by Adrian Levy
Pasha described it as a “kick in the teeth.”57 Even after Pakistan’s prime minister, president, and army chief all condemned the attack, belligerent U.S. officials still refused to apologize. “These people weren’t gathering for a bake sale. They were terrorists,” was the official Washington line.58
Pasha carried a personal message from General Kayani, who was infuriated by a damning new White House report to Congress on Pakistan’s domestic efforts to stamp out terrorism that had concluded that “there remains no clear path to defeating the insurgency in Pakistan.”59 Putting the focus back on the CIA, Pasha complained that the United States had far too many undeclared officers in-country. According to his tally, more than 330 contractors and staff had been identified as working under the radar and would have to quit Pakistan. “If the purpose of their coming was consistent with the interests of Pakistan, there was no good reason for Americans not to disclose all the required information,” Pasha said.60 The United States needed to come clean and treat Pakistan as a partner, or perhaps all parties should go their own way, he told Panetta.
In Islamabad, U.S. ambassador Munter appeared to back the latter course. At a think tank event entitled “Pakistan–United States: A Way Forward” he suggested that it was time to “change the nature of our help.” In the future, America must be “wise enough to build the relationship outside of the military.”61
April 11, 2011, Bilal Town, Abbottabad
Ibrahim’s wife, Maryam, was packing, taking her daughter, Rehma, and the three boys off to her parents’ place in Shangla. After hearing about Al Qaeda roundups in Abbottabad (although the ISI had never confirmed it had seized Bali bomber Umar Patek, the news of his capture had spread like wildfire among local residents) and fearing further crackdowns, she needed air. She had to get out of the compound, a place she found stifling, especially since Ibrahim had tried to convince her that the Sheikh and his entourage had “gone away.” Rehma, too, needed a break. Since the television incident she had barely spoken. She was frightened of the man upstairs and of what his continued presence meant for her family’s safety.
Osama watched from his third-floor balcony as Maryam was driven out in the red Suzuki minivan, glad to see the back of her.62 Her absence would provide him with a timely opportunity to work on Ibrahim, winning more time before he and his family would have to move.
Osama was determined for Hamzah to come before they quit the house. He had already dispatched Khalid’s fake ID card and driver’s license with letters to Atiyah, hoping that Hamzah bore a close enough resemblance to his half brother to be able to use them on his journey. All they had to agree on now was the safest route. Hamzah’s wife and children would come separately, as they did not need any special security measures.
In North Waziristan, where Hamzah was still staying, Atiyah remained deeply worried about security and still believed that Khairiah, Hamzah, Mohammed, and Othman bin Laden had all been tracked from Iran. His fears and frustration bubbled over in a letter written to Osama on April 5: “I am still upset with you about this. I want you to understand my point of view and … deal with the issue without rushing.” Unless they moved carefully, Hamzah could succumb to a drone strike like his half brother Saad or be picked up by Pakistani security forces. “All I want is for … us to have safety and success,” Atiyah explained, beseeching his leader to remain cautious. “You are his father. He belongs to you. You are our leader, and we will obey you.”63
There was another problem. Bored with Atiyah’s “prison,” Hamzah had taken off with Abu Khalil, a brother who supervised explosives training. Now Atiyah’s charge was in the most dangerous location of all: a designated Al Qaeda training camp. The last time Atiyah had lost control of one of the Sheikh’s sons there had been tragic consequences.64
Getting Hamzah to the safety of Abbottabad would take guile. But did the Sheikh understand how appalling the security situation really was? Atiyah asked. “Searches on the road have increased and become more intense. This is very dangerous and applies to travel on the highway.” If something were to happen to Hamzah—“God forbid”—then the intermediary who brought him would also be compromised, and Osama, too. “So the danger is multiplied!”
Atiyah had two suggestions: send Hamzah by the mujahideen smuggling route that went from North Waziristan into Khyber Agency, down to the town of Bara, and on to Peshawar, or send him to Quetta, from where he could fly up to Peshawar using Khalid’s ID card.
