Osama bin Laden is dead

[youtalkcock]

.... heard that obama bin unladen .... likely successor ....

... heard that osama got laid before navy seals moved in.

 

[Raiders]

... heard that osama got laid before navy seals moved in.

Sex makes the knees weak

 

[Cammy]

Bin Laden’s Killers Remain Secret Heroes in Virginia Hometown

<cite class="byline"> By William Selway - May 4, 2011 1:52 AM GMT+0800

</cite>

A silhouette of a Navy SEAL, part of U.S.Special Forces. Photographer: Greg Mathieson/Mai/Mai/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

U.S. Navy SEALs prepare for a night mission to capture Iraqi insurgent leaders near Fallujah, Iraq, on July 27, 2007. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Navy SEAL teams have engaged in intense combat during raids on al-Qaeda and Taliban strongholds. Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images

A U.S. Navy SEAL member provides cover for his teammates advancing on a suspected location of al Qaeda and Talibanin this photo taken in eastern Afghanistan. Source: U.S. Navy/Getty Images

As jets screamed over Naval Air Station Oceana behind his used-car lot in Virginia Beach, Richard DeBerry Jr. said he knows a member of Navy SEAL Team Six, the elite, secretive unit that killed Osama bin Laden.

That friendship still won’t get him any details of the nighttime raid on the Pakistan compound of the terrorist who eluded capture for a decade.

“We’re not even going to try to pick his brain about it -- he’s not going to say a thing,” DeBerry, 33, said in an office lined with baseball caps from Navy servicemen who bought cars. “You get drunk with them and they won’t tell you a thing about what happened on their missions. They don’t even tell their wives.”

The SEAL team emerged as local heroes, if discreet ones, in Tidewater Virginia, where a complex of military bases sprawls from the shipyards in Norfolk to the Dam Neck compound where part of the unit is based.

The SEALs trace their roots to World War II, when they surveyed beaches and cleared obstacles for Allied amphibious landings. Today, SEALs -- the name stands for Sea, Air and Land -- perform commando assaults, unconventional warfare, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering.

Professionalism in Uniform

Such special operations forces have played a key role since the beginning of the conflict against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001, when they worked with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.

“You’ve got a process of evolution since Vietnam that has not only created a more professional military but a far more professional group of intelligence operatives and special forces,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national-security analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The SEAL strike team flew May 1 in helicopters to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound under the cover of darkness, and during a 40 minute raid worked its way through the structure, confronting and killing him on a top floor, according to White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and other administration, defense and intelligence officials. President Barack Obama and national security officials listened to an audio feed and heard the code words that let them know bin Laden was dead.

Seals and Delta

In Virginia Beach, the base of bin Laden’s killers in a heavily guarded compound isn’t marked by name. Its Army counterpart is Delta Force, headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The teams are part of the Joint Special Operations Command, which also oversees the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment with helicopters to get the commandos to work and the 75th Ranger Regiment with infantry shock troops to back up the commandos with more firepower.

Around Virginia Beach, a city of about 433,000 dominated by strip malls and suburban sprawl around the military bases, there were no signs of public tribute to the Seals who killed America’s most-wanted man.

Service members were loath to discuss it. One told a reporter that the mention of a bar as a gathering spot for Seals might get it blacklisted by the military, lest it tip off enemies wishing to retaliate.

Around the town dominated by military, their families, and businesses that cater to them, residents said in interviews that their joy at the death of bin Laden was tinged with anxiety as troops are still waging two wars launched in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Joy and Melancholy

Standing on the lawn outside her mobile home, Marilyn Hargiss, 60, recounted her mixed emotions at the news of the terrorist’s death. She said her son-in-law is overseas with the Navy, which has kept him from his three daughters and year-and- a-half-old son for more than three months.

“I’m proud of our military,” she said. “They wouldn’t let up and they kept looking until they found him.” Diamond Desmond, 33, served eight years in the Navy -- “the best of the armed services in my opinion” -- leaving in 2007 after eight years.

She said that while serving on a carrier she helped ferry troops to Iraq and saw the devastation firsthand during 18 months when she was posted to the Navy’s medical center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Desmond, while working at a lingerie store near the Oceana base, said another terrorist would likely take bin Laden’s place, and that his death provides slim solace to those who lost loved ones in war.

Continuing Fire

“I’m excited that they caught him,” she said. “There’s still going to be a long list. It’s going to be never-ending. Someone’s going to step up.” DeBerry, the car dealer, said he has more than half a dozen relatives and friends in uniform.

“It’s an uncomfortable feeling,” he said. “What’s going to happen next?” “We don’t feel this is the end,” he said. “Not at all, the fire’s just getting started now.” Hargiss said her pleasure at bin Laden’s demise was tempered by the continuing struggle.

“Once the dust settles and we get past all the celebrating, they’ll start wondering, what now? What’s next?” she said. “I’d like to bring those kids home.”

