AP Enterprise: The man who hunted Osama bin Laden. WASHINGTON (AP) — After Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the White House released a photo of President Barack Obama and his Cabinet inside the Situation Room, watching the daring raid unfold. Hidden from view, standing just outside the frame of that now-famous photograph was a career CIA analyst. In the hunt for the world's most-wanted terrorist, there may have been no one more important. His job for nearly a decade was finding the al-Qaida leader. The analyst was the first to put in writing last summer that the CIA might have a legitimate lead on finding bin Laden.
He oversaw the collection of clues that led the agency to a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The CIA will not permit him to speak with reporters. The Associated Press has agreed to the CIA's request not to publish his full name and withhold certain biographical details so that he would not become a target for retribution. Call him John, his middle name. But there was no greater prize than finding bin Laden. Online: China's Jiaozhou Bay Bridge Photos | China's Jiaozhou Bay Bridge Pictures. Egyptian Saif al-Adel appointed acting leader of al Qaeda. The choice of Egyptian Saif al-Adel may not sit well with some Saudi and Yemeni members of al Qaeda, one expert says. Noman Benotman says Saif al-Adel is the "caretaker" leader of al QaedaThe selection of an Egyptian might not be accepted by some in al Qaeda Benotman has known al Qaeda leadership for two decades (CNN) -- An Egyptian who was once a Special Forces officer has been chosen "caretaker" leader of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the group's inner workings.
Al Qaeda's interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long played a prominent role in the group, according to Noman Benotman. Benotman has known the al Qaeda leadership for more than two decades. U.S.: Bin Laden communicated with Yemen group Bin Laden's money trail Stop the money, defeat al Qaeda The presumed successor to bin Laden is his long-time deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is also Egyptian. Al-Adel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Bin Laden's Great Mistake: Misjudging the American Spirit. When President Barack Obama announced on May 1 that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was among those who headed to the White House.
The mood in Lafayette Square was joyous, ebullient, cathartic — though hardly the bacchanal of vengeful jingoism that some in the media have portrayed it to be, or an expression of "orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed" as David Sirota claimed on Salon.com. An outsider would have been struck by the crowd's diversity, by now so familiar to Americans that we barely notice it. I'd guess that a plurality of the flag wavers were white, but I saw plenty of exuberant black, Asian, Latino and multiracial faces too.
An elated young Muslim American, wearing a headscarf, enthused to a television crew about the sense of unity and belonging she felt with those around her. The whole scene would have bewildered bin Laden as much as it would have repelled him. And it goes a long way toward explaining why his war on America was doomed to fail. KIDS REACT to Osama bin Laden's Death. Bin Laden Aides Said to Have Bought Bulk Orders of Pepsi, Coke for Hideout. The two polite Pakistanis who helped Osama bin Laden hide in the shadow of their country’s army bought bulk food orders, chose major brands and equally favored Pepsi and Coke, neighbors and a local shopkeeper said. The men called themselves Akbar and Rashid Khan and they owned the fortified home where U.S. commandos killed bin Laden in an early morning raid May 2.
They did the daily shopping in the Pashtu-language accents of Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, said grocer Anjum Qaisar, 27, who works 150 meters from the compound. Bin Laden’s men “never came by foot, they always drove a Pajero or a little Suzuki van, and they bought enough food for 10 people,” Qaisar said in an interview yesterday. “I was curious about why they bought so much food, but I did not want to be rude by asking” such a personal question, Qaisar said. Support Network ‘Best Brands’ With Pakistani troops and police guarding the streets, Qaisar was one of few merchants open for business yesterday. Tora Bora. Marijuana crops planted outside Osama Bin Laden's compound; farmers growing ganja near terror lair. - WWW.THEDAILY.COM. Could Osama bin Laden's Death Bankrupt al-Qaeda? Briefing reporters on the details of Osama bin Laden's killing in Pakistan, the White House's Deputy National Security Adviser, John Brennan, remarked optimistically that "bin Laden's dead.
The al-Qaeda narrative's becoming increasingly bankrupt. " Financially, al-Qaeda may be heading for bankruptcy too. The terrorist network has been hit by a double whammy: the death of its charismatic leader and the Arab Spring, the popular and democratic uprising against cutthroat despots. No longer can al-Qaeda and its offspring sell itself to Muslims as the sole alternative to tyrannical regimes.
It doesn't cost much to run a terrorist organization. A few hundred bucks will buy a suicide vest, and the 9/11 commission estimates that al-Qaeda forked out less than $500,000 to bring down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and to strike at the Pentagon. The telegenic figure of bin Laden was always the main draw. But now, bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaeda was also crippled by a post-9/11 U.S. Genetic Fingerprinting: How Officials Identified Bin Laden's Body - - TIME Healthland. The Obama Administration used several methods, including DNA testing, to confirm that U.S.
Navy Seals did in fact kill Osama bin Laden in a weekend raid in Pakistan, U.S. officials said on Monday. In addition to facial-recognition techniques, analysis of photos by the CIA and confirmation from people at the site of the raid (quoting a senior U.S. defense official, CNN reported that “one of bin Laden’s own wives identified his body to U.S. forces, after the team made visual identification themselves”), DNA from the body was matched to confirm bin Laden’s identity. (More on TIME.com: See pictures of a bin Laden family album.)
Matched to what? The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from several of bin Laden’s family members during the decade since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. DNA matching suggests with 99.9% certainty, officials said, that the man killed by a shot to the head in a compound in Abbottabad, a town about 75 miles north of Islamabad, was Osama bin Laden. Official: Bin Laden Mission Was Kill Or Capture, Not Just Kill | Swampland. Reuters’ Mark Hosenball is reporting that the U.S. special forces that raided Osama bin Laden’s compound Sunday were under orders to kill the terrorist leader, not capture him. But an administration official tells TIME that the report is not accurate. “No U.S. forces go in and, if someone surrenders to them, will kill them,” the official says. “There was a presumption that it would likely end in a kill,” the official continued, citing the U.S. government’s expectation that Bin Laden would resist capture.