The first option was the most problematic, as Hamzah would have to be guided. “Do we tell the brothers we recruit to accompany him to Peshawar who their passenger is?” asked Atiyah. If they kept his identity secret, then Hamzah would have to fend for himself when he reached Peshawar, using addresses and telephone numbers provided. Perhaps Khalid could meet him?
For Atiyah the second option was better: Quetta to Karachi to Peshawar by air or train. “This is the least dangerous … We have the means (through southern Waziristan) and we would introduce him to people there.”65
Still jittery, he reminded the Sheikh to review all communication methods. “I got rid of the [SIM] cards that I used to use between us,” he confided. “I broke them. I am using new cards now. Please do the same.”
A few days later, as the plan advanced, Khairiah wrote to Hamzah’s wife, Maryam.66 “Everyone misses you and hopes to see you.” She wanted to pass on some practical advice. “It is preferable to travel light.” And she added an apology for leaving them alone in Waziristan: “Please forgive me if I made you mad.” She also had a message for the grandchildren: “I miss you very much. May God unite us soon. Listen to and obey your mother and father and do not anger them. Peace and God’s mercy and blessings be upon you.”
She was sorry the letter was brief but “the power keeps going on and off.” Even leafy, peaceable Abbottabad had its problems.67
As Osama plotted new arrivals, worrying mainly about dangers posed by the “wicked Rafidahs [Iran],” the Americans were getting closer by the day, analyzing and watching. As well as establishing an observation post within sight of the compound, the CIA had also recruited local help to confirm Osama’s presence there. It came in the form of Dr. Shakil Afridi, a well-regarded local district health officer, who had been secretly tasked with obtaining DNA evidence from the women and children living inside AC1.68
Dr. Afridi had first turned up at the family planning office in Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad, in early February 2011, asking to recruit female nurses to work on a hepatitis B vaccination campaign. Dressed in a black suit and carrying a new laptop and satellite phone, he explained that Save the Children (STC) and USAID were footing the bill, so he could afford to pay higher-than-normal wages. Successful candidates only needed to have a good working knowledge of the local community.
As nurses queued up to put their names down, the doctor cheerfully mapped out a program that would concentrate on Abbottabad’s poorer fringes, particularly the parts of Nawan Shehr and Bilal Town inhabited by Pashtuns. He told the nurses that STC international colleagues Sue and Toni, who had set up an office in Abbottabad for the duration of the campaign, would supervise their work.
With nine nurses recruited, Dr. Afridi explained that each resident should be given a blood test to check if they had hepatitis B. If their results were negative, a vaccination would be administered. All blood samples should be kept and handed over to him. After treating those who came voluntarily, the nurses would knock on other doors. What he did not tell them was that the project had come about in a rather unorthodox manner.
An American STC staffer called Kate had first approached Dr. Afridi at a seminar in Peshawar in November 2009. The project had been green-lit the following year and, aware of the security implications for a Pakistani working on a USAID project, Kate had always picked up Dr. Afridi in an SUV with blacked-out windows and hid him under a blanket before driving him to a location that she described as “a USAID warehouse” but that was actually part of the U.S. embassy in Islamabad’s diplomat
ic zone.69
Dr. Afridi understood the need for heightened security. He had been kidnapped by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in 2008, the fighters hoping to extract money from his in-laws. It had been a terrifying experience that had led to his family relocating temporarily to California. After he signed on to Kate’s project, she had given him a satellite phone. The signal, she explained, was always on and could be tracked, unlike with the temperamental Pakistani cell phone network.
At the end of 2010, Kate had passed Dr. Afridi on to another American colleague, Sue, at Save the Children. To ensure his cooperation, Sue paid the equivalent of $55,000 into his private bank account. He had not questioned the surprisingly generous size of the sum but had gone on to recruit local helpers, following Sue’s instructions.
After the first medical camp in February, Dr. Afridi had come back to Abbottabad on March 19 to retrieve the blood samples—so that the DNA of everyone who had taken part could be tested. Dr. Afridi’s nurses had checked a significant percentage of the four thousand people who lived in Bilal Town, and a second camp took place between April 13 and 18.