To contact the reporters on this story: William Selway in Washington at [email protected].

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at [email protected]

 

[1sickpuppy II]

Heard 1 helicopter got shot down duno how many of these seals died in this ops.

 

[Cammy]

Obama Says White House Won’t Release Bin Laden Death Photos as ‘Trophies’

By Nicholas Johnston - May 5, 2011 12:00 PM GMT+0800

President Barack Obama decided yesterday not to release photographic evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death, saying the U.S. shouldn’t exploit such images as “trophies.”

In an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes,” Obama said a release of the “very graphic” photos of the al-Qaeda leader’s corpse might be used by extremists as propaganda to incite violence, creating a national security risk.

“We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies,” the president said, according to excerpts released by CBS. “The fact of the matter is, this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received, and I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he’s gone.”

The president’s decision ended a debate within his administration over whether to release photos taken after bin Laden was killed during a raid by U.S. special operations forces on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The U.S. strike also provided a potential trove of intelligence. Bin Laden had about 500 euros and some phone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, according to a government official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. Authorities also are examining the contents of computer drives and storage media that were seized in the raid.
Internal Debate

White House press secretary Jay Carney, who has described the photographs as “gruesome,” said Obama had been leaning against release and took time to get the views of his national security team. A majority of the president’s advisers were against publishing the images, he said.

The president’s decision concerns “all visual evidence” of bin Laden’s death, Carney said, though some of the information about how the identification was made may be made available.

Bin Laden’s identity was confirmed through photo comparisons, DNA and other means, including verification by his wife at the compound. The body, weighted down, was released into the Arabian Sea following a Muslim funeral ritual performed aboard a ship by U.S. military officers.

Obama told CBS the steps taken by the U.S. leave “no doubt” that it was bin Laden, and releasing the images could serve as a propaganda tool while not helping to sway the opinion of people who don’t believe the al-Qaeda leader is dead.

“We don’t think that a photograph in and of itself is going to make any difference,” the president said.
Lawmakers React

Lawmakers, some of whom were briefed by Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta, were divided on the issue of releasing the images.

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said “the risks of release outweigh the benefits.”

“Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East,” he said in a statement.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the photos should be released to “prove” that bin Laden is dead and that a failure to do so will “unnecessarily prolong this debate.”
Questions Over Account

Carney continued to face questions yesterday about the U.S. account of the raid, which was revised by the administration after initial briefings by White House and Defense Department officials indicated that bin Laden engaged in a firefight with the U.S. team and he or other men in the house used women as shields.

“A lot of information came out quickly,” Carney said. “When we needed to clarify some of the information that we had as more information came in, we’ve provided that.”

According to a narrative prepared by the Defense Department and released by the White House May 3, the woman killed in the raid was hit by crossfire. Bin Laden’s wife rushed a member of the assault team and was wounded in the leg. Bin Laden was unarmed, though he put up unspecified resistance, when he was shot.

Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday the killing complied with the law. “The operation against bin Laden was justified,” Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing in Washington. “It’s lawful to target an enemy commander in the field.”

Holder said bin Laden took no steps to surrender, and the U.S. actions were “consistent with our values.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at [email protected]

 

[Cammy]

Death of Osama bin Laden

On April 29, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized a raid ("Operation Neptune Spear" with "Geronimo" as the code name for bin Laden himself.) on bin Laden's suspected location near Abbottabad, Pakistan.

It was originally believed that bin Laden was hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but he was actually found 100 miles (160 km) away in a $250,000 three-story mansion in Abbottabad at 34°10′9.67″N 73°14′33.60″E.

Bin Laden's mansion was located 0.8 miles (1.3 km) southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy (Pakistan's "West Point"). Google Earth maps show that the compound was not present in 2001, but was present on images taken in 2005.

On May 1, 2011, in Washington, D.C. (May 2, Pakistan Standard Time), U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed. The operation (dubbed Geronimo "E-KIA") was successfully carried out in the early morning of May 2 by U.S. Navy SEALs with intelligence support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

During the raid, bin Laden was fatally shot in the head and chest. The entire raid, including intelligence sweeps of the compound, was completed in less than 40 minutes. His body was taken and biometric facial recognition tests were performed. Subsequent genetic testing reportedly supported the preliminary identification.

Among those killed in the raid were one of bin Laden's sons, a man described as a courier, and the courier's brother. Four years of surveillance of the courier led to the intelligence which made the raid possible. It was reported that the courier was the owner of the compound where the assault took place.

The day after the raid John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief, said that the woman that was killed was one of bin Laden's four wives and was being used as a human shield at the time, though this claim was later retracted.

Two other women, who were also used as shields, were injured during the raid. He also said that the al-Qaeda leader put up resistance, but was unarmed. Bin Laden was shot twice. A shot above his left eye blew away a part of his skull. He was also hit in the chest.

