by Adrian Levy
93. Nabila had some contact with CAGE, per author interview with Asim Qureshi.
94. This man was Abdullah al-Sindi, who since 1999 had worked for KSM in Karachi. In 2002 he had helped bin Laden’s family travel from Karachi to Iran. Based in Quetta and Karachi since 2003, he had also run couriers between Al Qaeda Central and the Persian Gulf. Letters from Abbottabad also suggest he was a key figure in helping those coming from Iran enter Pakistan, including Khairiah and Hamzah bin Laden.
95. An undated Al Qaeda report on smuggling routes through the Tribal Areas was found at Abbottabad. Given references to events mentioned in the report, it must have been composed after June 2008. ODNI documents, Abbottabad.
96. Author interviews with bin Laden family members. The existence of these photos is also referenced in several letters to and from Osama. ODNI documents, Abbottabad.
97. Miriam bin Laden was off the hook, and to ensure he had not offended Osama, Daood wrote asking if he had “done anything inappropriate, written something that made you mad or antagonized you?” Abu Abdallah al-Halabi (Daood) to Osama. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
98. Osama references Saad working in the shop in his final letter to Atiyah dated April 26, 2011. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in March 2016.
99. Hamzah to his father, July 2009. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
100. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
101. Osama made this suggestion in several letters, including in Osama to Atiyah (Sheikh Mahmud), October 21, 2010, SOCOM letters 2012-0000015-HT, www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined.
102. Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden (New York: St. Martin’s, 2009).
103. David Rohde, “Held by the Taliban,” New York Times, October 17, 2009.
104. “Jihadist Website Posts Al-Libi’s ‘Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy,’ ” Open Source Center, fas.org/irp/dni/osc/libi.pdf.
105. “Obama 2009 Pakistan Strikes,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, August 10, 2011.
106. A Pakistani military official later confirmed the reports, telling the Telegraph (London): “We have the same information but it has not yet been independently confirmed.” “Osama bin Laden’s Son Thought to Have Been Killed in Drone Strike,” July 23, 2009.
107. Author interviews with bin Laden family members. The hedgehog story was also told by Abdel Bari Atwan, After Bin Laden (London: Saqi Books, 2012).
108. Osama to Atiyah, undated. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
109. Khalid also sent a message to his former brother-in-law Daood. “Please send me the pictures of my brother Saad before and after his martyrdom,” Khalid said. Not only had he lost a much-loved older brother, he was also well aware that his on-again, off-again marriage to Karima was once again off, as his father would never let him go to Waziristan now. “I urge you to write to me in detail about your security news,” he continued. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
110. Atiyah to Osama, ODNI documents, Abbottabad. See also Osama to Atiyah, undated, SOCOM-2012-0000019-HT, www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined.
111. Balawi arrived in Wana in March 2009. Author interviews with Fida Dawani, widow of Captain Ali bin Zeid, 2014.
112. Joby Warrick, The Triple Agent (New York: Random House, 2011). Also author interviews with Fida Dawani and former GID officers who served with him, Amman, November 2014.
113. In the Makeen district of South Waziristan.
114. Although he was flattered by Baitullah’s attention, Balawi’s goal was getting close to Atiyah, al-Zawahiri, and bin Laden’s Number Three, Sheikh Saeed al-Masri. When a Pashtun journalist working for the Taliban’s online magazine, Vanguards of Khorasan, asked to interview him, Balawi agreed, hoping to get noticed. Had he changed since entering the land of jihad? he was asked. “You should rather ask, what did not change in me,” Balawi responded. “I was reborn here.” In Makeen, in South Waziristan, Balawi experienced one of the most intensive periods of the drone war. There had been fourteen strikes since he had entered Pakistan, three of them targeting Makeen, where he helped patch up many victims, treating the kinds of wounds he had never seen before, using rudimentary equipment.
115. He had been sleeping on the roof with his new wife, who was ministering an intravenous drip and massaging his swollen legs. She was also killed. Declan Walsh, “Airstrike Kills Taliban Leader Baitullah Mehsud,” Guardian, August 7, 2009.