Four days later, Afridi received a call from Sue, who asked him to extend the program farther into the “Pashtun area,” concentrating on the lanes closest to the Waziristan Palace, as locals nowadays called the Abbottabad compound. This time he should monitor the nurses’ progress personally, she said.
On April 21, 2011, Dr. Afridi, accompanied by two nurses, Amna and Bakhto, arrived in a gray jeep bearing the logo of the provincial health department outside the Waziristan Palace. It was the only house in the area the vaccination team had not yet visited. The local nursing supervisor had informed Dr. Afridi that her two workers had tried but had not been able to get in as the family had “had a feud” and told them to go away.70 He had been encouraged by Sue to give it another try.71
When nobody answered the doorbell, nurse Amna realized she had been to the house once before, administering polio vaccines to ten children shortly after the earthquake of 2005. At the time, Ibrahim and Abrar had had at most four children between them, so she must have treated Amal’s children, too.
But the nurse had no idea about names and identities. Finding Shamraiz Khan, the farm laborer who lived opposite and had once been inside the compound, Dr. Afridi extracted a phone number for the owner.72 The nurse called it. Ibrahim the companion answered and claimed that the residents were away. Unsure what to say next, the nurse gave the phone to Dr. Afridi, who explained that a new batch of high-quality hepatitis B doses was available. He was offering a cut-price deal. Ibrahim said he would consult his wife when she returned and hung up.
Later that day, Dr. Afridi reported back to Sue, who asked him to ring the palace again. He did so the next morning but the phone was switched off.
The following day, Osama, who had been inside the compound throughout this exchange—although Ibrahim had not informed him of the calls—received an update from Atiyah about a possible new companion. The Punjabi shopkeeper with cold feet was now back on, but he was having trouble extricating himself from his current job.
Atiyah was apologetic. Osama might have to remain in Abbottabad a while longer. In his reply, Osama came up with some suggestions as to how to break the deadlock.
“Propose to [the new companion] that he [quit his job and] be self employed,” he wrote, advising that the man would need a cover story to tell to relatives and neighbors whose curiosity would be pricked by his movements. “He convinces his relatives that self employment is better than a position and that he [has] found a partner to work with.” Perhaps the new companion could tell them he has set up “a real estate office,” “an automobile spare parts store,” “a household appliance store,” “a grocery story,” or “a small chicken farm.”
Osama was insistent. This maneuver had been brought on by Ibrahim, but he was ready to move in September. He wanted Hamzah with him when they ventured out.73
April 2011, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
The Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) booklet for AC1—a compendium of everyone living inside the Abbottabad compound and its probable layout—was brimming with information. One of its compilers was Gina Bennett, a veteran CIA analyst with a remarkably honed attention to detail who had authored the first strategic warning about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda while employed by the State Department in 1993.
Over the course of ten years, she had worked day and night inside a windowless office at CIA headquarters chasing bad guys, “people who are trying to kill lots of people in horrendous, painful ways.”74 By 2011, getting Osama had become personal. Her all-encompassing mission had contributed to the breakdown of her marriage, caused ructions with her children, and led to the loss of friends and colleagues, including Jennifer Matthews, who had been killed by Humam al-Balawi at Camp Chapman in 2009.
Matthews and Bennett had first bonded when they were both pregnant and throwing up with morning sickness in an agency bathroom. They joked that they were like the cartoon character Elastigirl from the Pixar Animation Studio film The Incredibles who declared: “I’m at the top of my game. I’m right up there with the big dogs. Girls, c’mon. Leave the saving the world to men? I don’t think so.”75
Reviewing all the available data, Bennett was now “100 percent sure” that Osama was living on the top floor of AC1.76 Although there was no reference to any assistance having come from the Iranian authorities, she knew that sixty-two-year-old “Khayriya Husayn Taha Sabir aka Umm Hamza” had recently moved in, and she believed that son Hamzah had arrived, too.