Within 24 hours of his death, his body was transported to the aircraft carrier "USS Carl Vinson" for final rites and burial at sea. According to the United States military, the decision to bury his remains at sea was to circumvent international difficulties in choosing a burial site. Some observers at the time suggested it might also have been designed to prevent any physical enshrinement of the terrorist leader.

His death attracted protests from hundreds of people in the city of Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan, burning U.S. flags and paying homage to the late al-Qaeda leader. U.S. officials reported that a team of 24 U.S. Navy SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team Six), under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command and working with the CIA, stormed bin Laden's compound in two helicopters.

Bin Laden, three other men, and a woman were killed in a firefight in which U.S. forces did not experience any injuries or casualties however one of the helicopters experienced mechanical difficulties, and was destroyed by the SEALs onsite. In his broadcast announcement President Obama said that U.S. forces "took care to avoid civilian casualties." According to U.S. officials, the attack was carried out without the knowledge or consent of Pakistani authorities.

DNA from bin Laden's body, compared with DNA samples on record from his dead sister's brain confirmed bin Laden's identity the following day according to assertions to ABC News by unnamed sources. The 193 cm long body was recovered by the U.S. military and was in its custody until his body was buried in the North Arabian Sea from the USS Carl Vinson, within 24 hours of his death in accord with Islamic traditions.

One U.S. official stated that, "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult." MSNBC reported, "There also was speculation about worry that a grave site could have become a rallying point for militants." The U.S. State Department issued a "worldwide caution" for Americans following bin Laden's death and U.S diplomatic facilities everywhere were placed on high alert, a senior U.S official said.

Crowds gathered outside the White House, in New York City's Times Square, as well as the World Trade Center, the site of the September 11 Attacks, to celebrate bin Laden's death. Chittral News, a Pakistani news site, claimed that some people were dismayed that Pakistan has lost its sovereignty.

 

[Cammy]

 

[talkincock]

Heard 1 helicopter got shot down duno how many of these seals died in this ops.

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

Bin Laden, three other men, and a woman were killed in a firefight in which U.S. forces did not experience any injuries or casualties however one of the helicopters experienced mechanical difficulties, and was destroyed by the SEALs onsite. In his broadcast announcement President Obama said that U.S. forces "took care to avoid civilian casualties." According to U.S. officials, the attack was carried out without the knowledge or consent of Pakistani authorities.

 

[talkincock]

Dr Chee my hero!!! :p

Here PAP bitch! I know you like him.

http://img261.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-5594/loc20/94096_5_122_20lo.jpg

 

[Cammy]

Bin Laden’s $1 Million ‘Fortress’ Lacks Luxuries of Wealth

By David Lerman and Anwar Shakir - May 5, 2011 11:06 PM GMT+0800

A local man walks through a field near Osama Bin Laden's compound. Bin Laden was killed during a raid by U.S. special forces on May 3, 2011, in Abottabad, Pakistan. Photographer: Getty Images

As U.S. officials tell it, Osama bin Laden was living in a $1 million mansion when he was killed this week, undermining his image as an ascetic warrior holed up in a cave near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“Here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound; living in an area that is far removed from the front; hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield,” said John Brennan, the top White House counterterrorism adviser, in a May 2 news conference. “I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.”

Yet the large compound in Abbottabad, outside of Islamabad, has none of the luxuries that a million-dollar-plus price tag brings to mind. A view of the three-story structure from outside shows unpainted walls streaked with black mold that commonly grows on bare concrete in Pakistani summers. Video of the interior featured rooms with basic, inexpensive furniture. More luxurious homes in Abbottabad are listed for less than $500,000.

Bin Laden chose to live in seclusion far from the tribal border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, prime staging ground for al-Qaeda and the Taliban fighters. Abbottabad, nestled in a valley about 38 miles as the crow flies from the capital of Islamabad, is a different world, with its upscale homes for retired military officers and a nearby golf course.

The house value, part of the initial narrative of the raid, was cited separately in briefings by officials. In subsequent days, the administration has stood by its house-value figure while revising other details of the raid. Officials retracted an early statement that bin Laden used one of his wives as a human shield.

Comparables

The estimated value of $1 million cited by U.S. officials was based on a comparison with other real estate prices in the area, the size of the compound and the size of the buildings on it, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday. The official wasn’t authorized to comment by name and affiliation.

The compound covers about 1.5 acres on a triangular lot. The perimeter walls run a total of almost 800 feet around the property and rise between 10 to 20 feet, dwarfing the neighbors who walk past on the dirt roads outside.

The complex is roughly eight times larger than other homes in the area, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters in a May 2 conference call. He described the home as custom-built to hide someone of significance.

Clearly Different

“It clearly was different than any other house out there,” Brennan said at a later briefing. “It had the appearance of, you know, sort of a fortress.”

The purported million-dollar price tag aside, it was not luxury living, even by Pakistani standards. For less than half that amount, home buyers in the Abbottabad area can snap up luxury residences complete with drawing rooms, gardens, TV lounges, central air conditioning and multiple bedrooms with en- suite bathrooms, according to listings posted on Zameen, a Pakistani real estate web site.