116. Warrick, Triple Agent.
117. Author interviews with Fida Dawani and former colleagues of bin Zeid at GID.
118. Quotes from videos Balawi recorded before his operation.
119. Since arriving in Pakistan, he had deliberately discontinued his e-mail communications with Amman to make the intelligence people “stew in their juices,” so they would be even more convinced of his commitment when he came back on track. Warrick, Triple Agent.
120. This included details of important mujahideen Balawi had met, the impact of drones, lists of dead and wounded, and the frustration being felt by Al Qaeda. Everything matched the CIA’s own records, which suggested the Jordanian was actually present at the events he described.
121. Author interviews with Mahfouz and bin Laden family members.
122. The Mauritanian, Osama’s three remaining sons, Abu Ghaith, and military council members including Saif were all in the party.
123. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
124. Ibid.
125. The Mauritanian reached his parents in Nouakchott, who, after nine years of silence, were ecstatic. However, they informed him that his wife’s mother had died. His wife complained to the compound director, Hajji Akhbari. “You heartless people,” she said. “You have destroyed my family!” Mahfouz interviews.
126. They discussed digging a tunnel (a near-impossible task given that the main gate was several hundred yards away), scaling a wall (too dangerous given the number of guards and security cameras), and feigning sickness and then escaping from the hospital.
127. Author interviews with Mahfouz, Nouakchott, Mauritania.
128. The Mauritanian, who regarded himself as Iman’s surrogate father, felt secretly ashamed. Iman had never traveled alone before but had embarrassed them all with her bravery. He was also worried she might be raped or executed. He had heard horrific stories about what went on in the women’s wing of Evin prison.
129. Najwa bin Laden had put the ticker tape message on the cable channel at Iman’s request. Per Mahfouz interviews and confirmed by bin Laden family.
130. Author interviews with Mahfouz and bin Laden family members.
131. Guy Lawson, “Osama’s Prodigal Son: The Dark, Twisted Journey of Omar bin Laden,” Rolling Stone, January 20, 2010.
132. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
133. Warrick, Triple Agent; also useful insight from former CIA agent Robert Baer, “A Dagger to the CIA,” GQ, February 25, 2010.
134. The Jordanian was exhausted and injured, having broken his leg during training exercises at a Taliban camp a few weeks earlier.
135. In truth, Hakimullah could not speak Arabic so could not converse directly with Balawi.
136. “Suspected CIA Suicide Bomber Calls American Team ‘Gift from God,’ ” CNN, February 28, 2010.
137. Secretly, he must have been terrified. He was the father of two young girls, Leila and Lina, and he had never planned for this to become a suicide operation. Captain Ali bin Zeid was supposed to have gone to Peshawar and been kidnapped with Al Qaeda extracting maximum propaganda before they butchered him on video. But after the CIA had insisted on meeting Balawi personally, money
man Sheikh Saaed and planner Atiyah had changed the plan so quickly Balawi could not resist, and before he knew it he was no longer the bait but the lethal ordnance. When the Americans refused to go to Pakistan, Balawi had been dispatched with his explosive vest to Afghanistan, with Al Qaeda agents following and filming him right up to the border in case he bailed out.
138. Paul Harris, “CIA Bomber’s ‘Martyrdom’ Video Urges More U.S. Attacks,” Observer (UK), January 9, 2010.
CHAPTER NINE
1. Bob Woodward, “Death of Osama bin Laden: Phone Call Pointed U.S. to Compound—and to ‘the Pacer,’ ” Washington Post, May 6, 2011.
2. Ali Ismail, “US Frame-up of Aafia Siddiqui Begins to Unravel: Pakistani Victim of Rendition and Torture,” World Socialist Website, February 1, 2010.
3. C. J. Hughes, “Neuroscientist Denies Trying to Kill Americans,” New York Times, January 28, 2010.
4. Petra Bartosiewicz, “Al-Qaeda Woman? Putting Aafia Siddiqui on Trial,” Time, January 18, 2010.
5. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
6. Inside the Tourist Complex, the Mauritanian was relieved. “If Iman had been deported to Saudi, she would have been easy prey for the U.S.,” he recalled. “Imagine what she could have told the Americans about all of us.”