In the SSE booklet, “Hamza” was listed, correctly, as being twenty-one years old and was marked as having come to the house accompanied by his wife and children, whose names were recorded, correctly, as “wife: Maryam, son: Usama (4 yrs old), daughter: Khayriya (1 yr old).”
Given that the first names of Al Qaeda wives and children were almost as sacrosanct within the movement as the real names of mujahideen, Bennett and her “Band of Sisters” at the CTC had been dexterous in getting this information. It could only have come from the authorities in Tehran or from reading private bin Laden family correspondence, which meant there was possibly a mole somewhere inside the courier network or Osama’s Pakistani protection ring, something that the CIA never admitted to.
Bennett’s team noticeably knew far less about Amal bin Laden, who had never been in Iran. The best piece of intelligence was a grainy picture of her as a teenager—smiling and with a shaggy mop of black hair, the young bride who Osama would marry—a photo that had been sold to the CIA by a relative in Yemen. According to the SSE booklet, Amal lived on the “2nd and 3rd floor” of AC1 and was thought to be twenty-eight years old and to have one daughter “Safiyah (9 yrs old)” and “2 unidentified children born since 2001.” Bennett could only presume that they were in the compound, too, although she had no actual information about them.
She was better informed about “Siham Abdullah bin Husayn Al Sharif (54 yrs old).” Osama’s third wife was also living on the second or third floor along with her daughters, “Miriam (20 yrs old) and Sumaya (16 yrs old).” Also confirmed as a resident was “Siham’s son, Khalid (23 yrs old).” The CIA had digitally aged a photo from his old Saudi passport, seized in a raid in Karachi. He was thought to be living on the second floor.
Bennett had struck gold with a passport photograph of Abrar, which showed him floppy-haired, jowly, discontented, and stubbly. According to Bennett’s information, his full name was “Abrar Ahmad Said Abd al Hamid.” He was thirty-three years old and had moved to the compound with his brother from “Mardan city” in 2006. His known pseudonyms were “Arshad, Asif Khan and Sardar Ashad” and together with his brother he was the “Owner of AC1.” His oldest son, “Muhammad,” attended “madrassa away from family” while he, Bushra, and three other children, “Ibrahim (4 months), Abd al-Rahman (1–4 yrs old), and Khadija (1–4 yrs old)” lived on the first floor of the main house. The agency suspected the house was split into a duplex with differe
nt entrances, Abrar and family using the door at the front of the house while Osama exited at the back.
On the CIA mock-ups, the main house was located in “Courtyard A.”
There was no photograph of Ibrahim.77 He was described as “Courier and assessed as one of 3 individuals responsible for HVT #1’s care”—the others being Abrar and Osama’s son Khalid.
Ibrahim had several pseudonyms—“Arshad, Asif Khan, Tariq, Haji Nadeem and Sardar Ashad”—and typically wore “a white shalwar kameez.” His children were “Khalid (5–7 yrs), Ahmad (1–4 yrs), Habib (18 months) and Rahma (8 yrs old),” who lived with their parents in the annex. The CIA labeled it C1, locating it in the smaller “Courtyard C.”78 There was no mention of Mohammed or Othman bin Laden, who were both in Karachi with their families.
In Washington, things were coming together. The president had chaired several National Security Council meetings about AC1 and by the time the final plan was brought to him for approval on March 29, analysis of the water table around the compound had discounted the possibility of tunneling in. It also meant there were no tunnels out.79 If he was in there, and they went in to get him, Osama bin Laden would be trapped.
Early April 2011, Naval Special Warfare Development Group Headquarters, Virginia Beach, Virginia
The Red Squadron of SEAL Team Six (ST6) had received an unexpected recall to the garrison. They had just got back from a deployment in Afghanistan, after which they had been on a training trip, diving off the coast of Miami, according to Robert O’Neill, a decorated sniper and former assault team leader who had been on the Captain Phillips Somali pirate mission.
At the end of their first day back at base they were no wiser. Some of the team speculated that they were being deployed to Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi’s regime was in free fall. “The first day’s briefing, they actually kind of lied to us,” recalled O’Neill.80