A 7,200-square-foot, two-story home with six bedrooms was listed for $416,500, fully furnished. Another two-story home, with eight bedrooms and 5,400 square feet, was listed for $291,550. There were no homes in Abbottabad listed for over $500,000 on the Zameen website.

Some of the properties listed this week were priced as low as $60,000, although these were on lots as small as one-fortieth the size of bin Laden’s compound.

Land Value

The four original plots of land that were joined to create the bin Laden compound were purchased for $48,000 in 2004 and 2005, the Associated Press reported.

In Bilal Town, bin Laden’s neighborhood of new villas being built amid plots of farmland on the northeastern edge of Abbottabad, that land today would cost $200,000, said Muhammad Sabir Abbassi, a real estate dealer in Abbottabad who spoke by phone.

The property values show the relative affluence of Abbottabad in a country where per capita income, adjusted for purchasing power, was $2,400 in 2010, according to the CIA World Factbook. Nearly a quarter of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day, according to Unicef.

Much of the interior of bin Laden’s compound is empty space that allowed the al-Qaeda leader’s guards a clear view of anyone who might scale the perimeter walls and try to reach the main house. Walls inside the compound create a 30-meter-long alleyway that a vehicle would have to traverse from the exterior gate to a second gate before reaching any of the buildings.

Satellite Dish

The three-story main house is surrounded by several single- story buildings, one with a satellite dish on its roof. The compound has four gas meters and four electricity meters.

Bin Laden provided spacious homes with gardens for his family when he could, though he disdained any reliance on physical comforts or luxury, according to a 2009 book by his first wife, Najwa, and his fourth son, Omar, written with American author Jean Sasson.

Living in Khartoum, Sudan, after he was exiled from his native Saudi Arabia during the 1990s, bin Laden put his wives and children into a group of comfortable three-story homes with gardens in a guarded compound, they wrote.

After being expelled to Afghanistan, Omar wrote, bin Laden kept his family in a series of rock huts “fit for nothing more than sheltering livestock,” in the mountainous Tora Bora area along the Pakistani border.

To contact the reporters on this story: David Lerman in Washington at [email protected]; Anwar Shakir in Abbottabad, Pakistan at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at [email protected]

 

[Cammy]

Will Heaven is an Assistant Comment Editor and the Deputy Editor of Telegraph Blogs. He writes about politics and religion and is @WillHeaven on Twitter. His email is [email protected].

Why that photo of a dead Osama bin Laden is a photoshopped fake

By Will Heaven World Last updated: May 2nd, 2011

Hat-tip to the Telegraph’s Conrad Quilty-Harper and one sharp-eyed Redditpics user for spotting that the bottom half of the photo of a dead Osama bin Laden looks like one we already had (albeit the mirrored version).

Having taken the bottom half of the photo on the top left, I’ve just made this on photoshop in about 30 seconds. See what I mean?

It doesn’t change the fact that Osama bin Laden is dead. But it does prove that photos of the corpse are not in the public domain. Yet.

 

[Cammy]

Osama bin Laden-Dead Body Pictures are Fake CAUTION Graphic Photos
May 2, 2011 — newsnet7

“Unconfirmed” photo of Usama/Osama Bin Ladens body.

NOTE: These photos are NOT the real photos of bin Ladens death.

The real photos have not yet been released. These photos are circulating now, but Defense Dept. says they are old edited photos that have been around for a while. We are trying to find the real photos for you now. Follow our twitter to get the photos as soon as we do - @newsnet7 - http://twitter.com/newsnet7

osama bin laden dead photo

Rick Shell: Reporting Live – Osama or Usama bin Laden has been killed. US sources including the president, have confirmed the death of the top al-Qaeda leader, saying he has been killed in firefight following a US Navy Seals raid in Abbottabad.

The operation to kill bin Laden was launched earlier Sunday in Pakistan’s Abbottabad, a two-hour drive north of the capital Islamabad.

Bin Laden was killed in a firefight. No Americans were harmed.

US Navy Seals attacked the 3 story home where Bin Laden was in hiding. The Seals rappelled from Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters. A large firefight ensued.

The home was 8 x larger than others in area, built in 2005 in a largely unpopulated area that had since grown around the home.

The home was surrounded by 2 security fences and barbed wire.

2 brothers who worked for bin Laden as couriers reportedly lived in the home and were also killed.

Latest reports indicate that Bin Laden’s son was also killed. Other dead include the two brothers and one woman was wounded. Sources are still unclear, but there may have been another woman killed. Apparently there were many people at the residence. U.S. forces took custody of bin Laden’s body and it was later buried at sea in keeping with Islamic tradition which calls for a body to be buried within 24 hours in most cases.

There are also reports that two of bin Laden’s wives and four of his children were also captured during the operation. No confirmation yet on these reports.

