Countdown bin Laden

by Chris Wallace

  “I don’t think Gary is up to this,” Panetta said. “Is it time to replace him? I think he’s grown discouraged.”

  Bash knew that was a bad idea. Gary and his team had worked their asses off, and were feeling just as frustrated as Panetta.

  Bash urged Panetta to wait, to give him time to sound out Gary. He’d let the rest of the group know that their jobs were on the line.

  And that’s what Bash did. He gathered all the dispirited agents together and told them that new ideas were all they had to come up with, nothing more. Just dismissing Panetta or other CIA leaders’ ideas as “impractical” was not enough.

  “Suggest anything—no matter how outlandish,” he said. “Get your thinking going. You have to reassure Panetta that you’re not out of gas.” Take the ideas and trace out how they might work. Write it all down, he said.

  “This is like math class. You need to show your work,” he said.

  Panetta had demanded ten ideas. Bash pressed them to come up with twenty-five.

  “Don’t worry about whether you can do it. Don’t worry about whether it’s a good idea. Just put it on a piece of paper,” Bash said.

  Bash didn’t care what they came up with. He had to motivate them. They were stuck right now, but he knew they could do it. They were elite agents, the best of the best. He’d seen how hard they had worked just to get this far.

  Brainstorming for motivation is Team-Building 101, but Bash was willing to use whatever tools came to hand. He, like Panetta, was new to the spy world. He was an attorney, a Harvard Law graduate who’d always been interested in national security issues. He’d been a security advisor to Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000. Later, he was a member of Gore’s legal effort during the thirty-six-day ballot recount in Florida.

  The team reconvened a week later. Panetta sat down at the head of the conference table as Gary, Sam, and the others filed quietly in.

  The agents didn’t have ten ideas, or twenty-five. No, they had thirty-eight. They had come up with thirty-eight ways to try to get information about the compound and, more important, The Pacer. They even put together what they called the “Chart of 38.”

  Panetta smiled as they rattled down the list. Some ideas were outrageous, like throwing a stink bomb into the compound and taking photos when the occupants fled, or putting listening devices in groceries that were delivered to the compound. Maybe use a sound system to blast a deep, booming voice—a James Earl Jones type—that would proclaim: “This is the voice of Allah. I command you to leave the house!”

  Yes, some of the ideas were crazy. Panetta didn’t know if they would lead to new information. But so what? Wild ideas were better than no ideas at all.

  And during that session, something else happened. Panetta could feel energy surging back into the group. In the end, that’s what he wanted more than anything else. That, and Osama bin Laden—dead or alive.

  COUNTDOWN: 138 DAYS

  December 14, 2010

  Washington, D.C.

  President Obama headed to the Situation Room. Panetta was going to update the president and his White House national security team on the compound in Pakistan. Obama hadn’t heard anything new since the September meeting, but he knew they wouldn’t have asked for this session if they didn’t have something to tell him.

  The president had other things on his mind. He was packed to leave later in the day for two weeks of vacation in Hawaii. He was calling it a vacation, but Obama, like his predecessors, couldn’t just turn off his cell phone and disappear. For the commander in chief there were no getaways. He’d still get his daily briefings and make and receive important calls. He just wouldn’t be doing it at the White House. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could spend some time on the beach with his wife and daughters.

  But before he could head to Hawaii, Obama had to attend the bin Laden briefing. He understood that even in hiding, bin Laden remained Al Qaeda’s most effective recruiter. With every video, he radicalized more disaffected men and women around the world. The national security experts—and Obama’s daily briefs—warned that the terrorist group was more dangerous now than it had been in years. Every day seemed to bring another terrorist bombing or plot.

  Eliminating bin Laden was key to reshaping America’s counterterrorism strategy. Obama believed the United States had lost its focus. Instead of concentrating on bin Laden and the others who had planned the 9/11 attacks, the United States opted into a “War on Terror” that did little to curb terrorist violence. Obama believed that taking out bin Laden was a way to remind the world that terrorism was not a monumental force, and terrorists were nothing more than “a band of deluded, vicious killers—criminals who could be captured, tried, imprisoned or killed.”

