later accounts indicated that the helicopters returned to
Bagram Airfield
Bagram Airfield-BAF, also known as Bagram Air Base , is located southeast of Charikar in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan. It is under the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Sitting on the site of the ancient Bagram at an elevation of above sea leve ...
.
The body of Osama bin Laden was flown from Bagram to the
aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...
in a
V-22 Osprey
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is an American multi-mission, tiltrotor military aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and short takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities. It is designed to combine the functionality of a convention ...
tiltrotor aircraft escorted by two U.S. Navy
F/A-18
The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather, twin-engine, supersonic, carrier-capable, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a fighter and attack aircraft (hence the F/A designation). Designed by McDonnell Douglas (now part ...
fighter jets.
Burial of bin Laden
According to U.S. officials, bin Laden was buried at sea because no country would accept his remains.
Before disposing of the body, the U.S. called the Saudi Arabian government, who approved of burying the body in the ocean.
Muslim religious rites were performed aboard ''Carl Vinson'' in the North Arabian Sea within 24 hours of bin Laden's death. Preparations began at 10:10 a.m. local time and at-sea burial was completed at 11 a.m. The body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet and placed in a weighted plastic bag. An officer read prepared religious remarks which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. Afterward, bin Laden's body was placed onto a flat board. The board was tilted upward on one side and the body slid off into the sea.
In ''Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace'',
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of ...
wrote that bin Laden's body was draped in a white shroud, given final prayers in Arabic and placed inside a black bag loaded with of iron chains, apparently to ensure that it would sink and never float. The body bag was placed on a white table at the rail of the ship, and the table was tipped to let the body bag slide into the sea, but the body bag did not slide and took the table with it. The table bobbed on the surface while the weighted body sank.
Pakistan–U.S. communication
According to Obama administration officials, U.S. officials did not share information about the raid with the government of Pakistan until it was over.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Michael Mullen
Michael Glenn Mullen (born October 4, 1946) is a retired United States Navy Admiral (United States), admiral, who served as the 17th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2007, to September 30, 2011.
Mullen previously served as ...
called Pakistan's army chief
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (Urdu: ; born 20 April 1952), is a retired four-star general of the Pakistan Army who served as the 8th Chief of Army Staff , being appointed on 29 November 2007 after his predecessor Pervez Musharraf retired from ...
at about 3 am local time to inform him of the operation.
According to the Pakistani foreign ministry, the operation was conducted entirely by the U.S. forces.
Pakistan
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI) officials said they were present at what they called a joint operation;
President
Asif Ali Zardari
Asif Ali Zardari ( ur, ; sd, ; born 26 July 1955) is a Pakistani politician who is the president of Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians and was the co-chairperson of Pakistan People's Party. He served as the 11th president of Pakistan ...
flatly denied this.
Pakistan's foreign secretary
Salman Bashir
Salman Bashir ( ur, سلمان بشیر ) (born 4 March 1952) is a Pakistani diplomat who served as the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan and as the High Commissioner of Pakistan to India.[scrambled
Scrambled eggs is a dish made from eggs (usually chicken eggs) stirred, whipped or beaten together while being gently heated, typically with salt, butter, oil and sometimes other ingredients.
Preparation
Only eggs are necessary to make scrambled ...]
F-16s
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine Multirole combat aircraft, multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it ...
after they became aware of the attack but that they reached the compound after the U.S. helicopters had left.
Identification of the body
U.S. forces used multiple methods to positively identify the body of Osama bin Laden:
* Measurement of the body: Both the corpse and bin Laden were ; SEALs on the scene did not have a
tape measure
A tape measure or measuring tape is a flexible ruler used to measure length or distance.
It consists of a ribbon of cloth, plastic, fibre glass, or metal strip with linear measurement markings. It is a common measuring tool. Its design all ...
to measure the corpse, so a SEAL of known height lay down next to the body and the height was so approximated by comparison.
Obama quipped: "You just blew up a $65 million helicopter and you don't have enough money to buy a tape measure?"
* Facial recognition software: A photograph transmitted by the SEALs to CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia
Langley is an unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Langley is often used as a metonym for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as it is home to its headquarters, the Geor ...
, for
facial recognition analysis yielded a 90 to 95 percent likely match.
* In-person identification: One or two women from the compound, including one of bin Laden's wives,
identified bin Laden's body.
A wife of bin Laden called him by name during the raid, inadvertently assisting in his identification by U.S. military forces on the ground.
* DNA testing: The
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
and ''The New York Times'' reported that bin Laden's body could be identified by
DNA testing
Genetic testing, also known as DNA testing, is used to identify changes in DNA sequence or chromosome structure. Genetic testing can also include measuring the results of genetic changes, such as RNA analysis as an output of gene expression, or ...
using tissue and blood samples taken from his sister who had died of brain cancer.
ABC News stated, "Two samples were taken from bin Laden: one of these DNA samples was analyzed, and information was sent electronically back to Washington, D.C., from Bagram. Someone else from Afghanistan is physically bringing back a sample."
A military medic took
bone marrow
Bone marrow is a semi-solid tissue found within the spongy (also known as cancellous) portions of bones. In birds and mammals, bone marrow is the primary site of new blood cell production (or haematopoiesis). It is composed of hematopoietic ce ...
and swabs from the body to use for the DNA testing.
According to a senior U.S. Department of Defense official:
* Inference: Per the same DoD official, from the initial review of the materials removed from the Abbottabad compound the Department "assessed that much of this information, including personal correspondence between Osama bin Laden and others, as well as some of the video footage ... would only have been in his possession."
Local accounts
Beginning at 12:58 a.m. local time (19:58 UTC), Abbottabad resident Sohaib Athar sent a series of
tweets starting with "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." By 1:44 a.m. all was quiet until a plane flew over the city at 3:39 a.m.
Neighbors took to their roofs and watched as U.S. special operations forces stormed the compound. One neighbor said, "I saw soldiers emerging from the helicopters and advancing towards the house. Some of them instructed us in chaste
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...
to turn off the lights and stay inside."
Another man said he heard shooting and screams, then an explosion as a grounded helicopter was destroyed. The blast broke his bedroom window and left charred debris over a nearby field.
A local security officer said he entered the compound shortly after the Americans left, before it was sealed off by the army. "There were four dead bodies, three male and one female and one female was injured", he said. "There was a lot of blood on the floor and one could easily see the marks like a dead body had been dragged out of the compound." Numerous witnesses reported that power, and possibly cellphone service,
went out around the time of the raid and apparently included the military academy.
Accounts differed as to the exact time of the blackout. One journalist concluded after interviewing several residents that it was a routine
rolling blackout
A rolling blackout, also referred to as rota or rotational load shedding, rota disconnection, feeder rotation, or a rotating outage, is an intentionally engineered electrical power shutdown in which electricity delivery is stopped for non-overla ...
.
ISI reported after questioning survivors of the raid that there were 17 to 18 people in the compound at the time of the attack and that the Americans took away one person still alive, possibly a bin Laden son. The ISI said that survivors included a wife, a daughter and eight to nine other children, not apparently bin Laden's. An unnamed Pakistani security official was quoted as saying one of bin Laden's daughters told Pakistani investigators that bin Laden had been captured alive, then in front of family members was shot dead by U.S. forces and dragged to a helicopter.
Compound residents
U.S. officials said there were 22 people in the compound. Five were killed, including Osama bin Laden.
Pakistani officials gave conflicting reports suggesting between 12 and 17 survivors.
''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' subsequently published excerpts from a pocket guide, presumably dropped by the SEALs during the raid, containing pictures and descriptions of likely compound residents.
The guide listed several adult children of bin Laden and their families who were not ultimately found in the compound. Because of a lack of accurate information, some of what follows cannot be verified as true.
* Five adults dead:
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...
, 54;
Khalid
Khalid (variants include Khaled and Kalid; Arabic: خالد) is a popular Arabic male given name meaning "eternal, everlasting, immortal", and it also appears as a surname. , his son by Siham (identified as
Hamza
Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...
in early accounts), 23;
Arshad Khan, a.k.a.
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (1978 – May 2, 2011), real name: Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed (also known as Shaykh Abu Ahmed, Arshad Khan and Mohammed Arshad), was a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani terrorist and courier for Osama bin Laden.
He was not a Kuwaiti, but rat ...
, the courier, described as the "flabby" one by ''The Sunday Times'', 33;
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's brother Abrar, 30; and Bushra, Abrar's wife, age unknown.
* Four surviving women:
Khairiah, bin Laden's third, Saudi wife a.k.a. Um Hamza, 62;
Siham, bin Laden's fourth, Saudi wife a.k.a. Um Khalid, 54;
Amal, bin Laden's fifth, Yemeni wife, a.k.a.
Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah
Osama bin Laden, a militant and founder of Al-Qaeda in 1988, believed Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdrew support for Israel and withdrew military forces from Islam ...
, 29 (injured);
and Mariam, Arshad Khan's Pakistani wife.
* Five minor children of Osama and Amal: Safia, a daughter, 12; a son, 5; another son, age unknown; and infant twin daughters.
* Four bin Laden grandchildren from an unidentified daughter who had been killed in an airstrike in Waziristan. Two may be the boys, around 10, who spoke to Pakistani investigators.
* Four children of Arshad Khan: Two sons, Abdur Rahman and Khalid, 6or 7; a daughter, age unknown; and another child, age unknown.
Aftermath
Leaks of the news
Around 9:45 p.m.
EDT, the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
announced that the president would be addressing the nation later in the evening.