US authorities received intelligence last September and were able to track bin Laden down through his couriers. They followed them to the compound and after weeks of surveillance, Navy Seals attacked.

DNA testing was conducted as well as facial recognition techniques to help formally identify him.

Oil and Silver have taken a dive and the US dollar has soared. It will be interesting to see the reaction of Wall Street in the next few hours.

In addition to 9/11 ( September 11, 2001) bin Laden has also been linked to a string of attacks including the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen. More Indepth Updates forthcoming.

Rick Shell -

Still seeking photos of battle and other casualties including Osama bin Ladens Son

Iraqis in Baghdad watch a news broadcast on Arabic satellite news channel Al-Arabiya showing an image which has been circulating on the internet and allegedly shows the body of Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Follow our twitter to get the latest photos, info etc. as soon as we do - @newsnet7 - http://twitter.com/newsnet7

 

[Cammy]

 

[Cammy]

Bin Laden was found at luxury Pakistan compound

Surrounded in red fabric, a compound is seen where locals reported a firefight took place overnight in Abbotabad, located in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, May 2, 2011.

The compound, within which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed, is seen in flames after it was attacked in Abbottabad in this still image taken from video footage from a mobile phone May 2, 2011.

A compound is seen on fire after a military helicopter crashed in Abbotabad on May 1, 2011.

A Pakistani soldier is seen searching the building of a compound following a firefight, in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 in this still image taken from video footage.

Policemen and a soldier halt traffic at a road block at Abbotabad, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province May 2, 2011.

By Patricia Zengerle and Alister Bull
WASHINGTON | Mon May 2, 2011 1:27pm EDT

(Reuters) - U.S. forces finally found al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden not in a mountain cave on Afghanistan's border, but with his youngest wife in a million-dollar compound in a summer resort just over an hour's drive from Pakistan's capital, U.S. officials said.

A small U.S. team conducted a night-time helicopter raid on the compound early on Monday. After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden and an adult son, one unidentified woman and two men were dead, the officials said.

U.S. forces were led to the fortress-like three-story building after more than four years tracking one of bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom U.S. officials said was identified by men captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with or protected by bin Laden," a senior administration official said in a briefing for reporters.

Bin Laden was finally found -- more than 9-1/2 years after the 2001 attacks on the United States -- after authorities discovered in August 2010 that the courier lived with his brother and their families in an unusual and extremely high-security building, officials said.

They said the courier and his brother were among those killed in the raid.

"When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound," a senior administration official said.

"The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harbored a high-value terrorist target. The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden," another administration official said.

The home is in Abbottabad, a town about 35 miles north of Islamabad, that is relatively affluent and home to many retired members of Pakistan's military.

It was a far cry from the popular notion of bin Laden hiding in some mountain cave on the rugged and inaccessible Afghan-Pakistan border -- an image often evoked by officials up to and including former President George W. Bush.

The building, about eight times the size of other nearby houses, sat on a large plot of land that was relatively secluded when it was built in 2005. When it was constructed, it was on the outskirts of Abbottabad's center, at the end of a dirt road, but some other homes have been built nearby in the six years since it went up, officials said.

WALLS TOPPED WITH BARBED WIRE

Intense security measures included 12- to 18-foot outer walls topped with barbed wire and internal walls that sectioned off different parts of the compound, officials said. Two security gates restricted access, and residents burned their trash, rather than leaving it for collection as did their neighbors, officials said.

Few windows of the three-story home faced the outside of the compound, and a terrace had a seven-foot (2.1 meter) privacy wall, officials said.

"It is also noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately $1 million but has no telephone or Internet service connected to it," an administration official said. "The brothers had no explainable source of wealth."

U.S. analysts realized that a third family lived there in addition to the two brothers, and the age and makeup of the third family matched those of the relatives -- including his youngest wife -- they believed would be living with bin Laden.

"Everything we saw, the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers' background and their behavior and the location of the compound itself was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden's hide-out to look like," another Obama administration official said.

Abbottabad is a popular summer resort, located in a valley surrounded by green hills near Pakistani Kashmir. Islamist militants, particularly those fighting in Indian-controlled Kashmir, used to have training camps near the town.

(Editing by Mary Milliken, Will Dunham and Mark Trevelyan)

 

[Cammy]

Special report: Why the U.S. mistrusts Pakistan's spies

A roadside vendor sells newspapers with headlines about the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in Lahore, May 3, 2011.

Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani reviews a Sri Lankan Air Force honor guard in Colombo January 20, 2011.

Supporters of Pakistan's religious and political party Jamaat-e-Islami shout slogans as they take part in a protest against the release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis in Karachi March 16, 2011.

By Chris Allbritton and Mark Hosenball

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON | Thu May 5, 2011 8:46am EDT

(Reuters) - In 2003 or 2004, Pakistani intelligence agents trailed a suspected militant courier to a house in the picturesque hill town of Abbottabad in northern Pakistan.

