Manhunt

by Peter L. Bergen

  18 Mumbai-style attacks in Germany: “Terror Suspects ‘Were Tipped Off,’ ” CNN.com, September 10, 2007, http://articles.cnn.com/2007-09-10/world/germany.terror_1_joerg-ziercke-terror-plot-training-camps?_s=PM:WORLD.

  19 ramped-up program of attacks: Katherine Tiedemann and Peter Bergen, “The Year of the Drone,” New America Foundation, February 24, 2010, http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/bergentiedemann2.pdf.

  20 a CIA drone killed Atiyah Abdul Rahman: “Atiyah Abd al-Rahman Dead: Al Qaeda Second in Command Killed in Pakistan,” Associated Press, August 28, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/27/atiyah-abd-al-rahman-al-qaeda-dead_n_939009.html.

  21 one of bin Laden’s dozen or so sons: Douglas Farah and Dana Priest, “Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in Al-Qaeda,” Washington Post, October 14, 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082000980.html.

  22 Islamist groups did very well: “Two Islamist Parties Win Big in Egypt Election,” CNN.com, January 21, 2012, http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-21/africa/world_africa_egypt-elections_1_egypt-election-egyptian-election-conservative-al-nour-party?_s=PM:AFRICA.

  23 the most dangerous of the group’s regional branches: “Intel Chief: U.S. Faces Many Interconnected Foes,” Associated Press, January 31, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57368904/intel-chief-u.s-faces-many-interconnected-foes/.

  24 “Let my grave be an eagle’s belly”: Osama bin Laden, “Exposing the New Crusader War,” on jihadist websites February 2003.

  25 sent mechanized diggers to the compound: “Osama Bin Laden Compound Being Demolished in Pakistan,” Reuters, February 25, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/26/osama-bin-laden-compound-demolished.

  26 “history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies”: “President Bush Addresses the Nation,” Washington Post, September 20, 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html.

  27 “small men on the wrong side”: Remarks by the President at United States Military Academy at West Point Commencement, West Point, New York, May 22, 2010.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Nonfiction book writing is a strange combination of the intensely solitary—no one is going to write the book for you—and the profoundly collective. Andrew Lebovich worked on all phases of this project, performing and organizing research, fact-checking and footnoting the book, and translating French materials. Jennifer Rowland also performed and organized research, fact-checked and footnoted the manuscript, translated Arabic materials, and did the excellent photo research. It was my good luck to have two researchers as smart and well organized as Andrew and Jennifer to work on this book and to have worked with them on a daily basis at the New America Foundation. Andrew has gone on to work for a D.C.-based firm doing analysis on North Africa, and we will be hearing much more from him in the future.

  The New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., has been my home for a decade. I am especially lucky to work there with its president, Steve Coll, who is invariably the smartest guy in the room and also the most self-effacing. His work ethic, integrity, and leadership are inspirational. Thanks also to my New America colleagues Patrick Doherty and Brian Fishman, who work with me in the national security program at New America. And thanks to Simone Frank, Danielle Maxwell, Troy Schneider, Stephanie Gunter, Faith Smith, and Rachel White, who help our program in numerous different ways. Thanks to interns Tristan Berne, Galen Petruso, Kelsy Greenwald, and Eric Verdeyen, who all helped with some of the research for the book. Thanks also to Christina Satkowski.

  The author Ken Ballen, who is also a leading pollster in the Muslim world, read the manuscript carefully and had many important suggestions about how to improve it. Similarly, the security expert Andrew Marshall made key editorial observations about how to better conceptualize the book. Thanks to you both for your guidance and friendship.

  The journalism of Nick Schmidle in the New Yorker and Kimberly Dozier and Adam Goldman at the Associated Press deserves special mention for the light it has helped to shed on the Abbottabad raid and the intelligence breakthroughs that led to it.

  In Pakistan, I received invaluable help from Major General Nazir Butt and Commodore (ret.) Zafar Iqbal. Thanks to you both for your sage advice and friendship. Thanks also to Khalid Khan Kheshgi and Ihsan Khan.

  Thanks also to the team at Free Press, who published my three previous books on al-Qaeda and bin Laden, which were the necessary foundations to write this book, and in particular my editor there, Dominick Anfuso. Thanks also to Will Sulkin and Stuart Williams, of the Bodley Head, who are publishing this book in the United Kingdom. Thanks also to Politikens Forlag in Denmark, the House of Books in Holland, Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH in Germany, Cappelen Damm AS in Norway, and Publicações Dom Quixote, Lda., in Portugal for publishing this book in their respective countries.

  At the White House, thanks to Ben Rhodes and Jamie Smith for the help you provided. At the Department of Defense, thanks to Doug Wilson, Dr. George Little, Carl Woog, Captain John Kirby, Tara Rigler, Bob Mehal, and Lieutenant Colonel James Gregory for the support you offered. At the CIA, thanks to Preston Golson, Cynthia Rapp, Jennifer Youngblood, and Marie Harf; at the National Counterterrorism Center, thanks to Carl Kropf; at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, thanks to Shawn Turner and Mike Birmingham; at Special Operations Command, thanks to Ken McGraw; in the Office of the Vice President, thanks to Alexandra Kahan; at the State Department, thanks to Philippe Reines and Caroline Adler; at the Defense Intelligence Agency, thanks to Susan Strednansky; in Admiral Mullen’s office, thanks to Sarah Chayes and to Sally Donnelly; in General McChrystal’s office, thanks to Duncan Boothby and Samuel Ayres, and thanks also to Colonel Erik Gunhus in Afghanistan. Thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Buckley, Lieutenant Colonel Joel Rayburn, Ferial Govashiri, and Tommy Vietor.