7. Najwa arrived at the end of February.
8. Khairiah had come into her life when the bin Laden household in Jeddah had had so many servants of different nationalities that they called themselves the United Nations. Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden (New York: St. Martin’s, 2009). Since 2001, when Najwa had left her older children with Khairiah, their lives had taken such different turns that she doubted they could still get along. Author interviews with family members.
9. Acccording to Mahfouz, the book was eventually published online in Arabic.
10. As a boy, he had visited his father’s training camps, had been sent to the front lines of the Soviet war, and had been with his father in 1998 when he received the news of the bombing of the U.S. embassies in East Africa.
11. Soon after Khalid dispatched his letter, Osama discovered that his daughter Miriam had also written and secretly added her own missive to the Iranians to Khalid’s USB stick. He demanded that Atiyah destroy it. Letter from Atiyah to Osama confirming he has done this, dated June 19, 2010, and declassified ahead of the Anas al-Libi trial in New York, Govt exhibit 421, 10-CR-019 (S-4) (RJD).
12. “Osama Bin Laden’s Family Seek Asylum,” Asharq Al-Awsat, March 24, 2010.
13. The letter itself has not been released, but Osama refers to it and its contents in another undated letter to Atiyah, which also confirms Saad’s death. Recovered from Abbottabad, declassified and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [hereafter ODNI] in May 2015, dni.gov/index.php/resources/bin-laden-bookshelf.
14. Ibid.
15. Osama to Bakr bin Laden, undated. ODNI documents, Abbottabad. Bakr is addressed as Abu Nawaf but it is clear to whom this letter is really addressed.
16. Atiyah believed that the Iranians had agreed to the family releases because of the kidnapped diplomat. He had boasted about Al Qaeda’s ability to put pressure on the Iranians in previous letters, such as this one he wrote to Osama on June 11, 2009: “The threat which we sent to them and the apprehension of their associate, the trade deputy in the consulate in Peshawar, and other things they saw from us, brought fear to them,… [But] they don’t want to show that they are negotiating with us or reacting to our pressure.” ODNI documents, Abbottabad.
17. Hamzah’s instructions were to: “inform the nation, spread the jihadi doctrine, and refute the wrong and the suspicious raised around the jihad.” ODNI documents, Abbottabad.
18. The Iranian vice president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, claimed that their diplomat had only been freed after a “complicated intelligence operation” led by Iran. The intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, announced: “My ministry took the initiative and managed to rescue the diplomat.”
19. The son who died was Mohammad Haqqani, a brother of Sirajuddin, who had taken over the network from his ailing father several years previously.
20. According to Pakistani investigative journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, author interview, Islamabad, 2010.
21. Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, who liked to describe America as “the evil empire” and was supervising Al Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan, had been delighted with the operation.
22. Among those who had stayed there shortly before being targeted was Khalid Habib, Al Qaeda’s commander for the Tribal Areas.
23. Sheikh Saeed’s son was Abd al-Rahman. More details of the strike can be read at “Obama 2010 Pakistan Strikes,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, August 10, 2011.
24. Local journalist Noor Behram reached the scene soon after and heard that five Pakistani civilians had also perished. At Miram Shah hospital he photographed a young girl swaddled in bandages shortly before she died, her mother and brother having been killed on the spot. Author interview, Islamabad, February 2012.
25. Sheikh Saeed warned back in August 2009 that the United States would pay for Baitullah Mehsud’s death: “There are thousands of tribesmen who are like him and who will take revenge on the Americans and their allies.” But until the Camp Chapman attack, no one outside intelligence circles had really taken much notice of him.
26. In February 2010, the families of those who had perished at Camp Chapman gathered at CIA headquarters to hear Panetta pledge: “Our resolve in unbroken, our energy undiminished … we will carry this fight to the enemy.”