There, the agents determined that the courier would make contact with one of the world's most wanted men, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who had succeeded September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammad as al Qaeda operations chief a few months earlier.

Agents from Pakistan's powerful and mysterious Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, raided a house but failed to find al-Libbi, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters this week.

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf later wrote in his memoirs that an interrogation of the courier revealed that al-Libbi used three houses in Abbottabad, which sits some 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Islamabad. The intelligence official said that one of those houses may have been in the same compound where on May 1 U.S. special forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

It's a good story. But is it true? Pakistan's foreign ministry this week used the earlier operation as evidence of Pakistan's commitment to the fight against terrorism. You see, Islamabad seemed to be pointing out, we were nabbing bad guys seven years ago in the very neighborhood where you got bin Laden.

But U.S. Department of Defense satellite photos show that in 2004 the site where bin Laden was found this week was nothing but an empty field. A U.S. official briefed on the bin Laden operation told Reuters he had heard nothing to indicate there had been an earlier Pakistani raid.

There are other reasons to puzzle. Pakistan's foreign ministry says that Abbottabad, home to several military installations, has been under surveillance since 2003. If that's true, then why didn't the ISI uncover bin Laden, who U.S. officials say has been living with his family and entourage in a well-guarded compound for years?

The answer to that question goes to the heart of the troubled relationship between Pakistan and the United States. Washington has long believed that Islamabad, and especially the ISI, play a double game on terrorism, saying one thing but doing another.

MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Since 9/11 the United States has relied on Pakistan's military to fight al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the mountainous badlands along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. President George W. Bush forged a close personal relationship with military leader Musharraf.

But U.S. officials have also grown frustrated with Pakistan. While Islamabad has been instrumental in catching second-tier and lower ranked al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and several operatives identified as al Qaeda "number threes" have either been captured or killed, the topmost leaders - bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al Zawahiri -- have consistently eluded capture.

The ISI, which backed the Taliban when the group came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, seemed to turn a blind eye -- or perhaps even helped -- as Taliban and al-Qaeda members fled into Pakistan during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, according to U.S. officials.

Washington also believes the agency protected Abdul Qadeer Khan, lionized as the "father" of Pakistan's bomb, who was arrested in 2004 for selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

And when Kashmiri militants attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people, New Delhi accused the ISI of controlling and coordinating the strikes. A key militant suspect captured by the Americans later told investigators that ISI officers had helped plan and finance the attack. Pakistan denies any active ISI connection to the Mumbai attacks and often points to the hundreds of troops killed in action against militants as proof of its commitment to fighting terrorism.

But over the past few years Washington has grown increasingly suspicious-and ready to criticize Pakistan. The U.S. military used association with the spy agency as one of the issues they would question Guantanamo Bay prisoners about to see if they had links to militants, according to WikiLeaks documents made available last month to the New York Times.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last July that she believed that Pakistani officials knew where bin Laden was holed up. On a visit to Pakistan just days before the Abbottabad raid, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the ISI of maintaining links with the Taliban.

As the CIA gathered enough evidence to make the case that bin Laden was in Abbottabad, U.S. intel chiefs decided that Pakistan should be kept in the dark. When U.S. Navy Seals roped down from helicopters into the compound where bin Laden was hiding, U.S. officials insist, Pakistan's military and intel bosses were blissfully unaware of what was happening in the middle of their country.

Some suspect Pakistan knew more than it's letting on. But the Pakistani intelligence official, who asked to remain anonymous so that he could speak candidly, told Reuters that the Americans had acted alone and without any Pakistani assistance or permission.

The reality is Washington long ago learned to play its own double game. It works with Islamabad when it can and uses Pakistani assets when it's useful but is ever more careful about revealing what it's up to.

"On the one hand, you can't not deal with the ISI... There definitely is the cooperation between the two agencies in terms of personnel working on joint projects and the day-to-day intelligence sharing," says Kamran Bokhari, Middle East and South Asia director for global intelligence firm STRATFOR.

But "there is this perception on the part of the American officials working with their counterparts in the ISI, there is the likelihood that some of these people might be working with the other side. Or somehow the information we're sharing could leak out... It's the issue of perception and suspicion."

The killing of bin Laden exposes just how dysfunctional the relationship has become. The fact that bin Laden seems to have lived for years in a town an hour's drive from Islamabad has U.S. congressmen demanding to know why Washington is paying $1 billion a year in aid to Pakistan. Many of the hardest questions are directed at the ISI. Did it know bin Laden was there? Was it helping him? Is it rotten to the core or is it just a few sympathizers?

What's clear is that the spy agency America must work within one of the world's most volatile and dangerous regions remains an enigma to outsiders.

GENERAL PASHA

ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington on April 11, just weeks before bin Laden was killed. Pasha, 59, became ISI chief in September 2008, two months before the Mumbai attacks. Before his promotion, he was in charge of military operations against Islamic militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. He is considered close to Pakistan military chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, himself a long-time ISI chief.