  Obama knew the Middle East was a tinderbox in part due to America’s foreign policy mistakes. The U.S. had invaded Iraq under a failed premise promoted by intelligence officials. They’d warned that Saddam Hussein was offering a safe haven to Al Qaeda terrorists. Worse, they believed Iraq was storing weapons of mass destruction. Neither one turned out to be true.

  The Iraq invasion alienated much of the Muslim world and destabilized the entire region. Iraq and Iran had been enemies for decades. They’d fought a bloody war in the 1980s. With Hussein gone, Iran’s power and influence spread unchecked across the Middle East. And now, from all U.S. intelligence reports, Iran was moving ahead with a nuclear program. Obama and other world leaders worried that Iran might try to develop nuclear weapons. If that happened, the balance of power in the Middle East would change forever.

  Obama didn’t know what to expect from Panetta. After the last meeting, the president saw they didn’t have enough information to show the terrorist was there. Anyone could be living inside that compound—an Al Qaeda leader, a criminal, or maybe some powerful family’s mad granny. It was unlikely that bin Laden would be living in such a heavily populated area. That would be too risky.

  Panetta’s team was a late addition to this pre-vacation meeting. When the president convened his full team of White House and Cabinet advisors, it was called the National Security Council. But he still wanted to keep top officials like Secretary of State Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates out of the loop on the latest bin Laden intel to prevent any leaks. The sessions were held in the Situation Room, a place where the nation’s most carefully guarded secrets were discussed on a regular basis.

  President Barack Obama with (from left to right): CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and advisors Tom Donilon and John Brennan, in the Situation Room.

  The Situation Room wasn’t one office. No, it was really a suite of rooms shrouded in secrecy. Housed in the basement of the West Wing, the main area—called the John F. Kennedy Conference Room—could hold a couple of dozen people. The room was dominated by a long brown boardroom table—its top usually covered with legal pads and pens. Cell phones or personal electronic devices had to be placed in a small box or locker outside the room. Flat-screen television monitors dotted the drab beige walls.

  Only those with top-level security clearance were allowed inside, making it the perfect place for Panetta to share the latest intelligence from Abbottabad. With the Secret Service in place, the president entered the main room, which was filled with people in dark suits: Panetta, Morell, Bash, Sam, and Mike.

  Panetta said he wanted to update the president on their surveillance of the compound, then turned it over to Mike. Obama listened carefully as the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center unreeled the latest facts.

  The courier al-Kuwaiti had purchased the property under an assumed name. The compound itself was unusually spacious, much larger than the neighboring homes, and was even more secure than they’d thought. The occupants had gone to great lengths to conceal their identities. The ages of the children appeared to match those of bin Laden’s known children. And the third family, like the others in the compound, never left the premises.

  Sam stepped up and took over the briefing.


  “There is a man,” he said. “We call him The Pacer.” Using aerial surveillance, they had observed this man who never left the compound. He would regularly walk in circles around the perimeter of a small garden in the courtyard before going back inside the main house. The surveillance couldn’t provide them with a clear image of the man’s face or height, or anything that could help them positively identify The Pacer. But that didn’t dampen Sam’s enthusiasm.

  “We think he could be bin Laden,” Sam said.

  Then he showed Obama a video of The Pacer. The president could see that it was impossible to identify the person—at least from this surveillance tape. Obama showed no emotion. He soaked up the information, then asked the question on everyone’s mind. “What else can we do to confirm The Pacer’s identity?”

  They had been working feverishly to do just that, Sam said. Any unusual movement in or near the compound was immediately noted, he explained, and they worried about arousing suspicion. If there was a hint they were being watched, The Pacer might flee in the middle of the night.

  Obama looked at Sam. “What’s your judgment?”

