As the raid commenced, the tail of one of the helicopters grazed the compound wall, forcing it into a “soft crash” landing that fortunately did not result in major injuries, although the helicopter itself had to be destroyed so none of its tech would fall into the wrong hands. Additionally, the compound was designed to obscure lines of sight from multiple directions. There were also seven-foot walls surrounding the balconies. News reports described bin Laden’s compound as surrounded with barbed wire and 18-foot walls. On the night of the infiltration, two dozen SEALs flew in using two helicopters, beneath the radar and varying routes to avoid detection. The actual raid on bin Laden’s compound was called Operation Neptune Spear, after the trident that appears on the U.S. “There was only a 55% chance that the 9/11 attack mastermind was in the compound.” “It was the best intelligence work I’ve ever seen that enabled those in the military who executed this mission to do so successfully,” former Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. “I think the image that bin Laden had tried to promote was that he was an ascetic, living in a cave,” Obama told "60 Minutes." “This guy was living in a million-dollar compound in a residential neighborhood.” Obama said he and his team were not surprised to find bin Laden hiding in plain sight, but were surprised to learn that the compound had been there for so long without information leaking out about it. “This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence we had was not absolutely conclusive,” he said. President Barack Obama discussed the decision to attack with "60 Minutes" after the raid. Over the next few months, the CIA used informants, surveillance and other intelligence gathering measures to arrive at the conclusion that bin Laden and his family were hiding out in the compound – but up until the attack, there was no hard proof that bin Laden was present, only the best guess available. For years, military and intelligence forces had scoured the globe to find bin Laden’s hideout, and in September 2010, the CIA got the lead it needed when it used surveillance photos and intelligence reports to determine that a known al-Qaida courier was visiting a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |