Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

48. The Fortress in Abbottabad

WASHINGTON, DC, 2010–2011; PAKISTAN, 2011—As the US manhunt for Anwar Awlaki intensified, the most wanted man in the world was spending his time hiding in plain sight. For years, it was assumed that Osama bin Laden was living in a cave or hiding in the tribal areas straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Some US officials thought the United States might never catch him, while some terror analysts believed bin Laden might already be dead. But bin Laden was very much alive and was living in the middle-class Bilal Town neighborhood of Abbottabad, Pakistan, in a large compound less than a mile from the Pakistani equivalent of the West Point Military Academy.

It is unclear exactly when bin Laden had moved to Abbottabad, but construction on the residence had been completed in 2005. And it was clearly built for secrecy. The al Qaeda leader lived on the third floor of the largest house on the property with three of his wives and many of his children. Their residence was expertly designed to ensure that no one could see inside. It had almost no windows, save for some narrow openings on one of the walls. Ironically, on May 2, 2011, it was those very attributes of the home that would prevent bin Laden from seeing the well-armed US Navy SEALs who were whizzing across Pakistan on a mission to end his life.

THE LAST SERIOUS CHANCE the United States had of killing or capturing bin Laden had come a decade earlier, in the winter of 2001 in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. A collapse in coordination between the Pentagon and CIA had marred that operation, resulting in bin Laden and his deputy, Zawahiri, disappearing—some thought for good. For the next decade, a determined group of analysts from the CIA followed one lead after another to a seemingly endless string of dead ends. With no human intelligence resources inside al Qaeda, no signals intelligence coming from bin Laden himself and little hope for support from authorities in the regions he was believed to be in, the CIA was stuck. In 2005, the bin Laden unit was shuttered, though a number of analysts continued to pursue the al Qaeda leader.

Barack Obama had campaigned on a pledge to make Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda the centerpiece of his counterterrorism policy, and he blasted the Bush administration for dropping the ball in the hunt for bin Laden. As president, Obama had ordered CIA Director Leon Panetta to prioritize the search, labeling the killing or capture of bin Laden Panetta’s “number one goal” in May 2009. Obama’s orders had injected new life—and resources—into the search that had, for four years, largely been conducted by a small group of CIA analysts. While the CIA was ratcheting up its efforts to find bin Laden, not everyone in the intelligence community thought they would produce any result. In April 2010, Major General Michael Flynn told Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, “I don’t think we’re going to get bin Laden,” adding, “I think we’ll get a call one day from the Paks: Bin Laden’s dead, we captured al Zawahiri.” At the time, Flynn was the highest-ranking intelligence officer in Afghanistan and Pakistan and was serving directly under General McChrystal. As Hastings pointed out, Flynn “had access to the most sensitive and detailed intelligence reports.”

But in August 2010, the CIA got its biggest break in the case since Tora Bora, when a CIA asset inside Pakistan spotted Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti in Peshawar. Kuwaiti had long been on the CIA’s radar and had been identified by various al Qaeda figures captured and interrogated by US forces in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as a top aide to bin Laden and his primary courier. The Agency’s asset in Pakistan followed Kuwaiti’s white Suzuki jeep on a two-hour drive from Peshawar to the garrison town of Abbottabad. As the CIA analysts examined the details of the compound, which they likened to a “fortress,” they discovered it had no phone or Internet connection and that its residents burned their trash. They grew their own vegetables and raised their own chickens and cows. Every week, they would slaughter two goats. The analysts knew they had one of bin Laden’s trusted aides in their scope but also knew there could be a bigger fish living in the compound—perhaps even the biggest. They decided not to try to capture Kuwaiti, hoping that he would lead them to bin Laden himself.

In late autumn, Panetta directed his bin Laden analysts to compile a list of twenty-five ways to extract intelligence from within the compound. They had already considered placing devices in the sewage system or placing a camera in a tree near the compound. Eventually, the analysts came up with thirty-eight options. According to author Peter Bergen, “One idea was to throw in foul-smelling stink bombs to flush out the occupants of the compound. Another was to play on the presumed religious fanaticism of the compound’s inhabitants and broadcast from outside the compound what purported to be the ‘Voice of Allah,’ saying, ‘You are commanded to come out into the street!’”

