For God and Country

President Obama and his national security team watch the live feed from
the Bin Laden raid on May 2nd, 2011.

     Sohaib Athar heard the sounds of helicopters overhead and decided to start tweeting about it. It was a little after 1 a.m. on Monday, May 2nd 2011. Athar tweeted "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." Unknown to Athar at the time, he was tweeting the results of the largest manhunt in history.

     The search for Osama Bin Laden began even before the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was placed on the FBI's "ten most wanted fugitives" and the "most wanted terrorist" list for his role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa that killed over 223 people. By this time, the US intelligence community knew his name and were aware of Al-Qaeda as a new hostile force to be reckoned with. After September 11th, 2001, Osama Bin Laden became the most wanted man in history and for the next ten years, the United States led the effort to bring him down.

     The cleanup at Ground Zero had barely begun in December, 2001 when the US launched an assault into the Tora Bora cave complexes in the White Mountains of Afghanistan where it was suspected that Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden himself was holed up. Using a joint force of US, British, German and Northern Alliance troops, the attack into Tora Bora lasted until December 17th, 2001. After a thorough search of the Tora Bora area in January, no sign of Bin Laden or any senior Al-Qaeda personnel could be found. It was assumed he must have slipped into Pakistan during a brief truce in the fighting.

     What followed was a frustrating six years of dead ends, false leads and misinformation concerning Bin Laden's true location. Some believed he was dead, others claimed to have seen him in various locations around the world in a variety of disguises. The news media turned the hunt for Bin Laden into a farcical  "Where's Waldo" that no one took seriously. However, this did not phase a key group of dedicated analyst and agents within the Central Intelligence Agency who relentlessly burned the midnight oil and chased every lead no matter how remote. What was known about Bin Laden was that he used couriers for communication with other Al-Qaeda operatives to avoid detection and that he never, ever used telephones and email. After a Herculean effort, a breakthrough occurred in 2007 when the real name of one of Bin Laden's couriers was learned. It would be another two years before it was discovered that the courier, Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed known as Abu-Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was living in Abbottabad, Pakistan in a custom built compound located at the end of a dirt road less than a mile from the Pakistani Military Academy. Satellite photos of this area prior to 2005 showed an empty field, so the structure was new to the neighborhood and featured some very unique features. For one thing, the entire compound was surrounded by a 12 to 18 foot high concrete wall topped by barbed wire. The main three story building had an additional 7 foot high privacy wall on the balcony so that whomever was on the other side could walk around and not be seen. This type of building was extremely unusual for the area and immediately aroused suspicion within the CIA that this building was meant to hide someone of great importance.

     Immediately, the place was put under surveillance and it was further learned that the residents of the compound burned their trash rather than putting it out to be collected and the house had no phone or Internet connection. Still, analysts at the CIA could not definitively say that it was Bin Laden himself who lived there. Some felt that it was probably a well to do drug dealer rather than the world's most wanted terrorist. Through the use of high resolution satellites and an RQ-170 Sentinel drone, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was able to create a three dimensional  rendering of the house as well as identifying the number, height and gender of the residents of the compound. The circumstantial evidence was then put through a process known as "red-teaming" in which all the information is reviewed independently and it was concluded that no other candidate fit the profile as well as Bin Laden did. It simply had to be him.

     At this point, the mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden became "Operation Neptune Spear". It was decided to use a group of Navy SEALS from the ultra elite Navel Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) sometimes erroneously referred to as Seal Team Six in the media. Red Squadron from DEVGRU was on their way home from a deployment in Afghanistan at the time, so they were chosen to be the go-team as they could be redirected without raising too much attention. Operational security was of the utmost importance here, no one wanted to tip off Al-Qaeda that their boss had been found and targeted. A mock-up of the Bin Laden compound was built in a remote area of North Carolina and the assault team from Red Squadron practiced daily without being told who the target actually was. Special top secret stealth UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters were used for the raid due to the minimal radar signature.The stealth helicopters had been developed in total secrecy and featured a special radar reflective paint and extra rotor blades to aid in reducing any sound signatures. Pakistan had not been informed about the impending operation for security concerns, so stealth was all important. The idea was to insert quickly and quietly and be on the way back across the border before anyone knew what happened. 