At 10:24:05 p.m. EDT the first public leak was made by Navy Reserve intel officer
Keith Urbahn
Keith Urbahn is the president and a founding partner of Javelin, a literary and creative agency located in Alexandria, Virginia that offers representation and public relations services.
Education
Urbahn studied religion and Arabic as an undergra ...
and 47 seconds later by actor and
professional wrestler
Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
Dwayne Johnson
Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972), also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor and former professional wrestler. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he was integral to the developm ...
on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
. Anonymous government officials confirmed details to the media, and by 11 p.m. numerous major news sources were reporting that bin Laden was dead;
the number of leaks were characterized as "voluminous" by
David E. Sanger
David E. Sanger (born July 5, 1960) is an American journalist who is the chief Washington correspondent for ''The New York Times''. A 1982 graduate of Harvard College, Sanger has been writing for the ''Times'' for 30 years covering foreign policy, ...
.
U.S. presidential address
At 11:35 p.m., President Obama appeared on major television networks:
President Obama recalled the victims of the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
. He praised the nearly ten-year-old war against al-Qaeda, which he said had disrupted terrorist plots, strengthened homeland defenses, removed the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
government, and captured or killed scores of al-Qaeda operatives. Obama said that when he took office he made finding bin Laden the top priority of the war. Bin Laden's death was the most significant blow to al-Qaeda so far but the war would continue. He reaffirmed that the U.S. was not at war against Islam and defended his decision to conduct an operation within Pakistan. He said Americans understood the cost of war but would not stand by while their security was threatened. "To those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror," he said, "justice has been done." This remark book-ended President Bush's statement to a joint session of Congress following the September 11 attacks that "justice will be done."
Reactions
![Times Square on the night Osama bin Laden killed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Times_Square_on_the_night_Osama_bin_Laden_killed.jpg)
Before the official announcement, large crowds spontaneously gathered outside the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
,
Ground Zero
In relation to nuclear explosions and other large bombs, ground zero (also called surface zero) is the point on the Earth's surface closest to a detonation. In the case of an explosion above the ground, ''ground zero'' is the point on the ground ...
,
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...
, and in New York's
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...
to celebrate. In
Dearborn, Michigan
Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976. Dearborn is the seventh most-populated city in Michigan and is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States pe ...
, where there is a large Muslim and Arab population, a small crowd gathered outside the City Hall in celebration, many of them of Middle Eastern descent.
From the beginning to the end of Obama's speech, 5,000 tweets per second were posted on Twitter.
As news of bin Laden's death filtered through the crowd at a
nationally televised Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
game in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
between
rivals
A rivalry is the state of two people or groups engaging in a lasting competitive relationship. Rivalry is the "against each other" spirit between two competing sides. The relationship itself may also be called "a rivalry", and each participant o ...
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies are an American professional baseball team based in Philadelphia. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) National League East, East division. Since 2004, the team's home sta ...
and the
New York Mets
The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division. They are one of two major league ...
,
"U-S-A!" cheers began.
In
Tampa, Florida
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and ...
, at the conclusion of a
professional wrestling event which was occurring at the time,
WWE Champion
The WWE Championship is a world heavyweight championship created and promoted by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE, representing the Raw brand division. It is one of two world titles on WWE's main roster, alongside SmackDown's ...
John Cena
John Felix Anthony Cena ( ; born April 23, 1977) is an American part-time professional wrestler, actor, and former rapper. He is currently signed to WWE. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he is tied w ...
announced to the audience that bin Laden had been "caught and compromised to a permanent end", prompting chants while he exited the arena to the march "
The Stars and Stripes Forever
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" is a patriotic American march written and composed by John Philip Sousa in 1896. By a 1987 act of the U.S. Congress, it is the official National March of the United States of America.
History
In his 1928 autobi ...
".
The deputy leader of Egypt's
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers ( ar, جماعة الإخوان المسلمين'' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan ...
said that, with bin Laden dead, Western forces should now pull out of
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
and
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
; authorities in Iran made similar comments.
Palestinian Authority
The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine, leaders had contrasting reactions.
Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas ( ar, مَحْمُود عَبَّاس, Maḥmūd ʿAbbās; born 15 November 1935), also known by the kunya Abu Mazen ( ar, أَبُو مَازِن, links=no, ), is the president of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian Natio ...
welcomed bin Laden's death, while
Ismail Haniyeh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Haniy ...
, the head of the
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
administration in the
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...
, condemned what he saw as the assassination of an "Arab holy warrior".
The
14th Dalai Lama
The 14th Dalai Lama (spiritual name Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, known as Tenzin Gyatso (Tibetan: བསྟན་འཛིན་རྒྱ་མཚོ་, Wylie: ''bsTan-'dzin rgya-mtsho''); né Lhamo Thondup), known as ...
was quoted by the ''Los Angeles Times'' as saying, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures." This was widely reported as an endorsement of bin Laden's killing and was criticized in Buddhist circles, but another journalist cited a video of the discussion to argue that the comment was taken out of context and the Dalai Lama supports killing only in self-defense.
A CBS/''The New York Times'' poll taken after bin Laden's death showed that 16% of Americans feel safer as the result of his death while 60% of Americans of those polled believe killing bin Laden would likely increase the threat of terrorism against the U.S. in the short term.
In India,
Minister for Home Affairs
An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...
P. Chidambaram
Palaniappan Chidambaram (born 16 September 1945), better known as P. Chidambaram, is an Indian politician and lawyer who currently serves as Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee ...
said that bin Laden hiding "deep inside" Pakistan was a matter of grave concern for India and showed that "many of the perpetrators of the
Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and the handlers of the terrorists who actually carried out the attack, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan". He also called on Pakistan to arrest them, amidst calls for similar strikes being conducted by India against
Hafiz Saeed
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed ( ur, , born 5 June 1950) is a Pakistani Islamism, Islamist who co-founded Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based Islamist militant organization that is List of designated terrorist groups, designated as a terrorist grou ...
and
Dawood Ibrahim
Dawood Ibrahim (; born 26 December 1955) is an Indian mafia gangster, drug kingpin, and wanted terrorist from Dongri, Mumbai. He reportedly heads the Indian organised crime syndicate D-Company, which he founded in Mumbai in the 1970s. Ibrahim i ...
.
Freedom of Information Act requests and denials
Although the Abbottabad raid has been described in great detail by U.S. officials, no physical evidence constituting "proof of death" has been offered to the public, neither to journalists nor to independent third parties who have requested this information through the
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act
* ...
.
Numerous organizations filed FOIA requests seeking at least a partial release of photographs, videos, and/or DNA test results, including
The Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
,
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
,
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...
,
Judicial Watch
Judicial Watch (JW) is an American conservative activist group that files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials. Founded in 1994, JW has primarily targeted Democrats, in particula ...
,
Politico
''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...
,
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
,
Citizens United
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
, and
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
.
On April 26, 2012, Judge
James E. Boasberg
James Emanuel Boasberg (born February 20, 1963) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He served as the Presiding Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from ...
held that the Department of Defense was not required to release any evidence to the public.
According to a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, Admiral William McRaven, the top special operations commander, ordered the Department of Defense to purge from its computer systems all files on the bin Laden raid after first sending them to the CIA.
Any mention of this decision was expunged from the final version of the inspector general's report.
According to the Pentagon, this was done to protect the identities of the Navy SEALs involved in the raid.
The legal justification for the records transfer is that the SEALs were effectively working for the CIA at the time of the raid, which ostensibly means that any records of the raid belong to the CIA.
"Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director", CIA agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. "Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records."
Golson said it is absolutely false that records were moved to the CIA to avoid the legal requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act
* ...
.
The
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The Nat ...
has criticized this maneuver, saying that the records have now gone into a "FOIA black hole":
What the transfer really did was ensure that the files would be placed in the CIA's operational records, a records system that—due to the 1986 CIA Operational Files exemption—is not subject to the FOIA and is a black hole for anyone trying to access the files within. The move prevents the public from accessing the official record about the raid, and bypasses several important federal records keeping procedures in the process.
The United States Defense Department can prevent the release of its own military files citing risks to national security, but that can be contested in court, and a judge can compel the Pentagon to turn over non-sensitive portions of records. The CIA has special authority to prevent the release of operational files in ways that cannot be challenged in federal court.
Richard Lardner, reporting for the Associated Press, wrote that the maneuver "could represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny."
The inspector general's draft report also described how former Secretary of Defense
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of ...
disclosed classified information to the makers of ''
Zero Dark Thirty
''Zero Dark Thirty'' is a 2012 American thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. The film dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of terrorist network Al-Qaeda, after the S ...
'', including the unit that conducted the raid and the ground commander's name.
Legality
Under U.S. law
Following the attacks of
September 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...
, the
U.S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
passed the
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists
The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) (, ) is a joint resolution of the United States Congress which became law on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of the United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the September ...
, which authorized the
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
to use "necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines were involved in the attacks.
The
Obama administration
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...
justified its use of force by relying on that resolution, as well as
international law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
set forth in treaties and customary
laws of war
The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war (''jus ad bellum'') and the conduct of warring parties (''jus in bello''). Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territor ...
.
John Bellinger III
John Bellinger Bellinger III (born March 28, 1960) is an American lawyer who served as the Legal Adviser for the U.S. Department of State and the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. He is now a partner at the Was ...
, who served as the
U.S. State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...
's senior lawyer during
President George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
's second term, said the strike was a legitimate military action and did not run counter to the U.S.' self-imposed prohibition on assassinations:
The killing is not prohibited by the long-standing assassination prohibition in executive order 12333
Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was an Executive Order intended to extend powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and direct the leaders of U.S. federal agencies to co-operat ...
igned in 1981 because the action was a military action in the ongoing U.S. armed conflict with al-Qaeda, and it is not prohibited to kill specific leaders of an opposing force. The assassination prohibition does not apply to killings in self-defense.