Eventually, the CIA enlisted a Pakistani doctor to administer a false Hepatitis B vaccination program in the neighborhood. The Agency wanted the doctor and his fake medical team to gain access to the compound and to extract DNA samples from the occupants so that they could compare them to samples the Agency already had from bin Laden’s deceased sister. The doctor involved in the effort, Shakil Afridi, was from Pakistan’s tribal regions. Eventually, the CIA would pay Afridi to run the fake program, which began in the poorer areas of Abbottabad in order to appear legitimate. In the end, the plan failed and Afridi and his team were unable to get any DNA samples. Afridi would later be arrested and imprisoned by Pakistani authorities for working with the CIA.

In the late summer and early fall of 2010, CIA analysts had begun circulating memos regarding the significance of the courier and his relationship to bin Laden, including one that was titled “Closing In on Usama bin Ladin’s Courier” and another titled “Anatomy of a Lead.”

The CIA set up a safe house in Abbottabad and expanded its “pattern of life” analysis of the compound’s residents. In addition to the families of Kuwaiti and his brother, they soon discovered that there was another family living in the secluded third floor of the biggest building on the property. By analyzing shadows through aerial imagery, CIA analysts detected someone they believed to be a man who would take daily walks in the courtyard inside the compound in a small vegetable garden—but only under the cover of a tarp, which prevented the drones or satellites from getting anything more than a silhouette of his image. They could not determine the man’s height. Internally, the CIA analysts called him “the Pacer.”

By January 2011, the general consensus at the CIA was that the Pacer was likely bin Laden himself. President Obama asked his counterterrorism team to develop a range of options for action. Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers, Panetta and his deputy Mike Morell met with Admiral McRaven at CIA headquarters and read him in on the intelligence out of Abbottabad. “First of all, congratulations on getting such a good lead,” McRaven told them. “Second, this is a relatively straightforward raid from JSOC’s perspective. We do these ten, twelve, fourteen times a night. The thing that makes this complicated is it’s one hundred and fifty miles inside Pakistan, and logistically getting there, and then the politics of explaining the raid, is the complicating factor. I want to think about it a little bit, but my instinct is to put a very seasoned member of a special unit to work directly with you who will come to the CIA every day and basically begin to plan and flesh out some options.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that “McRaven assigned one senior special-operations officer—a Navy Captain from SEAL Team 6, one of the top special-forces units—to work on what was known as AC1, for Abbottabad Compound 1. The captain spent every day working with the CIA team in a remote, secure facility on the CIA’s campus in Langley, Va.” On paper, any raid against the compound was to be done using CIA cover so that if it went wrong, the United States could deny the operation. But in reality, McRaven’s men would be running the show. Within the CIA, AC1 soon became known as “Atlantic City.”

The CIA and Obama’s national security team considered a number of other options beyond the SEAL team assault. They explored doing a B-2 strike on the compound, similar to the operation that killed Zarqawi in Iraq. But that scenario presented a number of major-league risks: it would be nearly impossible to extract DNA to confirm bin Laden was killed, and the bombing would certainly kill not only all of the women and children in the compound, but potentially residents of other homes in the neighborhood. A drone strike was always an option in Pakistan, but the conditions at the compound would have made the chance of a direct hit unpredictable. Looming over all of the planning was the fact that CIA contractor Raymond Davis was sitting in a Pakistani jail cell facing murder charges and widespread calls for his execution. Any unilateral action by the United States would undoubtedly infuriate the Pakistani government. Some analysts feared Davis could be killed in retaliation.

Ultimately, Obama’s counterterrorism team decided that a JSOC raid, conducted by veteran Navy SEALs under the command of McRaven, would provide the best opportunity to take out bin Laden. JSOC had conducted raids in Pakistan before, though never this deep into the country—or with such a sizable force. The risk of the Pakistani government spotting the US helicopters that would have to travel 150 miles into the country—and the possibility that the helicopters could be shot down—was serious. Admiral McRaven began assembling a team of SEALs to start preparing for a sensitive operation, but they were not yet briefed on what that mission would be. Once Raymond Davis was released from the Pakistani jail on March 16, momentum picked up for the operation.

McRaven’s men would prepare for the mission at a secret facility in North Carolina and at another in the desert in Nevada.

ONE OF THE SEALS TAKING PART in the exercises was thirty-six-year-old Matt Bissonnette, a veteran DEVGRU operator who had spent the last decade participating in a virtually nonstop run of combat deployments that put him behind enemy lines in the expansive post-9/11 US war on terror. Bissonnette had carried out missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and, as fate would have it, Pakistan. He had actually participated in a previous attempt to capture bin Laden in 2007 that he had dubbed a “wild-goose chase.” He had risen through the Special Ops ranks to become a DEVGRU team leader.