“But to say that it was a kill mission is wrong.” Later Monday, senior White House officials will hold an on-camera press briefing about the Bin Laden operation, and are expected to push back against the Reuters report, the official said. May Day: Both Hitler and bin Laden Announced Dead on May 1. Despite the jubilation (mostly) worldwide over the death of Osama bin Laden, the biggest enemy so far this century, it’s easy to forget the historic coincidence of the death of the biggest mass murderer of the previous century. On May 1, 1945, Germany announced that Adolf Hitler was dead, leading to the end of the allied campaign in Europe during World War II.
That same date 66 years later, President Obama announced the death of the al-Qaeda leader and international terrorist. (More on TIME.com: Hitler’s Last Hours) At about 10:30 that night a Hamburg Radio announcer broadcast that Hitler had “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany,” according to the BBC’s website.
Around 11:30 on May 1, 2011, Obama interrupted nighttime television broadcasts to announce bin Laden had been killed in a military operation. Hitler and his wife Eva Braun had actually committed suicide the evening before. How They Killed Osama bin Laden And What Happens to al Qaeda Now. The reports started coming in more than a month ago: Osama bin Laden was on the move, and the U.S. had its eye on him. Stressed by the turmoil sweeping his part of the world – tumult he had no roll in sparking – bin Laden was trying to bolster al Qaeda’s credibility as young people Tweeted and Facebooked about a future that didn’t involve him, or al Qaeda. Surprisingly, he didn’t die a standoff death from an unseen Predator drone, as most would have expected. Instead, a team of U.S. special-operations forces helicoptered into a high-walled compound deep inside Pakistan and killed him and four others in a firefight, including a son of bin Laden and a woman allegedly being used as a human shield.
Dispatching a joint Navy SEAL-CIA team of four choppers into Pakistan makes two things crystal clear: the U.S. believed its intelligence was solid, and it wanted proof he was dead; they wanted his corpse. The whereabouts and fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy, remain unknown. Osama Bin Laden Triggers Security Alert, Recall Marine Bio/Chem Unit. <br/><a href=" US News</a> | <a href=" Business News</a> Copy Security experts fear that al Qaeda or a U.S. born "lone wolf" may try to strike back at the U.S. for the death of Osama bin Laden, and in the hours following the announcement authorities at all levels of government were on alert for attacks from bin Laden's loyal and fanatical followers. "Though bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is not," said CIA Director Leon Panetta. "The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him, and we must—and will—remain vigilant and resolute. But we have struck a heavy blow against the enemy.
" Sen. "My own great concern in the days ahead is that a so-called 'lone wolf,' a single individual who has been radicalized, will now mobilize himself or herself to take action here at home against the American people," said Lieberman, I-Conn. Sen. Former chief of staff to President George W. New York, Los Angeles Police on Alert. Osama bin Laden Dead: Terrorist Killed by U.S. in Pakistan. Almost 10 years ago, Osama bin Laden ghosted away from the Afghan battlefields.
Afterward, it was as if the doomsday sheik had slipped into a twilight zone in which the only proof that he was alive was the chilling voice on a spool of tape, the occasional video image — and the string of terrorist outrages and wars around the globe that claimed inspiration from him and his cause. At 11:35 p.m. E.T. on May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama made a dramatic television appearance to announce that bin Laden, whose capture or killing was the top priority of CIA chief Leon Panetta, was dead.
The leader of al-Qaeda, Obama said, had been tracked by way of intelligence sources in August 2010, and earlier on May 1, a team of U.S. operatives found him at a compound in Pakistan in the town of Abbottabad, 75 miles outside of Islamabad and the home of the Pakistani army's training academy. After a brief firefight, the fugitive leader of al-Qaeda was killed and his body retrieved. How Operation Kill Bin Laden Went Down. The details remain foggy, but Osama bin Laden’s death early Monday local time began with a fleet of four helicopters slicing through the night skies over Pakistan from a U.S. base in northern Afghanistan.
The mission, approved by President Obama on Friday, had been set for early Sunday local time but had to be delayed because of poor weather. Unlike 1980′s doomed mission to rescue the American diplomats held hostage in Iran, by all accounts, the strike on bin Laden’s fortress in Abbottabad went smoothly. Navy Seal Team 6 — which reportedly played the key role in the assault — was created following the disaster that left eight Americans dead at Desert One. About two dozen Seals and CIA enablers swooped down on the compound in a pair of choppers, leaving the second pair lurking nearby in case they were needed. The U.S. troops came under fire almost immediately, giving the U.S. forces all the justification they needed to amp up their firepower. More on Time.com: See TIME’s al-Qaeda covers. Osama bin Laden is dead, Obama says. How U.S. found, killed bin Laden NEW: Bin Laden was shot in the head and chest, an official says"It's a win for everybody in the world," a slain firefighter's father saysU.S. forces sifting through a trove of captured documents, official saysIntelligence work on a courier for bin Laden led to a key break Don't miss CNN on Monday night, starting at 8 ET with "In the Arena" live from ground zero.
At 9 ET, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appears on "Piers Morgan Tonight. " "AC360°" at 10 ET has more details on the raid that led to Osama bin Laden's death. (CNN) -- A nearly decade-long manhunt for the mastermind of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil ended north of Pakistan's capital Monday as American commandos killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a pre-dawn firefight. The Saudi exile had been the world's most wanted man since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. World safer with bin Laden dead, Obama says Chants of 'USA! '