Similarly,
Harold Hongju Koh
Harold Hongju Koh (born December 8, 1954) is an American lawyer and legal scholar who served as the legal adviser of the Department of State in the Obama administration. He was nominated to this position by President Barack Obama on March 23, 20 ...
,
Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, said in 2010 that "under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision
targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination'."
David Scheffer
David John Scheffer (born September 18, 1953) is an American lawyer and diplomat who served as the first United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, during President Bill Clinton's second term in office. He is the Mayer Brown/Robert ...
, director of the
Northwestern University School of Law
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law is the law school of Northwestern University, a private research university. It is located on the university's Chicago campus. Northwestern Law has been ranked among the top 14, or "T14" law scho ...
Center for International Human Rights, said the fact that bin Laden had previously been indicted in 1998 in the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New Y ...
for conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations was a complicating factor. "Normally when an individual is under indictment the purpose is to capture that person in order to bring him to court to try him ... The object is not to literally
summarily execute him if he's under indictment."
Scheffer and another expert stated that it was important to determine whether the mission was to capture bin Laden or to kill him. If the Navy SEALs were instructed to kill bin Laden without trying first to capture him, it "may have violated American ideals if not international law."
Under international law
In an address to the
Pakistani parliament
The Parliament of Pakistan ( ur, , , "Pakistan Advisory Council" or "Pakistan Consultative Assembly") is the federal and supreme legislative body of Pakistan. It is a bicameral federal legislature that consists of the Senate as the upper ho ...
, Pakistan's Prime Minister
Yousaf Raza Gillani
Yusuf Raza Gilani (Urdu: ; born 9 June 1952), is a Pakistani politician who served as 18th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 25 March 2008, until his retroactive disqualification and ouster by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 26 April 2012. He ...
said, "Our people are rightly incensed on the issue of violation of sovereignty as typified by the covert U.S. air and ground assault on the Osama hideout in Abbottabad. ... The Security Council, while exhorting UN member states to join their efforts against terrorism, has repeatedly emphasized that this be done in accordance with
international law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
, human rights and
humanitarian law
International humanitarian law (IHL), also referred to as the laws of armed conflict, is the law that regulates the conduct of war (''jus in bello''). It is a branch of international law that seeks to limit the effects of armed conflict by prot ...
."
Former Pakistani President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf
General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of the ...
denied a report in ''The Guardian'' that his government made a secret agreement permitting U.S. forces to conduct unilateral raids in search of the top three al-Qaeda leaders.
In testimony before the U.S.
Senate Judiciary Committee
The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nominations, a ...
, Attorney General
Eric Holder
Eric Himpton Holder Jr. (born January 21, 1951) is an American lawyer who served as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States from 2009 to 2015. Holder, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama, was the first African America ...
said, "The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self-defense. It's lawful to target an enemy commander in the field." He called the killing of bin Laden "a tremendous step forward in attaining justice for the nearly 3,000 innocent Americans who were murdered on September 11, 2001."
Commenting on the legality under international law,
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
Law Professor Steven Ratner said, "A lot of it depends on whether you believe Osama bin Laden is a combatant in a war or a suspect in a mass murder." In the latter case, "you would... be able to kill a suspect
nlyif they represented an immediate threat".
Holder testified that bin Laden made no attempt to surrender, and "even if he had there would be a good basis on the part of those very brave Navy SEAL team members to do what they did in order to protect themselves and the other people who were in that building."
According to Anthony Dworkin, an international law expert at the
European Council on Foreign Relations
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is a pan-European think tank with offices in seven European capitals. Launched in October 2007, it conducts research on European foreign and security policy and provides a meeting space for decisi ...
, if bin Laden was ''
hors de combat
''Hors de combat'' (; ) is a French term used in diplomacy and international law to refer to persons who are incapable of performing their combat duties during war. Examples include persons parachuting from their disabled aircraft, as well as ...
'' (as his daughter is said to have alleged)
that would have been a violation of
Protocol I
Protocol I (sometimes referred to as Additional Protocol I or AP 1) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of ''international conflicts'', extending to "armed conflicts in which peoples are ...
of the
Geneva Conventions
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...
.
Former
Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz
Benjamin Berell Ferencz (born March 11, 1920) is an American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the 12 Subsequent Nuremb ...
said it was unclear if bin Laden's killing was justified self-defense or
premeditated illegal assassination,
and that "killing a captive who poses no immediate threat is a crime under military law as well as all other law,"
a view also held by legal scholar
Philippe Sands
Philippe Joseph Sands, KC (born 17 October 1960) is a British and French writer and lawyer a11 King's Bench Walkand Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. A specialist in ...
.
The UN Security Council released a statement applauding the news of bin Laden's death, and
UN Secretary-General
The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or SG) is the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations.
The role of the secretary-ge ...
Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon (; ; born 13 June 1944) is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016. Prior to his appointment as secretary-general, Ban was his country's Minister ...
said he was "very much relieved."
Two
United Nations Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement seeking more information regarding the circumstances in which bin Laden was killed and cautioning that "actions taken by States in combating terrorism, especially in high profile cases, set precedents for the way in which the right to life will be treated in future instances."
Handling of the body
Under Islamic tradition, burial at sea is considered inappropriate when other, preferred forms of burial are available, and several prominent Islamic clerics criticized the decision.
Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb
Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb ( ar, أحمد محمد أحمد الطيب) (born 6 January 1946) is an Egyptian Islamic scholar and the current Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Al-Azhar Al Sharif and former president of al-Azhar University. He was appoin ...
, the head of
Al-Azhar University
, image = جامعة_الأزهر_بالقاهرة.jpg
, image_size = 250
, caption = Al-Azhar University portal
, motto =
, established =
*970/972 first foundat ...
, Egypt's seat of
Sunni
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
Muslim learning, said the disposal of the body at sea was an affront to religious and human values.
Scholars like el-Tayeb hold that sea burials can be allowed only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship, and that the regular practice should have occurred in this case—the body buried in the ground with the head pointing to Islam's holy city of
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
.
A stated advantage of a burial at sea is that the site is not readily identified or accessed, thus preventing it from becoming a focus of attention or "terrorist shrine".
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' questioned whether bin Laden's grave would have become a shrine, as this is strongly discouraged in
Wahhabism
Wahhabism ( ar, ٱلْوَهَّابِيَةُ, translit=al-Wahhābiyyah) is a Sunni Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist movement associated with the reformist doctrines of the 18th-century Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, an ...
. Addressing the same concern, Egyptian Islamic analyst and lawyer
Montasser el-Zayat
Montasser el-Zayat () or Muntasir al-Zayyat ( ar, منتصر الزيات ') (born 1956) is an Egyptian lawyer and author whose former clients, according to press reports, included Ayman al-Zawahiri, since 2011 the leader of al-Qaeda, the terrori ...
said that if the Americans wished to avoid making a shrine to bin Laden, an unmarked grave on land would have accomplished the same goal.
''The Guardian'' also quoted a U.S. official explaining the anticipated difficulty of finding a country that would accept the burial of bin Laden in its soil.
A professor of
Islamic Law
Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the ...
at the
University of Jordan
The University of Jordan ( ar, الجامعة الأردنية), often abbreviated UJ, is a public university located in Amman, Jordan. Founded in 1962 by royal decree, it is the largest and oldest institution of higher education in Jordan. ...
stated burying at sea was permitted if there was nobody to receive the body and provide a Muslim burial, but that "it's neither true nor correct to claim that there was nobody in the Muslim world ready to receive bin Laden's body".
On a similar note, Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand
mufti
A Mufti (; ar, مفتي) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion ('' fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatwas'' played an important rol ...
, stated: "They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam. If the family does not want him, it's really simple in Islam: you dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that's it. Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them."
Khalid Latif, an
imam
Imam (; ar, إمام '; plural: ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a worship leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Islamic worship services, lead prayers, ser ...
who serves as a chaplain and the director of the Islamic Center of
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, argued that the sea burial was respectful.
Leor Halevi, a professor at
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...
and the author of ''Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society'', explained that Islamic law does not prescribe ordinary funerals for those killed in battle, and pointed to controversy within the Muslim world over whether bin Laden was, as a "mass murderer of Muslims", entitled to the same respect as mainstream Muslims. At the same time, he suggested that the burial could have been handled with more cultural sensitivity.
Omar bin Laden
Omar bin Osama bin Mohammed bin 'Awad bin Laden ( ar, عمر بن أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن, ''ʿUmar bin ʾUsāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin''; born March 1, 1981), better known as Omar bin Laden, is a Saud ...
, son of Osama bin Laden, published a complaint on May 10, 2011, that the burial at sea deprived the family of a proper burial.
Bin Laden's will
After bin Laden's death, it was reported he had left a will written a short time after the September 11 attacks in which he urged his children not to join al-Qaeda and not to continue the Jihad.
Release of photographs
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
cited a senior U.S. official as saying three sets of photographs of bin Laden's body exist: photos taken at an
aircraft hangar
A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...
in Afghanistan, described as the most recognizable and gruesome; photos taken from the burial at sea on before a shroud was placed around his body; and photos from the raid itself, which include shots of the interior of the compound as well as three of the others who died in the raid.
''
CBS Evening News
The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature s ...