Bissonnette and other JSOC operators were summoned to a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, where phones are prohibited and the walls are lined with lead to prevent the use of electronic listening devices. According to Bissonnette, “There were almost thirty people in the room, including SEALs, an EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] tech, plus two support guys.” The men received little information other than the fact that they were going to be headed to North Carolina for a “joint readiness exercise.” They were offered no clues as to what was in store. “Overall there was a lot of experience in the room. They’d drawn us from different teams,” Bissonnette recalled. “On most teams, the new guy usually carries the ladder and the sledgehammer. But looking around the room, we had all senior guys.” He added, “It looked like some kind of dream team they were putting together.”

According to Bissonnette, “speculation was rampant.” Some of the men predicted they would be sent to Libya. Others wagered Syria or Iran. When the SEALs arrived at the North Carolina training base, they were briefed. The target of the mysterious mission was, in fact, Osama bin Laden. “No fucking way,” Bissonnette declared.

Twenty-eight of DEVGRU’s most senior operators were chosen for the operation, including an explosives expert. Also on the team were a combat dog named Cairo and an interpreter. There were four alternates attached to the mission in the event one of the SEALs was injured in training. In Afghanistan, the all-star troop would be joined by a SEAL Bissonnette called “Will,” a self-taught Arabic speaker who would be able to conduct interrogations on the mission.

Together with the help of CIA analysts, the men committed to memory the intricately detailed mock-up of the compound that sat outside the main doors to the briefing room. The foam model stood on a five-foot by five-foot plywood base. It was locked up in a wooden box when not in use. The model showed the “house in amazing detail, right down to the small trees in the courtyard and cars in the driveway and on the road that ran along the north side of the compound,” Bissonnette later wrote. “It also had the location of the compound’s gates and doors, water tanks on the roof, and even concertina wire running along the top wall. Grass covered the main courtyard. Even the neighbors’ houses and fields were rendered in almost exact detail.”

The SEALs were introduced to the Pacer. They were given a “Road to Abbottabad” briefing from the CIA in which they were brought up to speed on the multiyear intelligence effort to track down the al Qaeda leader. A few days after the men arrived in North Carolina, they caught their first glimpse of the Pacer via a black-and-white video feed. They watched him walk in circles under a “makeshift awning” in the compound’s courtyard. On one occasion, a Pakistani military helicopter passed over the compound while the Pacer was outside. “We didn’t see the Pacer sprint to a car and run. Instantly, we all thought the same thing,” Bissonnette recalled. “This meant he was accustomed to hearing helicopters.”

The CIA assessment informed the men that bin Laden was believed to be living on the third floor of the compound, and his son Khalid on the second. Aside from educated guesses placing the occupants of the compound on certain floors, the DEVGRU operators had no idea what the layout of the buildings would look like once they were inside. The team would use a number of “pro” words to report on the progress of the mission via radio, the idea being that short, single words would reduce radio traffic and confusion. According to Bissonnette, “On this mission, we chose pro words with a Native American theme.” Bin Laden would be designated with the word “Geronimo.”

As his SEALs readied for their mission, McRaven briefed the president and his national security team. “In terms of difficulty, compared to what we’re doing on a nightly basis in Afghanistan, what we’re doing in Iraq, this is not among the most difficult missions technically. The difficult part was the sovereignty issue with Pakistan and flying for a long stretch of time over Pakistani airspace,” McRaven said. Biden’s national security adviser, Tony Blinken, described the impact of McRaven’s analysis. “First of all, it helps that he’s from central casting,” he told Bergen. “He looks and sounds the part, so he inspires confidence, but you also got the very strong impression that this was not a guy who was going to be blustering or bragging. This was a guy who was going to give his very honest assessment, and so when he did, he had a lot of credibility, and it also created a tremendous amount of reassurance. And basically what McRaven told us was after they modeled this, and gamed it, and rehearsed it, he said, ‘We can do this.’”

As the SEALs war-gamed for the operation in North Carolina and the Nevada desert, a string of VIPs from the administration, the military and CIA attended some of the drills. According to Bissonnette, during one session, someone asked if the raid was a kill mission. “A lawyer from either the Department of Defense or the White House made it clear this wasn’t an assassination,” he recalled. “If he is naked with his hands up, you’re not going to engage him,” the attorney said. “I am not going to tell you how to do your job.”