  At Nutopia Productions, thanks to Jane Root and Phil Craig, who made available the full transcripts of the White House interviews that they taped for their invaluable documentary Targeting bin Laden, which aired on the History Channel. Thanks to Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times, who made available the card that the SEALs carried the night of the raid, which is reproduced in this book. Thanks to Gene Thorp for the excellent maps. Thanks also to Keith Sinzinger.

  Thanks to Anderson Cooper, Eric Greitens, and Steve Coll, three gentlemen whose work and character I greatly admire and who all looked over the manuscript. Thanks also to all those who agreed to be interviewed for the book. Those who agreed to go on the record can be found in the list of interviewees on this page.

  I have worked at CNN in one capacity or another since 1990 and am grateful to continue to work there today with so many of its excellent reporters, executives, producers, and editors, in particular Pamela Sellars, Richard Galant, Charlie Moore, and Anderson Cooper. Thanks also to Henry Schuster, now at CBS’s 60 Minutes, who has been a friend and colleague for a decade and a half.

  Thanks to Storyhouse Productions and producer Simon Epstein for their work on the National Geographic documentary The Last Days of Osama bin Laden, which helped to inform this book. And a particular thanks to my wife, Tresha Mabile, who was the co-executive producer of the documentary and traveled to Pakistan when she was five months pregnant to produce it. At National Geographic Television, thanks to Michael Cascio, Kim Woodward, and Jack Smith, who made the documentary better.

  Thanks to Marin Strmecki of the Smith Richardson Foundation and Nancy Chang of the Open Society Institute, for their funding of our work at the New America Foundation. Thanks also to Chip Kaye and Fareed Zakaria, who chair the advisory council for the national security program at New America and have been stalwart supporters. Thanks also to the other members of the advisory council, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Fred Hassan, Tom Freston, Bob Niehaus, and Chris Niehaus. Thanks also to Liaquat and Meena Ahamed.

  Some of the reporting for this book first took shape in a number of magazines and newspapers. I
am grateful to The New Republic’s former editor Franklin Foer for publishing my work and to the magazine’s current editor, Richard Just, who made my pieces much better. Thanks to Cullen Murphy at the Atlantic and Wayne Lawson at Vanity Fair, Carlos Lozada at the Washington Post, Rick Stengel at Time, Alan Hunter at the Sunday Times, and Robert Colvile, Con Coughlin, and Sally Chatterton at the Daily Telegraph.

  Thanks to the director Greg Barker, who has optioned this book for a theatrical-release documentary for HBO, and to producers John Battsek and Julie Goldman. I’m looking forward to seeing the results! Thanks also to Colin Callender and Marc Gordon of Playground Entertainment for their interest in this book.

  Thanks to Susan Glasser, Blake Hounshell, and Benjamin Pauker of Foreign Policy for your collaboration on the AfPak Channel. Thanks to Chris Clifford and Shannon Calabrese of Keppler Speakers and Clark Forcey for your advice and help over the years. Thanks to Karen Greenberg at Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security for your counsel and friendship.

  My agent, Tina Bennett of Janklow & Nesbit, has been a joy to work with for the past decade, both as a friend and as an intellectual sounding board. Tina is widely and justly regarded as the best nonfiction agent in the business, and I consider myself very lucky to be one of the authors she represents. Also at Janklow, thanks to Svetlana Katz.

  Thanks to the Bergen, Mabile, Gould, Takacs, and Coughlin families for all your support. In particular I want to thank my mother-in-law, Albertha Mabile, who came to stay with us in the first month when Pierre was born and helped to hold down the fort. You were indispensable. (How did you sleep last night?)

  At Crown, thanks to the superb team of Molly Stern, David Drake, Annsley Rosner, Jay Sones, Julie Cepler, Matthew Martin, Robert Siek, Linda Kaplan, and Rachel Berkowitz. Special thanks to assistant editor Stephanie Chan, who worked diligently on the photo inserts. Copy editor Jenna Dolan made the book better and more accurate in innumerable small ways. And executive publicist Penny Simon brought much efficiency and good humor to the task of publicizing this book.

  In many ways this book is a co-production with my wonderful editor, Rachel Klayman, who edited my first book about bin Laden, the manuscript of which I submitted to her a week or so before the 9/11 attacks. Rachel brought her ferocious intelligence to bear on this new project and also her great attention to detail, which was mandatory for a book that had to be researched, reported, and written in ten months. An “editor’s editor,” she worked with a great deal of care and thought on every line of this book. She did all this with much grace and humor despite the other significant projects she also had going on. I hope we can publish another book together soon!

  Above all, thanks to my wife, Tresha Mabile. Thanks for reading this book many times over and discussing its contents with me far beyond what anyone could ask for. And thanks also for traveling to Pakistan with me to research the book when you were pregnant with Pierre. The book is dedicated to him, our most important joint project. I love him and you, a lot.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CNN’s Peter Arnett and Peter Bergen together with cameraman Peter Jouvenal (at right) did the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in spring 1997. They met al-Qaeda’s leader in a mud hut in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where this photograph was taken.

  Peter Bergen is the author of three previous books about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. His first book, Holy War, Inc., was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into eighteen languages. His most recent book, The Longest War, also a New York Times bestseller, won the Washington Institute’s prize for the best book on the Middle East of 2011. Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst and director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation. He is a contributing editor at the New Republic and has worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television, Discovery, and CNN. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Time, Vanity Fair, and many other newspapers and magazines around the world. A member of the National Security Preparedness Group, a successor to the 9/11 Commission, he is also the editor of the AfPak Channel, which can be found at www.foreignpolicy.com/afpak. He has testified before several congressional committees about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and al-Qaeda. Bergen holds an MA in modern history from New College, Oxford University. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, documentary producer Tresha Mabile, and their son, Pierre.

  For more information, visit peterbergen.com.