'' reported that the photo shows that the bullet which hit above bin Laden's left eye blew out his left eyeball and blew away a large portion of his frontal skull, exposing his brain. CNN stated that the pictures from the Afghanistan hangar depict "a massive open head wound across both eyes. It's very bloody and gory."
U.S. Senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
Jim Inhofe
James Mountain Inhofe ( ; born November 17, 1934) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Oklahoma, a seat he was first elected to in 1994. A member of the Republican Party, he chaired the U.S. Senate Commit ...
said the photos taken of the body on the ''Carl Vinson'', which showed bin Laden's face after much of the blood and material had been washed away, should be released to the public.
A debate on whether the military photos should be released to the public took place. Those supporting the release argued that the photos should be considered
public records
Public records are documents or pieces of information that are not considered confidential and generally pertain to the conduct of government.
For example, in California, when a couple fills out a marriage license application, they have the optio ...
, that they are necessary to complete the journalistic record, and that they would prove bin Laden's death and therefore prevent
conspiracy theories
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
. Those in opposition expressed concern that the photos would inflame
anti-American sentiment
Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment) is prejudice, fear, or hatred of the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general.
Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Cen ...
in the Middle East.
Obama decided not to release the photos.
In an interview aired on May4 on ''
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...
'', he said: "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies. We don't need to
spike the football." Obama said that he was concerned with ensuring that "very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, or as a propaganda tool. That's not who we are."
Among Republican members of Congress, Senator
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee ...
criticized the decision and said he wanted to see the photos released, while Senator
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...
and Representative
Mike Rogers, the chair of the
House Intelligence Committee
The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Adam Schiff. It is the primary committ ...
, supported the decision.
On May 11, selected members of
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
(the congressional leadership and those who serve on the House and Senate intelligence, homeland security, judiciary, foreign relations, and armed forces committees) were shown 15 bin Laden photos. In an interview with
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Spitzer was b ...
, Senator Jim Inhofe said that three of the photos were of bin Laden alive for identification reference. Three other photos were of the burial-at-sea ceremony.
The group
Judicial Watch
Judicial Watch (JW) is an American conservative activist group that files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials. Founded in 1994, JW has primarily targeted Democrats, in particula ...
filed a
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act
* ...
request to obtain access to the photos in May 2011, soon after the raid.
On May 9, the Department of Defense declined to process Judicial Watch's FOIA request, prompting Judicial Watch to file a federal lawsuit. In 2012, Judge
James E. Boasberg
James Emanuel Boasberg (born February 20, 1963) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He served as the Presiding Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from ...
of the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia (in case citations, D.D.C.) is a federal district court in the District of Columbia. It also occasionally handles (jointly with the United States District Court for the District of ...
issued a ruling denying release of the photographs. In May 2013, a three-judge panel of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate cou ...
consisting of Chief Judge
Merrick Garland
Merrick Brian Garland (born November 13, 1952) is an American lawyer and jurist serving since March 2021 as the 86th United States attorney general. He previously served as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of ...
, Senior Judge
Harry T. Edwards
Harry Thomas Edwards (born November 3, 1940) is an American jurist and legal scholar. He is currently a Senior United States Circuit Judge and chief judge emeritus of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Was ...
, and Judge
Judith Rogers
Judith Ann Wilson Rogers (born July 27, 1939) is a Senior status, Senior United States federal judge, United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Education and career
Born in New York C ...
affirmed the ruling, holding that 52 post-mortem images were properly classified as "top secret" and exempt from disclosure. Judicial Watch filed a petition for a
writ of certiorari
In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...
in August 2013, seeking
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
review, but in January 2014 the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
filed a FOIA request for photographs and videos taken during the Abbottabad raid less than one day after bin Laden was killed.
[Richard Lardner]
AP Fighting With Government Over Bin Laden Photo FOIA Request
Associated Press (May 18, 2011, updated July 18, 2011). The AP also requested "contingency plans for bin Laden's capture, reports on the performance of equipment during the mission and copies of DNA tests" confirming bin Laden's identity.
The Defense Department rejected the AP's request for expedited processing, a legal provision to shorten the amount of time to process FOIA requests. The Defense Department rejected the request, and the AP administratively appealed.
Alternative accounts
''Seal Target Geronimo''
A book published in November 2011, ''Seal Target Geronimo'', by
Chuck Pfarrer
Charles Patrick Pfarrer III (born April 13, 1957) is an American writer, film producer, and former United States Navy SEAL. As an author, he has penned published screenplays, novels, comic book, and non-fiction works. Regardless of medium, his wo ...
, a former SEAL, contradicted the account as given by U.S. government sources. According to Pfarrer, neither helicopter crashed at the beginning of the raid. Instead, the SEALs jumped onto the roof from the hovering Razor1 helicopter and entered a third-floor hallway from the roof terrace. Osama's third wife, Khairah, was in the hallway, headed towards the SEALs. She was blinded by a strobe light and pushed to the floor as the SEALs went past her. Osama bin Laden stuck his head out of a bedroom door, saw the SEALs, and slammed the door closed. At the same time, Osama's son Khalid bin Laden ran up the stairs to the third floor and was killed with two shots.
Susannah Cahalan
Susannah Cahalan (born January 30, 1985) is an American journalist and author, known for writing the memoir ''Brain on Fire, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness'', about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor enceph ...
,
Real Story Of Team 6's Charge
, ''New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'', November 6, 2011, p. 18.
Two SEALs broke through the bedroom door. Bin Laden's wife Amal was on the edge of the bed shouting in Arabic at the SEALs, and Osama bin Laden dived across the bed, shoving Amal at the same time, for an
AKS-74U
The AK-74 (Russian: , tr. ''Avtomat Kalashnikova obraztsa 1974 goda'', lit. 'Kalashnikov assault rifle model 1974) is an assault rifle designed by small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1974. While primarily associated with the Soviet U ...
kept by the headboard. The SEALs fired four shots at bin Laden; the first missed, the second grazed Amal in the calf also missing bin Laden, and the final two hit bin Laden in the chest and head, killing him instantly. In Pfarrer's account, the total time elapsed from jumping on the roof to Osama bin Laden's death was between 30 and 90 seconds.
Around the same time, snipers in the hovering Razor2 helicopter shot and killed Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti when he came to the door of the guest house firing an AK-47. One SEAL sniper fired two shots at al-Kuwaiti and the other fired two three-round bursts. Two of the snipers' bullets went through al-Kuwaiti and killed his wife who was standing behind him. The Razor2 team cleared the guest house and then breached their way into the main house with explosives. As the Razor2 team entered the main house, al-Qaeda courier Arshad Khan pointed his AK-47 gun and was killed with two shots. The SEAL team fired a total of 16 shots, killing Osama bin Laden, Khalid bin Laden, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and al-Kuwaiti's wife, Arshad Khan, and wounding Osama bin Laden's wife Amal al-Sadah.
Twenty minutes into the operation, Razor1 took off from the roof of the main house to reposition to a landing spot outside the compound. As Razor1 was crossing over the courtyard, both "green unit" flight deck control systems went off line. The helicopter settled slowly, bounced off the ground, and then broke apart as it hit the ground a second time. Both failed green units were removed for later examination.
Media accounts had reported that the plan had been to
fast rope
Fast-roping is a technique for descending a thick rope, allowing troops to deploy from a helicopter in places where the aircraft cannot touch down.
The person holds onto the rope with gloved hands (with or without using their feet) and slides do ...
to the inner courtyard and to clear the main house from the ground floor up. The helicopter crashed in the outer courtyard with the SEAL team still on board. The SEAL team exited and needed to breach two walls and then into the house. As a result, Osama bin Laden was killed several minutes into the operation.
Pfarrer's account differs in that he wrote that a SEAL team was inserted onto the roof of the main house, that Osama bin Laden was killed seconds into the operation, and that the main house was cleared from the top down.
The
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.
A pentagon may be simpl ...
disputed Pfarrer's account of the raid, calling it "incorrect".
The
U.S. Special Operations Command
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM) is the unified combatant command charged with overseeing the various special operations component commands of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force of the United States Arm ...
also disputed Pfarrer's account, saying, "It's just not true. It's not how it happened."
''No Easy Day''
![United States Navy SEALs 602](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/United_States_Navy_SEALs_602.jpg)
Matt Bissonnette, a SEAL who participated in the raid, wrote an account of the mission in the book ''
No Easy Day
''No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden'' (2012) is a military memoir by a former member of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) who participated in the mission that resulted ...
'' (2012), which significantly contradicts Pfarrer's account. Bissonnette wrote that the helicopter approach and landing matched the official version. According to Bissonnette, when bin Laden peered out at the Americans advancing on his third-floor room, the SEAL who fired upon him hit him on the right side of the head. Bin Laden stumbled into his bedroom, where the SEALs found him crumpled and twitching on the floor in a pool of body matter, with two women crying over his body. The other SEALs allegedly grabbed the women, moved them away, and shot several rounds into bin Laden's chest until he was motionless. According to Bissonnette, the weapons in the room—an AK-47 rifle and a
Makarov pistol
The Makarov pistol or PM ( rus, Пистоле́т Мака́рова, r=Pistolét Makárova, p=pʲɪstɐˈlʲet mɐˈkarəvə, t=Makarov's Pistol) is a Soviet semi-automatic pistol. Under the project leadership of Nikolay Fyodorovich Makarov, it ...
—were unloaded.
Unlike the official account, Bissonnette's version alleges that bin Laden's wife Mariam was uninjured in the raid. In addition, Bissonnette states that the report of bin Laden's daughter Safia having splintered wood striking her foot is false, as he explains that it was rather his wife Amal who was injured by such fragments.