  He hesitated. Anything he said would be speculation, but he had helped put this intricate puzzle together. He might not have the proof, but he knew what his gut was telling him.

  “There’s a good chance he’s our man,” he said.

  Panetta agreed. He said that “it is the CIA’s judgment” that al-Kuwaiti was harboring bin Laden. It was a big bureaucratic step forward. But Panetta quickly added that the agency had only “medium confidence” in the assessment, which was still based on circumstantial evidence. They still had no proof that he was in the compound.

  Obama had heard enough. He knew they had enough information to at least begin developing options for a possible attack on the compound. So, in the Situation Room that day, the president turned to Panetta and said that in addition to urging the CIA director’s team to continue working to identify The Pacer, he wanted Panetta to start thinking about Concepts of Operation (CONOPs)—how the United States should go after bin Laden if the president decided to act.

  Obama was clear about something else: He didn’t want the military involved in the planning. Not yet. Secrecy was of utmost importance. Once again Obama stressed that he only wanted a handful of people to know. If information leaked out, whatever opportunity they had to get bin Laden would be gone, and all their labor would have been wasted.

  Top floor of Abbottabad compound.

  The president was certain of one thing. If The Pacer really was bin Laden, they could not involve the Pakistanis. True, they had worked closely with Pakistan on some counterterrorism operations, and yes, this was deep inside Pakistani territory. But some people in the Pakistani military showed signs of ties to the Taliban, and maybe Al Qaeda. They couldn’t risk someone tipping off bin Laden.

  The Pakistanis would be incensed if the U.S launched an attack on Pakistani soil. Who could say how they might retaliate? But if The Pacer was bin Laden, Obama knew he might have to take that risk. Right now, it was too early to make any decisions. They needed more information—and fast.

  COUNTDOWN: 133 DAYS

  December 19, 2010

  New York City

  The alarm went off. Jessica Ferenczy lifted her head from her pillow. It was Sunday morning. No work today, but she had a little road trip planned. She jumped out of bed and started getting ready.

  From upstairs came the bustle and scent of breakfast. Bacon, eggs, and a wailing child. Larry and the kids would probably ask her to join them. At one time she’d have dug in, but this time she’d politely decline. She’d tell them she needed to hit the road.

  Ferenczy was getting used to living alongside a noisy young family. Larry, her supervisor, and his wife had invited her to move in a few months previous—an act of mercy. Jessica had been dealing with emotional issues at work and increasing isolation at home, but here at Larry’s house, she was becoming part of the family. Ferenczy did her part, too. There were three children in the house—two toddlers and a teenage boy. When she was off-duty, she helped care for the two younger children. And you can’t be depressed when you’re around babies, she thought.

  Ferenczy grabbed some pens and a notebook and stuffed them in her bag, snatched her jacket, and bounded up the stairs. She said goodbye to the family and hurried out of the house. When she started her car, she realized she shouldn’t have skipped breakfast. On her way to the main road, Ferenczy stopped at a 7-Eleven and grabbed an egg sandwich and coffee to go. That would have to hold her for a while.

  She was driving to Montauk, a village at the furthermost tip of Long Island. During the summer, the beaches there were crowded, but no one would be around today, not with this cold wind blowing off the Atlantic. That was OK.

  This was one of her special remembrance days. She planned to park the car atop the cliffs at Montauk Point State Park and sit overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. There she would enjoy the view, listen to the wind, and write.

  This was their anniversary. Twelve years earlier, on December 19, Jerome Dominguez had pulled his motorcycle into the parking lot of her precinct in Manhattan and stolen her heart.

  Montauk Point held special memories for her.

  Dominguez loved motorcycles. He was a member of the NYPD’s motorcycle unit before he transferred to the elite Emergency Service Unit. Ferenczy had never ridden on a motorcycle until she met him.

  After they moved in together, he tried to teach her to drive one. She was reluctant at first, but after he bought her a new Harley-Davidson Sportster, she had to learn.