A slight man who wastes neither words nor movements, Pasha speaks softly and is able to project bland anonymity even as he sizes up his companions and surroundings. In an off-the-record interview with Reuters last year, he spoke deliberately and quietly but seemed to enjoy verbal sparring. There was none of the bombast many Pakistani officials put on.

Pasha, seen by U.S. officials as something of a right-wing nationalist, and CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was in the final stages of planning the raid on Osama's compound, had plenty to talk about in Washington. Joint intelligence operations have been plagued by disputes, most notably the case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore in January. Davis was released from jail earlier this year after the victims' families were paid "blood money" by the United States, a custom sanctioned under Islam and common in Pakistan.

Then there are the Mumbai attacks. Pasha and other alleged ISI officers were named as defendants in a U.S. lawsuit filed late last year by families of Americans killed in the attacks. The lawsuit contends that the ISI men were involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba, an anti-India militant group, in planning and orchestrating the attacks.

An Indian government report seen by Reuters states that David Headley, a Pakistani-American militant who was allied with Lashkar-e-Taiba and who was arrested in the United States last year, told Indian interrogators while under FBI supervision that ISI officers had been involved in plotting the attack and paid him $25,000 to help fund it.

Pakistan's government said it will "strongly contest" the case and shortly after the lawsuit was filed Pakistani media named the undercover head of the CIA's Islamabad station, forcing him to leave the country.

TECHNIQUE OF WAR

The ISI's ties to Islamist militancy are very much by design.

The Pakistan Army's humiliating surrender to India in Dhaka in 1971 led to the carving up of the country into two parts, one West Pakistan and the other Bangladesh. The defeat had two major effects: it convinced the Pakistan military that it could not beat its larger neighbor through conventional means alone, a realization that gave birth to its use of Islamist militant groups as proxies to try to bleed India; and it forced successive Pakistani governments to turn to Islam as a means of uniting the territory it had left.

These shifts, well underway when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, suited the United States at first. Working with its Saudi Arabian ally, Washington plowed money and weapons into the jihad against the Soviets and turned a blind eye to the excesses of Pakistan's military ruler, General Zia ul-Haq, who had seized power in 1977 and hanged former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979.

Many Pakistanis blame the current problems in Pakistan in part on Washington's penchant for supporting military rulers. It did the same in 2001 when it threw it its lot with Musharraf following the attacks on New York and Washington. By then, the rebellion in Indian Kashmir had been going since 1989, and U.S. officials back in 2001 made little secret that they knew the army was training, arming and funding militants to fight there.

That attitude changed after India and Pakistan nearly went to war following the December 2001 attack on India's parliament, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militant groups -- a charge Islamabad denied. Musharraf began to rein in the Kashmiri militant groups, restricting their activity across the Line of Control which divides the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir.

But he was juggling the two challenges which continue to defy his successor as head of the army, General Ashfaq Kayani -- reining in the militant groups enough to prevent an international backlash on Pakistan, while giving them enough space to operate to avoid domestic fall-out at home.

The ISI has never really tried to hide the fact that it sees terrorism as part of its arsenal. When Guantanamo interrogation documents appearing to label the Pakistani security agency as an entity supporting terrorism were published recently, a former ISI head, Lt. General Asad Durrani, wrote that terrorism "is a technique of war, and therefore an instrument of policy."

Critics believe that elements of the ISI -- perhaps an old guard that learned the Islamization lessons of General Zia ul-Haq a little too well -- maintain an influence within the organization. "It is no secret that Pakistan's army and foreign intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, actively cultivated a vast array of Islamist militants - both local and foreign, from the early 1980s until at least the events of September 11, 2001 - as instruments of foreign policy," STRATFOR wrote in an analysis posted on its website this week.

LIST OF GRIEVANCES

That legacy is at the heart of Washington's growing mistrust of the ISI.

Take the agency's ties to the powerful Afghan militant group headed by Jalaluddin Haqqani, which has inflicted heavy casualties on U.S. forces in the region.

"We sometimes say: You are controlling -- you, Pasha -- you're controlling Haqqani," one U.S. official said, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"Well, Pasha will come back and say ... 'No, we are in contact with them.' Well, what does that really mean?"

"I don't know but I'd like our experts to sit down and work out: Is this something where he is trying (to), as he would put it, know more about what a terrorist group in his country is doing. Or as we would put it, to manipulate these people as the forward soldiers of Pakistani influence in Afghanistan."

When U.S. Joint Chiefs head Admiral Mike Mullen visited Islamabad last month he was just as blunt.

"Haqqani is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners. And I have a sacred obligation to do all I can to make sure that doesn't happen," Mullen told a Pakistani newspaper.

"So that's at the core -- it's not the only thing -- but that's at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship."