The author also asserted that one SEAL sat on bin Laden's chest in a cramped helicopter as his body was flown back to Afghanistan.
Bissonnette stated that a search of bin Laden's room after his death uncovered a bottle of
Just for Men hair dye.
''Esquire'' interview
In February 2013, ''
Esquire
Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title.
In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentlema ...
'' conducted an interview with an anonymous individual called "the shooter" who said that bin Laden placed one of his wives between himself and the commandos, pushing her towards them. "Shooter" then claimed bin Laden stood up and had a gun "within reach" and it was only then that he fired two shots into bin Laden's forehead, killing him.
Another member of
SEAL Team Six
The Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), abbreviated as DEVGRU ("Development Group") and commonly known as SEAL Team Six, is the United States Navy component of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The unit is often referre ...
said the story as presented in ''Esquire'' was false and "complete BS".
[Berge, Pete]
CNN, March 27, 2013 Then, in November 2014, former SEAL Robert O'Neill disclosed his identity as the shooter in a series of interviews with ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''.
Hillhouse and Hersh reports
In 2011 American intelligence analyst Raelynn Hillhouse wrote that according to U.S. intelligence sources, the U.S. had been tipped-off to bin Laden's location by an unnamed Pakistani intelligence insider collecting the $25 million reward. According to the sources, Pakistan purposely stood-down its armed forces to allow the U.S. raid, and the original plan was to kill—not capture—bin Laden. Hillhouse's sources stated that the Pakistanis had been keeping bin Laden under house arrest near their military headquarters in Abbottabad with money provided by the Saudis.
According to ''The Telegraph'', Hillhouse's account might explain why U.S. forces encountered no resistance on their way to and in Abbottabad, and why some residents in Abbottabad were warned to stay in their houses the day before the raid.
Hillhouse later also said bin Laden's body had been thrown out of a helicopter over the
Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas. It stretches from central and western Afghanistan, Quote: "The Hindu Kush mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Provinc ...
. Hillhouse's account was picked up and published internationally.
In May 2015, a detailed article in the
London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
by journalist
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer.
Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received t ...
said that the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI) had kept bin Laden under house arrest at Abbottabad since 2006, and that Pakistani Army chief
Pervez Kayani
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (Urdu: ; born 20 April 1952), is a retired four-star general of the Pakistan Army who served as the 8th Chief of Army Staff , being appointed on 29 November 2007 after his predecessor Pervez Musharraf retired fro ...
and ISI director
Ahmad Shuja Pasha aided the U.S. mission to kill, not capture bin Laden.
According to Hersh, Pakistani officials were always aware of bin Laden's location and were guarding the compound with their own soldiers. Pakistan decided to give up bin Laden's location to the U.S. because American aid was declining. Pakistani officials were aware of the raid, and assisted the U.S. in carrying it out. According to Hersh, bin Laden was basically an invalid.
Hersh's U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources stated that the U.S. had learned of bin Laden's location through a Pakistani walk-in seeking the $25 million reward, and not through tracking a courier.
NBC News and
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency.
AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C ...
subsequently reported that their sources indicated a walk-in was an extremely valuable asset, though the sources disputed that the walk-in knew the location of bin Laden.
Pakistan-based journalist Amir Mir in the ''
News International
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a List of newspapers in the United Kingdom, British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media Conglomerate (c ...
'' reported the walk-in's identity to be Usman Khalid, though that allegation was denied by Khalid's family.
Although similar in claims, both Hillhouse's and Hersh's accounts of the bin Laden death appeared to be based on different sources which ''
The Intercept
''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing news website founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras and funded by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Its current editor is Betsy Reed. The publication initially reported ...
'' concluded might corroborate the claims if their identities were known. After the Hersh story broke,
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
also independently reported that a Pakistani intelligence officer was the source of the original bin Laden location report, and not the courier.
The White House denied Hersh's report. A former intelligence official who had direct knowledge of the operation speculated that the Pakistanis, who were furious that the operation took place without being detected by them, were behind the false story as a way to save face. Pakistani journalist
Ahmed Rashid
Ahmed Rashid (Urdu:; born 1948 in Pakistan) is a journalist and best-selling foreign policy author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.
Life and career
Ahmed Rashid was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He attended Ma ...
in ''
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'' finds the cooperation between the CIA and ISI that Hersh describes "inconceivable", in part because 2011 was "the worst year in
U.S.-Pakistan relations since the late 1980s" and "hatred and mistrust" between the CIA and ISI was "acute"—something Hersh does not mention. Among the incidents that occurred in Pakistan in the months before the killing of bin Laden were the killing of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor
Raymond Davis, numerous death threats against the Islamabad CIA station chief after his name was leaked (purportedly by the ISI), the cessation of the issuing of visas for U.S. officials (following which the U.S. consulate in
Lahore
Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...
was moved to Islamabad over concerns about security), increased U.S. anger over the refusal of Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban, the
death of 40 Pakistanis including many civilians and later 24 Pakistani soldiers from U.S. drone strikes; and the cut-off of U.S. supplies to Afghanistan by Pakistan.
Indian airspace controversy
In the publication ''No Easy Day'', a map of the operation show the U.S. SEALs briefly crossed into
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n territory before its loop approaching Abbottabad in Pakistan, raising questions in India whether the U.S. violated Indian airspace, and if India had advance knowledge about the mission. The
Indian Air Force
The Indian Air Force (IAF) is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its complement of personnel and aircraft assets ranks third amongst the air forces of the world. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial w ...
dismissed claims that the U.S. crossed into Indian airspace.
Conspiracy theories
The reports of bin Laden's death on May 2, 2011, are not universally accepted despite unreleased DNA testing confirming his identity,
bin Laden's twelve-year-old daughter witnessing his death,
and a May 6, 2011, al-Qaeda statement confirming his death.
The swift burial of bin Laden's body at sea, the speed of the DNA results, and the decision not to release pictures of the dead body have led to the rise of conspiracy theories that bin Laden had not died in the raid. Some blogs suggested that the U.S. government feigned the raid, and some forums hosted debates over the alleged hoax.
Role of Pakistan
Pakistan came under intense international scrutiny after the raid. The Pakistani government denied that it had sheltered bin Laden, and said it had shared information with the CIA and other intelligence agencies about the compound since 2009.
Carlotta Gall
Carlotta Gall is a British journalist and author. She covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for ''The New York Times'' for twelve years. She is currently the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times covering Turkey.
Career Summary
Daughter of ve ...
, in her 2014 book ''
The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014'', accuses the
ISI, Pakistan's clandestine intelligence service, of hiding and protecting
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...
and his family after the
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
. She claims that she learned from a Pakistani official (with whom she later clarified that she did not speak, the information coming through a friend)
that a senior U.S. official had told him that the United States had direct evidence that
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI) chief,
Lt. Gen.
Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star rank, three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in ...
Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, but ISI, Pasha and officials in Washington all deny this:
"C.I.A. and other Obama administration officials have said they possess no evidence—no intercepts, no unreleased documents from Abbottabad—that Kayani or Pasha or any other I.S.I. officer knew where bin Laden was hiding."
After the raid, there was an unconfirmed report that Pakistan allowed Chinese military officials to examine the wreckage of the crashed helicopter.
Connections with Abbottabad
![Abbottabad View](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Abbottabad_View.JPG)
Abbottabad attracted refugees from fighting in the
tribal areas and
Swat Valley
Swat District (, ps, سوات ولسوالۍ, ) is a district in the Malakand Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. With a population of 2,309,570 per the 2017 national census, Swat is the 15th-largest district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa prov ...
, as well as
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
. "People don't really care now to ask who's there", said
Gohar Ayub Khan
Gohar Ayub Khan ( ur, گوہر ایوب خان; born 15 January 1937) is a Pakistani politician, business oligarch, retired army officer, and conservative figure of the Pakistan Muslim League, who held ministerial positions during the administ ...
, a former foreign minister and resident of the city. "That's one of the reasons why, possibly, he came in there."
The city was home to at least one al-Qaeda leader before bin Laden. Operational chief Abu Faraj al-Libi reportedly moved his family to Abbottabad in mid-2003.
Pakistan
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI) raided the house in December 2003 but did not find him.
This account was contradicted by American officials who said that satellite photos show that in 2004 the site was an empty field.
A courier told interrogators that al-Libi used three houses in Abbottabad. Pakistani officials say they informed their American counterparts at the time that the city could be a hiding place for al-Qaeda leaders.
In 2009 officials began providing the U.S. with intelligence about bin Laden's compound without knowing who lived there.
On January 25, 2011,
ISI arrested
Umar Patek
Umar Patek (born 1970) is an Indonesian convicted terrorist and member of Jemaah Islamiyah who was wanted in the United States, Australia, and Indonesia on terrorism charges. There was a US$1 million reward offered by the Rewards For Justice Pr ...
, an Indonesian wanted in connection with the
2002 Bali nightclub bombings, while he was staying with a family in Abbottabad. Tahir Shehzad, a clerk at the post office, was arrested on suspicion of facilitating travel for al-Qaeda militants.
Allegations against Pakistan
Numerous allegations were made that the government of Pakistan had shielded bin Laden.
Critics cited the proximity of bin Laden's heavily fortified compound to the Pakistan Military Academy, that the U.S. chose to not notify Pakistani authorities before the operation, and the double standards of Pakistan regarding the perpetrators of the
2008 Mumbai attacks
The 2008 Mumbai attacks (also referred to as 26/11, pronounced "twenty six eleven") were a series of Terrorism, terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist terrorist organisation from P ...
.