  They practiced in parking lots and the streets in West Islip, Long Island, where they lived at the time. When he felt she had the hang of it, he gave her a test.

  “You get onto the highway and I’ll follow you in the car,” Dominguez said.

  “Am I ready?”

  “You’re ready,” he said. “Just four exits up the highway.”

  She nodded. “I got it.”

  Ferenczy inserted the key in the ignition, put her hands on the grips, and rolled onto the street. She jumped onto Montauk Highway. She slowed at the fourth exit, but changed her mind. The bike felt good, the weather was perfect, and Jerome was right there on the road with her. She could almost feel him grinning. She kept going and going. At one point he pulled alongside.

  “You’re doing great,” he shouted. “Keep going!”

  So she did, for another eighty miles, until she ran out of road at the eastern tip of Long Island.

  When she finally braked to a stop in the shadow of the Montauk Point Lighthouse, Dominguez leapt from his car to celebrate. They high-fived, then hugged. He was so proud of her. “That’s my baby,” Dominguez told everyone around them. “She rode all the way here.”

  They walked then, along the cliffs overlooking the ocean. They sat and watched the waves crash. They walked to the gates of Camp Hero, a World War II base with a radar tower. Jerome read the sign out front and tried to make a joke. “Hey, they named the park after me,” he said. Jessica smiled. They kissed and laughed.

  It was a beautiful day, in a time of her life that was filled with wonderful days. Jessica hadn’t had many of those since Jerome died.

  After 9/11, her job only got rougher. She transferred from Manhattan to Queens. She kept her nose down, worked hard, and kept everything inside. By 2010, she had seventeen years on the police force. People around her thought she was a badass. But inside, she was breaking down.

  Then one night, she screwed up.

  She and several other police officers were chasing a suspect who was fleeing from a burglary. She followed the man into a backyard. She looked inside a car parked in the driveway. When she didn’t see anyone, she kept going. But an officer who was trailing her by six feet also glanced into the car, and there was the suspect, hiding inside.

  “He’s in the car!” the police officer shouted.

  Shit. She had just practically looked the perp in the eye and didn’t see him!

>   The officers arrested the man, but Ferenczy was consumed with guilt. She played the scenario over and over in her head. She should have spotted him. What if he had pulled a gun on another officer? She should have opened the car door.

  Back at the station, Larry, her supervisor, called her into his office for a talking-to. He was pissed off. Ferenczy was a good cop, he said, but she was taking too many chances. Now she was putting other officers at risk.

  He knew about Dominguez. He knew things hadn’t gone well for her since he died. She lost the home they’d bought on Long Island. Her stepmother had just died, and she was trying to take care of her elderly father. She lived alone in a tiny apartment, and had stopped hanging out with her colleagues.

  “You’re in a rut,” Larry said. “You need a change. We have room at our house. Why don’t you move in with my family for a while?”

  Ferenczy knew she needed help. She agreed.

  And so far, things were working out. She didn’t know how long she would stay, but she was in no hurry to leave. She’d started attending a counseling program, and recently had learned about a special police program for officers dealing with depression. She clearly wasn’t functioning on a high level, on or off the job, but she felt some hope stirring, anyway.

  Restless after the long drive, she buttoned her coat, grabbed her bag, and stepped from the car. The wind whipped off the ocean. Jessica walked to the cliffs and along the seafront. She’d forgotten her gloves, and by the time she got back to the car her hands were stiff with cold. She turned on the car, turned up the heater, and warmed her fingers in the defroster blast.

  Then she pulled out her paper, uncapped a pen, and started to write:

  Baby, Baby

  Happy Anniversary My Love. Today is the day we met, and you changed my life forever. You gave me such a gift to make me feel so loved and appreciated. All the things I thought were my faults, were all your favorite things about me. To have been truly loved is so precious to me, and even now when I cannot hold you in my arms, I can still see your smiles and feel your kisses on my face while I sleep. Not many people can say with such certainty that they Really love and have been loved in return.