The SEAL team was dispatched to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, ahead of the mission. Bissonnette strung up a hammock in the plane in preparation for the lengthy trip. Some of the men popped Ambien pills for the long flight across the Atlantic. A number of analysts from the NSA and CIA joined the SEALs. As the plane took off, Bissonnette took an open seat next to one of the CIA analysts. He asked her, “What are the odds” the man in the compound was bin Laden? “One hundred percent,” she told him. Bissonnette pushed back, reminding her that he had heard such proclamations from intelligence analysts before and they had fallen apart. The CIA analyst doubled down on her assessment, telling Bissonnette that she did not support the idea of the raid and would have preferred an air strike. “Sometimes JSOC can be the big gorilla in the room,” she said. “I’d rather just push the easy button and bomb it.” Bissonnette told her, “You guys did all the hard work to get us here,” adding, “We’re happy to have our thirty minutes of fun and be done.”

On Friday morning, April 29, at 8:20 a.m., Obama met with National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, his deputy Dennis McDonough, John Brennan and Chief of Staff William Daley in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. As they stood in a half circle, Obama told the men, “I’ve considered the decision: It’s a go. And the only thing that makes it not a go is if Bill McRaven and his folks believe that either weather or conditions on the ground increase the risk to our forces.”

The mission would be called Operation Neptune Spear, a tip of the hat to the trident favored by the Roman god of the sea. It is also a common insignia on Navy SEAL paraphernalia and unit crests.

On their second night in Jalalabad, Bissonnette and a number of other SEALs sat around a fire pit discussing where they should shoot bin Laden. “Try not to shoot this motherfucker in the face,” said a SEAL he called “Walt.” “Everybody is going to want to see this picture.” The men speculated about how the raid would advance the careers of their superior officers. Bissonnette predicted McRaven would be promoted to SOCOM commander. “And we’ll get Obama reelected for sure,” Walt added. “I can see him now, talking about how he killed bin Laden.”

The raid, planned for the evening of Saturday, April 30, coincided with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which would have meant that the president and virtually every senior member of his national security team would be rubbing elbows with the media elite and Hollywood celebrities while the raid was taking place. Some of the president’s advisers wanted the operation held back until after the dinner, concerned that if something went wrong, forcing the president and other officials to leave the event, the raid’s cover could be blown. The raid was specifically planned to take place on a moonless night in order to allow the approaching helicopters to have the best cover possible. By chance, excessive cloud cover ultimately compelled McRaven to delay the raid until the next night.

Obama called McRaven for a final check-in. It was late in the evening in Jalalabad when McRaven picked up the phone. He told the president his men were ready to go. “I couldn’t have any more confidence in you than the confidence I have in you and your force,” the president said. “Godspeed to you and your forces. Please pass on to them my personal thanks for their service and the message that I personally will be following this mission very closely.”

The president and the first lady arrived at the Washington Hilton at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday night for the Correspondents’ Dinner. Panetta, Gates, Vickers and several other core members of the team planning the bin Laden raid were there as well. Obama’s demeanor revealed nothing about the high-stakes preparations that were taking place on the other side of the globe. Instead, the president appeared calm and jovial, cracking a number of jokes, including one targeting billionaire Donald Trump, who was in the audience. Trump had been on a media rampage, promoting his inane theory that the president was not a US citizen. Saturday Night Live star Seth Meyers, who hosted the dinner, actually made a joke about bin Laden, obviously unaware that a number of people in the room were intimately involved in planning his imminent demise. “People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush,” Meyers said. “But did you know that every day from 4 to 5 p.m. he hosts a show on C-SPAN?” The camera panned to the president laughing heartily.

IN AFGHANISTAN, the final briefing before the launch of Operation Neptune Spear was “standing room only,” Bissonnette wrote, with SEALs from the other squadron on the base packing in. The president had authorized the SEALs to fight off any Pakistani units that confronted them on the mission. An officer briefing the teams informed them of their cover story, should they find themselves in Pakistani custody: you were recovering a drone that had crashed. The proposal drew laughter. “The story was preposterous. We were allies with Pakistan on paper, so if we did lose a drone, the State Department would negotiate directly with the Pakistani government to get it back,” an incredulous Bissonnette asserted. “The story didn’t wash and would be very difficult to stick to during hours of questioning,” he wrote. “The truth is, if we got to that point, no story we could come up with was going to cover up twenty-two SEALs packing sixty-pounds of high-tech gear on their backs, an EOD tech, and interpreter for a total of twenty-four men, plus a dog, raiding a suburban neighborhood a few miles from the Pakistani military academy.” The briefing was closed by the commanding officer of DEVGRU. McRaven, he said, had given them the green light. In twenty-four hours, the SEALs would be on their way to Abbottabad.