U.S. government files, leaked by
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...
, disclosed that American diplomats had been told that Pakistani security services were tipping off bin Laden every time U.S. forces approached. Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI), also helped smuggle al-Qaeda militants into Afghanistan to fight
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
troops. According to the leaked files, in December 2009, the
government of Tajikistan
The politics of Tajikistan takes place in a framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in both the executive branch and the ...
had also told U.S. officials that many in Pakistan were aware of bin Laden's whereabouts.
CIA chief
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of ...
said the CIA had ruled out involving Pakistan in the operation, because it feared that "any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets."
Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
said that "cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding".
Obama echoed her sentiments.
John O. Brennan
John Owen Brennan (born September 22, 1955) is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from March 2013 to January 2017. He served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. Presi ...
, Obama's chief counterterrorism advisor, said that it was inconceivable that bin Laden did not have support from within Pakistan. He said: "People have been referring to this as hiding in plain sight. We are looking at how he was able to hide out there for so long."
The
Indian Minister for Home Affairs,
P. Chidambaram
Palaniappan Chidambaram (born 16 September 1945), better known as P. Chidambaram, is an Indian politician and lawyer who currently serves as Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee ...
, said that bin Laden hiding "deep inside" Pakistan was a matter of grave concern for India, and showed that "many of the perpetrators of the
Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and the handlers of the terrorists who actually carried out the attack, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan". He called on Pakistan to arrest them.
Pakistani-born British member of parliament
Khalid Mahmood
Khalid Mahmood (also spelled Mahmud) may refer to:
* Allama Khalid Mahmood (1925–2020), Islamic scholar and former Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan (Shariat Appellate Bench).
* Khaled Mahmud (born 1971), Bangladeshi cricketer
* Khalid Mahmood ...
said he was "flabbergasted and shocked" after he learned that bin Laden was living in a city with thousands of Pakistani troops, reviving questions about alleged links between al-Qaeda and elements in Pakistan's security forces.
On August 7, 2011,
Raelynn Hillhouse
Raelynn J. Hillhouse is an American national security and United States Intelligence Community, Intelligence community analyst, former smuggler during the Cold War, spy novelist and health care executive.
Personal history
Hillhouse taught at th ...
, an American spy novelist and security analyst, posted "The Spy Who Billed Me" on her national security blog, suggesting that Pakistan's ISI had sheltered bin Laden in return for a $25 million
bounty
Bounty or bounties commonly refers to:
* Bounty (reward), an amount of money or other reward offered by an organization for a specific task done with a person or thing
Bounty or bounties may also refer to:
Geography
* Bounty, Saskatchewan, a g ...
; ISI and government officials have denied her allegations.
Former Pakistani Army Chief, General
Ziauddin Butt
General Khawaja Ziauddin Abbasi ( ur, خواجہ ضیاء الدین عباسى), also known as Ziauddin Butt ( ur, ضیاء الدین بٹ), is a retired four-star rank army generalChaudhry, Aminullah (2009) Hijacking from the Ground: The Bi ...
has said that, according to his knowledge, Osama bin Laden was kept in an Intelligence Bureau safe house in Abbottabad by the then Director-General of the
Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan
The Intelligence Bureau ( ur, ) is a civilian intelligence agency in Pakistan. Established in 1947, the IB is Pakistan's oldest intelligence agency. Appointments and supervision of its operations are authorized by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. ...
(2004–2008), Brigadier
Ijaz Shah
Ijaz Ahmed Shah is a Pakistani politician, former officer of the Pakistan Army, and a former Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officer.[Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (Urdu: ; born 20 April 1952), is a retired four-star general of the Pakistan Army who served as the 8th Chief of Army Staff , being appointed on 29 November 2007 after his predecessor Pervez Musharraf retired from ...](_bla ...<br></span></div>. This had occurred with the )
. Emails from the private American security firm,
Stratfor
Strategic Forecasting Inc., commonly known as Stratfor, is an American geopolitics publisher and consultancy founded in 1996. Stratfor's business model is to provide individual and enterprise subscriptions to Stratfor Worldview, its online public ...
, published by WikiLeaks on February 27, 2012, indicate that up to 12 officials in Pakistan's ISI knew of Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad safe house. Stratfor had been given access to the papers collected by American forces from bin Laden's Abbottabad house. The emails reveal that these Pakistani officers included "Mid to senior level ISI and Pak Mil with one retired Pak Mil General". In 2014, British journalist
Carlotta Gall
Carlotta Gall is a British journalist and author. She covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for ''The New York Times'' for twelve years. She is currently the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times covering Turkey.
Career Summary
Daughter of ve ...
revealed that she had been told by an undisclosed ISI source that the ISI "ran a special desk assigned to handle bin Laden". The desk was "led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior
..but the top military bosses knew about it, I was told".
According to
Steve Coll
Steve Coll (born October 8, 1958) is an Americans, American journalist, academic and executive.
He is currently the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he is also the Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. A staf ...
, as of 2019 there is no direct evidence showing Pakistani knowledge of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, even by a rogue or compartmented faction within the government, other than the circumstantial fact of bin Laden's compound being located near (albeit not directly visible from) the Pakistan Military Academy. Documents captured from the Abbottabad compound generally show that bin Laden was wary of contact with Pakistani intelligence and police, especially in light of Pakistan's role in the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; it has also been suggested that the $25 million U.S. reward for information leading to bin Laden would have been enticing to Pakistani officers given their reputation for corruption. The compound itself, although unusually tall, was less conspicuous than sometimes envisaged by Americans, given the common local habit of walling off homes for protection against violence or to ensure the privacy of female family members. Coll notes that a
Pakistani Taliban
The Pakistani Taliban (), formally called the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (Urdu/ ps, , lit=Student Movement of Pakistan, TTP), is an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani bor ...
cell had previously surveilled the army's
General Headquarters
Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the top ...
in
Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...
out of a nearby house for two months prior to a
deadly October 2009 attack on the facility—without detection.
Pakistani response
According to a Pakistani intelligence official, raw phone-tap data had been transferred to the U.S. without being analyzed by Pakistan. While the U.S. "was concentrating on this" information since September 2010, information regarding bin Laden and the compound's inhabitants had "slipped from" Pakistan's "radar" over the months. Bin Laden left "an invisible footprint" and he had not been contacting other militant networks. It was noted that much focus had been placed on a courier entering and leaving the compound. The transfer of intelligence to the U.S. was a regular occurrence according to the official, who also stated regarding the raid that "I think they came in undetected and went out the same day", and Pakistan did not believe that U.S. personnel were present in the area before the special operation occurred.
According to the Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom,
Wajid Shamsul Hasan
Wajid Shamsul Hasan (died 28 September 2021) was a Pakistani diplomat since June 2008. He served as the High Commissioner of Pakistan to the United Kingdom. , Pakistan had prior knowledge that an operation would happen. Pakistan was "in the know of certain things" and "what happened, happened with our consent. Americans got to know him—where he was first—and that's why they struck it and struck it precisely." Husain Haqqani, Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., had said that Pakistan would have pursued bin Laden had the intelligence of his location existed with them and Pakistan was "very glad that our American partners did. They had superior intelligence, superior technology, and we are grateful to them."
Another Pakistani official stated that Pakistan "assisted only in terms of authorization of the helicopter flights in our airspace" and the operation was conducted by the United States. He also said that "in any event, we did not want anything to do with such an operation in case something went wrong."
In June, the
ISI arrested the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe Osama bin Laden's compound and five CIA informants.
Mark Kelton, then the CIA
station chief
A station chief is a government official who is the head of a team, post or function usually in a foreign country. Historically it commonly referred to the head of a defensible structure such as an ambassador's residence or colonial outpost. In G ...
for Pakistan, alleges that he was poisoned by the ISI in retaliation for the raid, forcing him to leave the country.
Code name
Several officials who were present in the
Situation Room
The Situation Room, officially known as the John F. Kennedy Conference Room, is a conference room and intelligence management center in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. It is run by the National Security Council staff for the ...
, including the president,
told reporters that the code name for bin Laden was "Geronimo". They had watched
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of ...
, speaking from
CIA headquarters
The George Bush Center for Intelligence is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, located in the unincorporated community of Langley in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States; near Washington, D.C.
The headquarters is a conglome ...
, while he narrated the action in Abbottabad. Panetta said, "We have a visual on Geronimo", and later, "Geronimo EKIA"—enemy
killed in action.
The words of the commander on the ground were, "For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo."
Officials subsequently explained that each step of the mission was labelled alphabetically in an "Execution Checklist", which is used to ensure all participants in a large operation are kept synchronized with a minimum of radio traffic. "Geronimo" indicated the raiders had reached step "G", the capture or killing of bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden was identified as "Jackpot", the general code name for the target of an operation.
ABC News reported that otherwise his regular code name was "Cakebread".
''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' reported that bin Laden's code name was "Crankshaft".
Many Native Americans were offended that
Geronimo
Geronimo ( apm, Goyaałé, , ; June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909) was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Ndendahe Apache people. From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo joined with members of three other Central Apache ba ...
, the renowned 19th-century
Apache
The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...
leader, was irrevocably linked with bin Laden. The chairman of the
Fort Sill Apache Tribe
The Fort Sill Apache Tribe is the federally recognized Native American tribe of Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache in Oklahoma.
Government
The Fort Sill Apache Tribe is headquartered in Apache, Oklahoma. Tribal member enrollment, which requires a mi ...
, the successor to
Geronimo's tribe, wrote a letter to Obama asking him to "right this wrong."
The president of the
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native American reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah; at roughly , the ...
requested that the U.S. government change the code name retroactively.