     In addition to the assault team, a quick reaction force (QRF) was to be positioned nearby in heavy lift Chinook CH-47 helicopters in case the team had to "fight their way out". At last, everything was ready. There was no moon at this time in Pakistan, so the conditions were perfect for a nighttime raid. On April 29th, 2011 President Obama gave the final go-ahead for the raid the following night, however cloudy weather prevented the mision from going off as planed so it was decided to go on May 1st. At 3 p.m. that afternoon, the president and his staff moved into the White House Situation Room to watch the raid happen live on night vision feed from a Sentinel drone flying overhead. On board both stealth helicopters piloted by members of the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the two dozen men from Red Squadron sat in silence. As they approached the designated landing zone, one of the helicopters experienced a sudden and violent condition known as a "vortex ring state" caused by high air temperature and a loss of lift due to the compound's high wall. The aircraft bucked violently with the tail end clipping the top of the wall and the machine started to tilt. The pilot knew exactly what had happened and expertly drove the nose of the aircraft into the ground which prevented the craft from pitching onto it's side which would have been disastrous to the passengers. With one helicopter down, the remaining Blackhawk set down as planed and the SEALs made their way to the compound wall in total silence using only their night vision devices. In order to force their way into the compound, the assault team relied on breaching charges to blow the metal security doors. The concussive booms from these explosives going off startled nearby neighbors who began move outside their homes to see what was going on in the neighborhood.

     Moving just outside the main house, one of the two assault teams took fire from an AK-47 belonging to the courier al-Kuwaiti. He was killed by several rounds of 5.56 fired from the assault team's sound-suppressed HK 416 carbines. Kuwaiti's wife was hit in the shoulder but did not die. Next, the team encountered al-Kuwaiti's brother Abrar in a room downstairs. He was shot and killed as was his wife, Bushra. Moving up the stairs, Bin Laden's son rushed the second assault team and was also shot and killed. Moving up the stairs to the third floor, one of the SEALs saw Bin Laden peer over the third floor ledge, then dart into a room. According to a team member, Bin Laden then glanced out into the darkened hallway and was immediately shot in the head by a team member and fell back into the room. The team member then entered the bedroom and saw two of Bin Laden's wives standing over his body on the floor. One of them started to scream at him in Arabic and looked like she was about to charge, so the SEAL tackled both women and forced them out of the way. A second team member burst into the room and shot Bin Laden twice more in the chest. The worlds most wanted terrorist and mastermind of Al-Qaeda,  died on his bedroom floor in the company of two American commandos. A quick visual inspection of Bin Laden revealed that the first shot was the one that most likely killed him.

  The high velocity 5.56 round entered his forehead and had blown out part of his skull so that his face was distorted. Brain matter was spilling out from the gaping hole and his face was covered in blood. Several digital photos were taken and then one of the Seal team members went out onto the balcony where a number of children that were found in the compound were placed. He asked one of the older girls who the dead man lying on the floor was and she replied "Osama Bin Laden". He then went to one of Bin Laden's wives back in the room and asked her the same thing. At first she didn't respond, so he grabbed her roughly by the arm and said, "Stop fucking with me now, who is that in the bedroom?" "Osama" the woman replied. They had confirmation from two sources at the location.  The SEAL team leader then radioed "For God and country, I pass Geronimo, Geronimo E.K.I.A." (enemy killed in action). This was a predetermined confirmation that Bin Laden was dead. The confirmation was sent live to the White House Situation Room where President Obama said "We got him".

     A body bag was brought along on the raid and the team members worked quickly to put Bin Laden's corpse inside and zip it up tight. A quick search of the compound netted numerous computer hard-drives, thumb-drives, disks, cell phones and paper memos. All in all, they hit the jackpot for Al-Qaeda intelligence.  All of this material was stuffed into several duffel bags to be brought back to the base at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for analysis. As the two assault teams prepped to leave, one of the team members rigged the downed stealth helicopter with explosives to destroy it in place so that nothing could be gleaned from the top secret craft. As they were now down a helicopter, one of the nearby Chinooks was brought in to ferry the assault team back to base. In all, the raid to kill Bin Laden had taken less than 40 minutes from the time the first pair of boots hit the ground to when they were airborne once again. However, it took over 10 years, close to a billion dollars and numerous lives to even get to that point.

     I remember on the day that it was announced that we had finally gotten Bin Laden, I awoke early that morning and headed downstairs for a drink of water. It was my wife's birthday the next day and for some reason I just happened to glance at the news on my mobile phone. I went upstairs and climbed back into bed and told my wife the momentous news that we had killed Bin Laden. She said simply, "Best birthday present ever!"