about 35 miles northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan, dozens of U.S. special operations members and CIA agents readied themselves aboard military helicopters for the operation of a lifetime.
U.S. intelligence officers had been gathering evidence since August that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was not in a cave along the U.S.-Pakistan border, as had become lore, but was living comfortably with his family and others in a $1 million compound in Abbottabad, a suburb of the Pakistani capital, Defense Department and CIA officials who spoke on background about the operation at the Pentagon said today.
Intelligence officers spent the next eight months gathering information, which flowed heavily early this year, in part from detained fighters with the Afghanistan insurgency, they said. “The intelligence on the compound was shared with no one outside the U.S. government, and only a small number inside,” an intelligence official said.
President Barack Obama “pushed this to an actionable level,” a senior defense official said, holding numerous meetings with his national security team to consider all possible scenarios.
The special operations team, meanwhile, used its intelligence information to train for the operation, including developing contingency plans for anything they could think of that might not go as planned. With no one other than a small group of U.S. national security officials aware of the operation, officials said, the team was flown in to take bin Laden dead or alive.
Officials would not say how the forces got inside the compound, which has walls that range from 10 to 18 feet high around the perimeter, are topped with barbed wire and cover an acre of land. Once inside the triangular-shaped fortress, the team engaged in a firefight that killed two men who lived there in separate, smaller homes outside the three-story home of bin Laden and his family, officials said. The men are believed to have been brothers; one owned the property and was a courier for bin Laden, deputy national security advisor John O. Brennan said later at a White House briefing.
As expected, officials said, bin Laden resisted capture and was killed in the firefight with U.S. forces on the third floor of the home. Bin Laden’s adult son and a woman believed to be his wife also were killed in the shootout, and two women were wounded, they added.
U.S. forces were in the compound for about 40 minutes and took no casualties, officials said. During that time, they also seized numerous items that are being investigated, they said.
Obama and his national security team anxiously monitored the operation in real time, Brennan said.
“The minutes passed like days,” he said. “The president was very concerned about the security of our personnel. Clearly, it was very tense. A lot of people were holding their breath, and there was a fair degree of silence as we got the updates.” Technical problems with one of the helicopters added to the tension, he said.
After the U.S. team was safely out of the country, officials said, Obama and other members of the national security team began calling government leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan and members of Congress.
“The accomplishment that these very brave personnel from the U.S. government were able to do yesterday is very significant” to the broader effort against terrorism, Brennan said. “This is decapitating the head of the snake. This is something we’ve been after for 15 years. We are going to try to take advantage of this opportunity we have to demonstrate to the Pakistani people and others that al-Qaida is a thing of the past.”
An intelligence official who spoke to Pentagon reporters on background said the operation demonstrated “the tremendous partnership between the CIA and the U.S. military since 9/11.”
As intelligence allowed them to piece together details of the compound and its occupants, he said, it became clear bin Laden “was more or less living in plain sight” while al-Qaida’s lower level operatives “are living in dire conditions.”
“You have to wonder what they think today when they see that their leader was living high on the hog,” he said.
By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
The plan to attack the compound of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was the result of relentless intelligence work and operational professionalism, White House officials, speaking on background, said this morning.
The operation was the culmination of years of careful and highly advanced intelligence work, officials said, as officers from the CIA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency worked as a team to analyze and pinpoint the Pakistani compound where bin Laden was killed.
Once the intelligence pointed precisely to the compound in Abbottabad –- a town 35 miles north of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad –- the work on the mission began between the intelligence and military communities.
“In the end, it was the matchless skill and courage of these Americans that secured this triumph for our country and the world,” one official said.
A small team conducted the helicopter raid on the compound. An official called it a complex operation, noting that the compound was a virtual fortress -– built in 2006 with high walls, razor wire and other defense features. Its suburban location and proximity to Islamabad complicated the operation, the official said.
“The men who executed this mission accepted this risk, practiced to minimize those risks, and understood the importance of the target to the national security of the United States,” he said. “This operation was a surgical raid by a small team designed to minimize collateral damage and to pose as little risk as possible to noncombatants on the compound or to Pakistani civilians in the neighborhood.”
U.S. helicopters delivered the team to the compound, and the team was on the ground for less than 40 minutes, an official said. They did not encounter any local authorities. In addition to bin Laden, three adult males were killed in the raid.
“There were several women and children at the compound,” the official said. “One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant. Two other women were injured.”
One of the U.S. helicopters was lost at the compound due to mechanical failure. The crew destroyed it on the ground, and the assault force and crew members boarded the remaining aircraft to leave, an official said.
“There’s also no doubt that the death of Osama bin Laden marks the single greatest victory in the U.S.-led campaign to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida,” the official said. “It is a major and essential step in bringing about al-Qaida’s eventual destruction.”
Though the organization’s terrorists still are dangerous and al-Qaida may not fragment immediately, an official said, “the loss of bin Laden puts the group on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.”
The United States did not share any intelligence on the raid with any other country, the official said.
“We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel,” he said. “In fact, only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance.” Shortly after the raid, he added, U.S. officials contacted senior Pakistani leaders and told them about the raid and its results.
“Since 9/11, the United States has made it clear to Pakistan that we would pursue bin Laden wherever he might be,” the official said. “Pakistan has long understood that we are at war with al-Qaida. The United States had a legal and moral obligation to act on the information it had.”
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
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This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2011 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Military, War on Terror, September 11, War on Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
While it may be great news that he’s dead,it doesn’t stop terrorism at all. Things could even get worse. Americans will fear air travel. For a nation that’s looking for an economic recovery, this is not what we need.