Officials from the
National Congress of American Indians
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is an American Indian and Alaska Native rights organization. It was founded in 1944 to represent the tribes and resist federal government pressure for termination of tribal rights and assimilati ...
said the focus should be on honoring the disproportionately high number of Native Americans who serve in the military, and they had been assured that "Geronimo" was not a code name for bin Laden.
The
U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is a committee of the United States Senate charged with oversight in matters related to the American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native peoples. A Committee on Indian Affairs existed from 1820 to 1 ...
heard testimony on the issue from tribal leaders, while the Defense Department had no comment except to say that no disrespect was intended.
Derivation of intelligence
After the death of bin Laden, some officials from the Bush administration, such as former Bush
Office of Legal Counsel
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General's position as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the Attorney ...
attorney
John Yoo
John Choon Yoo (; born July 10, 1967) is a Korean-born American legal scholar and former government official who serves as the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoo became known for his legal opinions ...
and former
attorney general
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Michael Mukasey
Michael Bernard Mukasey (; born July 28, 1941) is an American attorney and former federal judge who served as the 81st Attorney General of the United States from 2007 to 2009.
Born in New York City in 1941, Mukasey attended Ramaz School, graduat ...
, wrote op-eds stating that the
enhanced interrogation techniques
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for the program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. A ...
they authorized (since legally clarified as torture) yielded the intelligence that later led to locating bin Laden's hideout. Mukasey said that the waterboarding of
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes also spelled Shaikh; also known by at least 50 pseudonyms; born March 1, 1964 or April 14, 1965) is a Pakistani Islamist militant held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-re ...
caused him to reveal the nickname of bin Laden's courier.
U.S. officials and legislators, including Republican
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...
and Democrat
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...
, chairwoman of the
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...
, countered that those statements were false. They noted that a report by CIA Director
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of ...
stated that the first mention of the courier's nickname did not come from Mohammed, but rather from another government's interrogation of a suspect whom they said they "believe was not tortured."
McCain called on Mukasey to retract his statements:
Panetta had written a letter to McCain on the issue, saying: "Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier's role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the 'only timely and effective way' to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively."
Although some information may have been obtained from detainees who were subjected to torture, Panetta wrote to McCain that:
We first learned about the facilitator/courier's nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier's role were alerting. In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier's full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.
In addition, other U.S. officials state that shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in
CIA secret prisons
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
told interrogators about the courier's pseudonym "al-Kuwaiti" and that when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was later captured, he only confirmed the courier's pseudonym. After
Abu Faraj al-Libbi
Abu Faraj al-Libi ( ; ; أبو الفرج الليبي) (also transliterated al-Libbi ) is an assumed name or nom de guerre of a Libyan alleged to be a senior member of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. His real name is Mustafa Faraj Muhammad M ...
was captured, he provided false or misleading information: he denied that he knew al-Kuwaiti and he made up another name instead.
Also, a group of interrogators asserted that the courier's nickname was not divulged "during torture, but rather several months later, when
etaineeswere questioned by interrogators who did not use abusive techniques."
Intelligence postmortem
Evidence seized from the compound is said to include ten
cell phones
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
, five to ten computers, twelve hard drives, at least 100 computer disks (including
thumb drives
A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since first ...
and DVDs), handwritten notes, documents, weapons, and an assortment of personal items.
It was described by a senior Pentagon intelligence official as "the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever."
On November 1, 2017, the CIA released to the public approximately 470,000 files and a copy of bin Laden's diary.
Intelligence analysts also studied
call detail record
A call detail record (CDR) is a data record produced by a telephone exchange or other telecommunications equipment that documents the details of a telephone call or other telecommunications transactions (e.g., text message) that passes through that ...
s from two phone numbers that were found to be sewn into bin Laden's clothing.
They helped over the course of several months to apprehend several al-Qaeda members in several countries and to kill several of bin Laden's closest associates by
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
drone attacks in Pakistan
Between 2004 and 2018, the United States government attacked thousands of targets in northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) operated by the United States Air Force under the operational control of the Central Intelligence ...
.
The material gathered at the compound was stored at the
FBI Laboratory
The FBI Laboratory (also called the Laboratory Division) is a division within the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation that provides forensic analysis support services to the FBI, as well as to state and local law enforcement agencies ...
in
Quantico, Virginia
Quantico ( or ; formerly Potomac) is a town in Prince William County, Virginia, United States. The population was 480 at the 2010 census. Quantico is approximately 35 miles southwest of Washington, DC, bordered by the Potomac River to the east a ...
, where
forensic
Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to Criminal law, criminal and Civil law (legal system), civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standard ...
experts analyzed
fingerprint
A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...
s,
DNA, and other
trace evidence
Trace evidence is created when objects make contact. The material is often transferred by heat or induced by contact friction.
The importance of trace evidence in criminal investigations was shown by Dr. Edmond Locard in the early 20th century. ...
left on the material.
Copies of the material were provided to other agencies; officials want to preserve a
chain of custody
Chain of custody (CoC), in legal contexts, is the chronological documentation or paper trail that records the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of materials, including physical or electronic evidence. Of particular ...
in case any of the information is needed as evidence in a future trial.
A special CIA team has been given the responsibility of combing through the digital material and documents removed from the bin Laden compound. The CIA team is working in collaboration with other U.S. government agencies "to triage, catalog and analyze this intelligence."
Bin Laden's youngest wife told Pakistani investigators that the family lived in the
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a wa ...
village of
Chak Shah Muhammad
Chak Shah Muhammad is a feudal village in Haripur District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. A small farming village of low brick houses, poultry farms and wheat fields, Osama Bin Laden allegedly lived in the village for two and a half ye ...
, in the nearby district of
Haripur, Pakistan, for two and a half years before moving to Abbottabad in late 2005.
The material seized from the compound contained al-Qaeda's strategy for Afghanistan after America's withdrawal from the country in 2014,
as well as thousands of electronic memos and missives that captured conversations between bin Laden and his deputies around the world.
It showed that bin Laden stayed in touch with al-Qaeda's established affiliates and sought new alliances with groups such as
Boko Haram
Boko Haram, officially known as ''Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād'' ( ar, جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد, lit=Group of the People of Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad), is an Islamic terrorist organization ...
from Nigeria.
According to the material, he sought to reassert control over factions of loosely affiliated jihadists from Yemen to Somalia, as well as independent actors whom he believed had sullied al-Qaeda's reputation and muddied its central message.
Bin Laden was worried at times about his personal security and was annoyed that his organization had not utilized the
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in T ...
to improve its image.
He acted, according to ''The Washington Post'', on the one hand as "chief executive fully engaged in the group's myriad crises, grappling with financial problems, recruitment, rebellious field managers, and sudden staff vacancies resulting from the unrelenting U.S. drone campaign",
and on the other hand as "a hands-on manager who participated in the terrorist group's operational planning and strategic thinking while also giving orders and advice to field operatives scattered worldwide."
The material also described Osama bin Laden's relation with
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri (June 19, 1951 – July 31, 2022) was an Egyptian-born terrorist and physician who served as the second emir of al-Qaeda from June 16, 2011, until his death.
Al-Zawahiri graduated from Cairo University with ...
and
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman ( ar, عطية عبد الرحمن; 1969 – August 22, 2011), born Jamal Ibrahim Ashtiwi al Misrati, was reported by the US State Department .
Seventeen documents seized during the Abbottabad raid, consisting of electronic letters or draft letters dating from September 2006 to April 2011, were released by the
Combating Terrorism Center
The Combating Terrorism Center is an academic institution at the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York that provides education, research and policy analysis in the specialty areas of terrorism, counterterrorism, homeland ...
at West Point one year and one day after bin Laden's death.
and made available at ''The Washington Post'' homepage. The documents covered subjects such as the
news media in America, affiliate organization, targets, America, security, and the
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in T ...
. In the documents, bin Laden said al-Qaeda's strength was limited and therefore suggested that the best way to attack the U.S., which he compared to a tree, "is to concentrate on sawing the trunk".
He refused the promotion of
Anwar al-Awlaki
Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (also spelled al-Aulaqi, al-Awlaqi; ar, أنور العولقي, Anwar al-‘Awlaqī; April 21 or 22, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was an American imam who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone stri ...
when this was requested by
Nasir al-Wuhayshi
Nasir Abdel Karim al-Wuhayshi ( ar, ناصر عبد الكريم الوحيشي'; also transliterated as Naser al-Wahishi, Nasser al-Wuhayshi) alias Abu Basir, (1 October 1976 – 12 June 2015) was a Yemeni Islamist, who served as the leader o ...
, leader of
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ( ar-at, تنظيم القاعدة في جزيرة العرب, Tanẓīm al-Qā‘idah fī Jazīrat al-‘Arab, lit=Organization of the Base in the Arabian Peninsula or , ''Tanẓīm Qā‘idat al-Jihād fī Jaz ...
. "We here become reassured of the people when they go to the line and get examined there",
bin Laden said. He told al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to expand operations in the U.S. in the wake of the
2009 Christmas Day bomb plot
The attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 occurred on December 25, 2009, aboard an Airbus A330 as it prepared to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport following a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam. Attributed to the terrori ...
by writing "We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes."
The seized material shed light on al-Qaeda's relationship with
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, which detained jihadis and their relatives in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, including members of bin Laden's family. Al-Qaeda's relationship with Iran was, according to the Combating Terrorism Center, an "unpleasant byproduct of necessity, fueled by mutual distrust and antagonism."