Obama’s national security staffers began arriving at the White House around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, May 1. Sandwich platters were purchased from Costco. Multiple pizzerias were called upon to avoid making one large conspicuous order.

At around 1:00 p.m., Obama’s national security team began to assemble in the Situation Room. Obama was finishing up a round of golf at Andrews Air Force Base—part of the attempt to send the signal publicly that business was as usual. Over at the CIA, Panetta and his deputy, Mike Morell, huddled with SOCOM’s commander, Eric Olson, in a secure room. On paper, Panetta was in charge of the operation. In reality, Admiral McRaven was running Neptune Spear.

Obama returned to the White House at approximately 2:00 p.m. and, still wearing his golf shoes and a windbreaker, went downstairs to the Situation Room, where Panetta’s final overview of the operation was relayed. But Obama and his team would not monitor the most sensitive mission in US history from the Situation Room, which was built for such operations. Instead, the most powerful decision makers in the United States wound up confining themselves to a much smaller room next door.

The room had the same secure video and phone communications as the Situation Room but could only seat seven people. Two modest-sized flat-screen televisions were installed side by side on one wall of the room. On the day of the bin Laden raid, the conference room was initially occupied by Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb, JSOC’s assistant commanding general. Webb and another JSOC officer were monitoring the operation in real time through a laptop. The feed was provided by an RQ-170 stealth drone hovering over Abbottabad. They also had secure communications with McRaven in Jalalabad, Panetta at CIA headquarters and General Cartwright at the Pentagon’s Ops Center. When the men proposed moving their command center to the Situation Room, they were told to stay put.

Next door in the Situation Room, Obama’s inner circle was arguing about whether the president should monitor the mission live. As that debate dragged on, various senior officials, including Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Biden, began streaming into General Webb’s small room. A short time later, the president walked into the room. “I need to watch this,” he said. The commander in chief seated himself in a folding chair to the right of Webb. Obama later discussed the seating arrangement, saying, “[Webb] started to get up and people were starting to go through the protocol and figuring out how to rearrange things. I said, ‘You don’t worry about it. You just focus on what you’re doing. I’m sure we can find a chair and I’ll sit right next to him.’ And that’s how I ended up [on a] folding chair.”

IT WAS 11:00 P.M. IN ABBOTTABAD, and the families at the bin Laden compound were already in bed. Many miles to the west, across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in the city of Jalalabad, twenty-three members of SEAL Team 6 were at an airbase preparing to embark on their mission. Half an hour later, the Black Hawks took off. By 2:30 p.m., the White House had received the first word that the choppers were off the ground. “It was nail-biting time and we were holding our breath,” recalled Brennan.

For the mission, the SEALs would utilize two specialized MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, flown by JSOC’s “Night Stalkers.” The helicopters were a stealth version of the Black Hawk that the United States had long been rumored to be developing. The unique aircraft had never been discussed publicly. The Black Hawks had been specially modified with advanced technology that would allow it to fly silently and to avoid radar detection. To further mask their presence, the pilots would fly at high speeds as close to the ground as possible, using a tactic known as “nap of the earth.” General Hugh Shelton, the former commander of SOCOM, whose son is a JSOC pilot, said the Night Stalkers are the best in the US military. “They can literally—the pilots can fly a helicopter upside-down if they want to, they can land on a moving train—at night,” he told me. “Any time that you’ve got a mission that you don’t want to fail, those are the guys that you want to have doing it.”

Three MH-47 Chinooks took off from the same Jalalabad airfield once the Black Hawks had entered Pakistan. One set down on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan. The other two flew to a remote riverbank in Kala Dhaka, located in the Swat region, roughly fifty miles north of bin Laden’s compound. There the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) would wait. In the event that the SEALs’ raid ran into serious trouble, the QRF could get to Abbottabad in approximately twenty minutes. Meanwhile, the Black Hawks whizzed quietly toward the compound and eventually made it to the outskirts of Abbottabad.

In Afghanistan, Admiral McRaven was running the operation from a secure location in Jalalabad. In Kabul, General David Petraeus and one of his aides monitored the events in a classified control room. If the Pakistanis scrambled their fighter jets, Petraeus was poised to mobilize US warplanes to respond.