27. Zamray (Osama) to “the children of the noble Brother, Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (Sheikh Saeed),” August 7, 2010. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
28. Sheikh Saeed had also been Al Qaeda’s main link to Mullah Omar, having become one of the few Arabs who had absorbed the local culture and learned to speak Pashto.
29. That mission was being coordinated by Ilyas Kashmiri, the enigmatic Pakistani former spy and mujahid who had assisted in the attempts on Musharraf’s life in 2003 and helped plan the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. He was raising a lashkar al-zil (shadow army) for Al Qaeda, which consisted of two undercover units: one based in Bagram, Afghanistan, and the other inside Pakistan, to track the U.S. president’s movements and those of David Petraeus, the recently appointed commander of the International Security Assistance Force.
30. Osama to Atiyah, letter dated July 17, 2010. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015. Atiyah had been lauded on Al Qaeda websites as “the most important pillar” of the Camp Chapman operation.
31. They had left their movement in a parlous state. By the time Abu Ayyub died, the U.S. bounty on his head had reduced from $5 million to $100,000, and the rate of civilian killings by Islamic State of Iraq had dropped from a high of 2,500 a month in 2007 to just 500. Will McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s, 2015).
32. Osama to Atiyah, letter dated July 17, 2010, ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
33. A good summary of Abu Bakr’s background can be found in McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse.
34. Terrence McCoy, “How the Islamic State Evolved in an American Prison,” Washington Post, November 4, 2014.
35. Ibid. “Anyone who takes part in behavior which is seen as ‘Western’ is severely punished by the extremist elements of the compound,” said one U.S. soldier stationed there. “It’s quite appalling.”
36. The official biography of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
distributed online by jihadist discussion forums and translated into English by SITE Intelligence Group, July 16, 2013, news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/categories/jihad/entry/226-the-story-behind-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi.
37. “The situation will be strongest politically and militarily for the Islamic plan to prepare to completely seize the reins of control over all Iraq,” he wrote.
38. McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse.
39. Osama to Atiyah letter dated July 17, 2010, ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015. What Al Qaeda would not be doing was killing Muslims—something initiated by Zarqawi during the “roar of the killing and the fight” and now embraced by Abu Bakr.
40. Ibid. The Afghan diplomat held with Attarzadeh would have to wait until October 2010 to taste freedom. In negotiations supervised by Osama bin Laden, the government of Hamid Karzai eventually paid $5 million to get him back—such a huge sum that Osama suspected the notes had been marked with “harmful materials or rays” by the CIA. The money should be exchanged “at a bank in a large city” into euros, he said, and then into U.S. dollars at another location.
41. Ibid.
42. The word “expectations” could be translated as “energies.”
43. Osama to Atiyah, letter dated July 17, 2010, ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015. Under Awlaki’s influence, Wuhayshi had also recently lashed out at Iran, threatening attacks if the shura members in the Tourist Complex were not released. Osama sent a sharp rebuke: “Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.” Such threats should not be made without the express permission of Al Qaeda Central.
44. Author copy.
45. Ahmad Hasan Abu al-Khayr to Professor Mustafa Hamid (real name of Abu Walid), August 22, 2009. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in March 2016.
46. Abu Walid’s book contained allegations that were similar to those the Quds Force had aired when first interrogating the Mauritanian: 9/11 had been orchestrated by Mossad and Osama was working under the direction of the CIA. Then there was also an accusation that on the first day of the war in 2001, the CIA had aborted a chance to kill Mullah Omar in a drone strike when it learned Osama bin Laden was there, too. “Perhaps the Taliban was another one entangled in this wicked plan that the web of American and Jewish intelligence agencies was hatching with the leaders of the mujahideen,” Abu al-Khayr wrote, tongue in cheek. Walid would be freed in 2011 and begin a long correspondence with Leah Farrall, an Australian former antiterrorism police officer and now writer. In 2014, they published a book together: Mustafa Hamid and Leah Farrall, The Arabs at War in Afghanistan (London: Hurst, October 2015).