An explicit reference to any institutional support from Pakistan for al-Qaeda wasn't mentioned in the documents; instead, bin Laden instructed his family members how to avoid detection so that members of Pakistani intelligence couldn't track them to find him.
According to the seized material, former commander of the international forces in Afghanistan
David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus (; born November 7, 1952) is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Prior to h ...
and US President Barack Obama should be assassinated during any of their visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan, if there was an opportunity to do so. Bin Laden opined that U.S. Vice President
Joe Biden should not be a target because "Biden is totally unprepared for that post
f president
F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.
His ...
which will lead the US into a crisis."
Bin Laden was also against one-person suicide attacks and was of the opinion that at least two persons should undertake these attacks instead.
He planned to reform in a way so that al-Qaeda's central leadership would have a greater say in the naming of the al-Qaeda branch leaders and their deputies. He expressed his opinion that killing Muslims has weakened his organization and not helped al-Qaeda, writing that it "cost the mujahedeen no small amount of sympathy among Muslims. The enemy has exploited the mistakes of the mujahedeen to mar their image among the masses."
The
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
released a further eleven documents in March 2015. The documents were part of the trial against Abid Naseer, who was convicted of plotting to bomb a
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
shopping mall in 2009. They included letters to and from Osama bin Laden in the year before his death, and showed the extent of the damage the CIA drone program had done to Al-Qaeda.
In addition to information and data recovered that were of intelligence interest, the documents and computer items also contained personal files, including family correspondence and a large stash of
pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, . US officials have refused to characterize the type of pornography found other than to say that it was "modern" in nature. The most likely explanation for the pornography on bin Laden's hard drive is that he bought a poorly refurbished computer since bin Laden did not have internet access and the computer was also infected with viruses.
Helicopter stealth technology revelations
The
tail section of the secret helicopter survived demolition and lay just outside the compound wall.
Pakistani security forces put up a cloth barrier at first light to hide the wreckage.
Later, a tractor hauled it away hidden under a tarp.
Journalists obtained photographs that revealed the previously undisclosed
stealth technology
Stealth technology, also termed low observable technology (LO technology), is a sub-discipline of military tactics and passive and active electronic countermeasures, which covers a range of methods used to make personnel, aircraft, ships, subm ...
. ''Aviation Week'' said the helicopter appeared to be a significantly modified
MH-60 Black Hawk
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift utility military helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. Sikorsky submitted the S-70 design for the United States Army's Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System ...
. Serial numbers found at the scene were consistent with an MH-60 built in 2009.
Its performance during the operation confirmed that a
stealth helicopter could evade detection in a militarily sensitive, densely populated area. Photos showed that the Black Hawk's tail had stealth-configured shapes on the boom and the
fairings, swept
stabilizers and a "hubcap" over the noise-reducing five- or six-blade tail rotor. It appeared to have a silver-loaded
infrared suppression finish similar to some
V-22 Osprey
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is an American multi-mission, tiltrotor military aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and short takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities. It is designed to combine the functionality of a convention ...
s.
The crash of the Blackhawk may have been, at least in part, caused by the aerodynamic deficiencies introduced to the airframe by the stealth technology add-ons (an unrelated possible cause of the crash was that the rehearsal mock-ups of the compound had used a chain-link fence rather than a solid wall for the perimeter and thus had not reproduced the airflows that the helicopter would face).
The U.S. requested return of the wreckage and the Chinese government also expressed interest, according to Pakistani officials. Pakistan had custody of the wreckage for over two weeks before its return was secured by
U.S. Senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party (Unite ...
.
Experts disagreed as to how much information could have been gleaned from the tail fragment. Stealth technology was already operational on several
fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the aircraft's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinc ...
and the cancelled
RAH-66 Comanche helicopter; the modified Black Hawk was the first confirmed operational "stealth helicopter". It is likely that the most valuable information obtainable from the wreckage was the composition of the
radar-absorbing paint used on the tail section.
Local children were seen picking up pieces of the wreckage and selling them as souvenirs.
In August 2011, Fox News reported that Pakistan had allowed Chinese scientists to examine the helicopter's tail section and were especially interested in its radar-absorbing paint. Pakistan and the PRC denied these claims.
Previous attempts to capture or kill bin Laden
![Strikes on Tora Bora](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Strikes_on_Tora_Bora.png)
* February 1994: A team of
Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...
ns attacked bin Laden's home in
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
. The CIA investigated and reported that they had been hired by
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
, but Saudi Arabia accused them of lying to make bin Laden more amenable to Sudanese interests.
* August 20, 1998: In
Operation Infinite Reach
Operation Infinite Reach was the codename for American cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda bases in Khost Province, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 20, 1998. The attacks, launched by the U.S. Nav ...
, the U.S. Navy launched 66 cruise missiles at a suspected al-Qaeda training camp outside
Khost
Khōst ( ps, خوست) is the capital of Khost Province in Afghanistan. It is the largest city in the southeastern part of the country, and also the largest in the region of Loya Paktia. To the south and east of Khost lie Waziristan and Kurram in ...
, Afghanistan, where bin Laden was expected to be. Reports said that 30 people may have been killed.
* 2000: Foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA fired a
rocket-propelled grenade
A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) is a shoulder-fired missile weapon that launches rockets equipped with an explosive warhead. Most RPGs can be carried by an individual soldier, and are frequently used as anti-tank weapons. These warheads are a ...
at a convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which bin Laden was riding.
* December 2001: During the opening stages of the war in Afghanistan launched following the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
, the U.S. and its allies believed that bin Laden was hiding in the rugged mountains at
Tora Bora
Tora Bora ( ps, توره بوړه, "Black Cave") is a cave complex, part of the Spin Ghar (White Mountains) mountain range of eastern Afghanistan. It is situated in the Pachir Aw Agam District of Nangarhar, approximately west of the Khyber ...
. Despite overrunning the Taliban and al-Qaeda positions, they failed to capture or kill him.
See also
*
Abbottabad commission
*
Barisha raid
On 26–27 October 2019, the United States conducted a military operation code named Operation Kayla Mueller that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then-leader and self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist orga ...
, similar raid that targeted
Islamic State
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ( ar, أبو بكر البغدادي, ʾAbū Bakr al-Baḡdādī; born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai ( ar, إبراهيم عواد إبراهيم علي محمد البدري السامرائي, ʾIb ...
in 2019.
*
Killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Salafi jihadist group al-Qaeda, was killed by a United States drone strike on 31 July 2022 in Kabul, Afghanistan. He was the successor of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan on 2 May ...
, 2022 U.S. drone strike on bin Laden's successor
*
2013 raid on Barawe
*
Coup de main
A ''coup de main'' (; plural: ''coups de main'', French for blow with the hand) is a swift attack that relies on speed and surprise to accomplish its objectives in a single blow.
Definition
The United States Department of Defense defines it as ...
*
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives is a most wanted list maintained by the United States's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William Kin ...
*
High-value target
In United States military terminology, a high-value target (HVT) is the term given to a person or resource that an enemy commander requires to complete a mission. The term has been widely used in the news media for Osama Bin Laden and high-ranking ...
*
Robert J. O'Neill (U.S. Navy SEAL)
*
Shakil Afridi
Shakil Afridi ( ur, ), or Shakeel Afridi, is a Pakistani physician who allegedly helped the CIA run a fake hepatitis vaccine program in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in order to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence in the city b ...
, a doctor who supposedly assisted the U.S. in locating bin Laden.
*
Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert operation, covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within S ...
Notes
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Reuters Photo Gallery: Inside bin Laden's Compound, photos by Pak security officialInside the Situation Room: Obama on making OBL raid decision a documentary behind the raid interviewing the important persons in the Situation Room
archived
Death of Bin Ladencollected news and commentary at
BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. It is one of the most popular news websites, with 1.2 billion website visits in April 2021, as well as being used by 60% of the U ...
*
"Closing in on bin Laden" ''The Washington Post'' collection of maps, diagrams, and other images
* Phillips, Macon.
Osama Bin Laden Dead"
The White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
Blog. May 2, 2011.
*
Photo Gallery May 1, 2011"
The White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
* Garamone, Jim.
Obama Declares 'Justice Has Been Done'"
American Forces Press Service
DoD News Channel was a television channel broadcasting military news and information for the 2.6 million members of the U.S. Armed Forces. It was widely available in the United States as a standalone television channel, or as part of programming o ...
,
U.S. Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
.
* Garamone, Jim.
Intelligence, Operations Team Up for bin Laden Kill" American Forces Press Service,
U.S. Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
.
*
Office of the Spokesperson Press Release Death of Osama bin Ladin" Embassy of Pakistan in Washington. May 2, 2011.
*
"
.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. May 2, 2011.
"Osama bin Laden killed" The Big Picture. ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
''. May 2, 2011.
Osama Bin Laden's death: How it happened written by Adrian Brown from BBC News on September 10, 2012.
Osama Bin Laden: The long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader written by David Gritten from BBC News on May 2, 2011.
The Killing of Osama bin Laden written by Seymour M. Hersh from London Review of Books on May 21, 2015. Hersh challenges the official U.S. account of the death of bin Laden.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Laden, Osama Bin, Killing Of
Death
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
2011 in military history
2011 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
May 2011 events in Pakistan
CIA activities in Pakistan
Deaths by firearm in Pakistan
Deaths by person in Pakistan
Filmed executions in Pakistan
Government of Yousaf Raza Gillani
Operations involving American special forces
Pakistan military scandals
Pakistani commissions and inquiries
United States Naval Special Warfare Command
Abbottabad District
Pakistan–United States relations
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Articles containing video clips