Just across the border in Afghanistan, Major General John Campbell reaches into a bag and pulls out a thick stack of cards with the names and photos of coalition forces killed in the nearly year-long period since he's been on the job. Many of the men in the photos were killed by Haqqani fighters.

"I carry these around so I never forget their sacrifice," Campbell said, speaking to a small group of reporters at U.S. Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost province.

"There are guys in Pakistan that have sanctuary that are coming across the border and killing Americans... we gotta engage the Pakistanis to do something about that," he said.

Campbell calls the Haqqani network the most lethal threat to Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are entrenched in a near decade-old war.

"The Haqqani piece, it's sort of like a Mafia-syndicate. And I don't know at what level they're tied into the ISI -- I don't. But there's places ... that you just see that there's collusion up and down the border," he said.

DRONE WARS

Another contentious subject discussed on Pasha's trip to Washington was the use of missile-firing drones to attack suspected militant camps on Pakistani territory.

Once Obama moved into the White House, the drone program begun by the Bush Administration not only continued, but according to several officials, increased. Sometimes drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan took place several times in a single week.

U.S. officials, as well as counter-terrorism officials from European countries with a history of Islamic militant activity, said that they had no doubt that the drone campaign was seriously damaging the ability of al Qaeda's central operation, as well as affiliated groups like the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, to continue to use Pakistan as a safe haven.

But the increasingly obvious use of drones made it far more difficult for either the CIA or its erstwhile Pakistani partners, ISI, to pretend that the operation was secret and that Pakistani officials were unaware of it. Since last October, the tacit cooperation between the CIA and ISI which had helped protect and even nurture the CIA's drone program, began to fray, and came close to breaking point.

Before Pasha visited CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, last month, Pakistani intelligence sources leaked ferocious complaints about the CIA in general and the drone program in particular, suggesting that the agency, its operatives and its operations inside Pakistan were out of control and that if necessary, Pakistan would take forcible steps to curb them -- including stopping drone attacks and limiting the presence of CIA operatives in Pakistan.

When Pasha arrived at CIA HQ, U.S. officials said, the demands leaked by the Pakistanis to the media were much scaled down, with Pasha asking Panetta that the US give Pakistan more notice about drone operations, supply Pakistan with its own fleet of drones (a proposal which the United States had agreed to but which had subsequently stalled) and that the agency would curb the numbers of its personnel in Pakistan.

U.S. officials said that the Obama administration agreed to at least some measure of greater notification to the Pakistani authorities about CIA activities, though insisted any concessions were quite limited.

Just weeks later, Obama failed to notify Pakistan in advance about the biggest U.S. counter-terrorist operation in living memory, conducted on Pakistani soil.

LEARNING FROM HISTORY

It was different the first time U.S. forces went after bin Laden.

Washington's first attempt to kill the al Qaeda leader came in August 1998. President Bill Clinton launched 66 cruise missiles from the Arabian Sea at camps in Khost in eastern Afghanistan to kill the group's top brass in retaliation for the suicide bombings on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The CIA had received word that al Qaeda's leadership was due to meet. But Bin Laden canceled the meeting and several U.S. officials said at the time they believed the ISI had tipped him off. The U.S. military informed their Pakistani counterparts about 90 minutes before the missiles entered Pakistan's airspace, just in case they mistook them for an Indian attack.

Then U.S. Secretary of State William Cohen came to suspect bin Laden escaped because he was tipped off. Four days before the operation, the State Department issued a public warning about a "very serious threat" and ordered hundreds of nonessential U.S. personnel and dependents out of Pakistan. Some U.S. officials said the Taliban could have passed the word to bin Laden on an ISI tip.

Other former officials have disputed the notion of a security breach, saying bin Laden had plenty of notice that the United States intended to retaliate following the bombings in Africa.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Now that the U.S. has finally killed bin Laden, what will change?

The Pakistani intelligence official acknowledged that bin Laden's presence in Pakistan will cause more problems with the United States. "It looks bad," he said. "It's pretty embarrassing." But he denied that Pakistan had been hiding bin Laden, and noted that the CIA had struggled to find bin Laden for years as well.

Perhaps. But the last few days are unlikely to convince the CIA and other U.S. agencies to trust their Pakistani counterparts with any kind of secrets or partnership.

Recent personnel changes at the top of the Obama Administration also do not bode well for salvaging the relationship.

Panetta, a former Congressman and senior White House official, is a political operator who officials say at least got on cordially, if not well, with ISI chief Pasha. But Panetta is being reassigned to take over from Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. His replacement at the CIA will be General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. military operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

The biggest issue on Petraeus's agenda will be dealing with Pakistan's ISI. The U.S. general's relationship with Pakistani Army chief of Staff Kayani, Pasha's immediate superior, is publicly perceived to be so unfriendly that it has become a topic of discussion on Pakistani TV talk shows.

"I think it is going to be a very strained and difficult relationship," said Bruce Riedel, a former adviser to Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He characterized the attitude on both sides as "mutual distrust."

After a decade of American involvement in Afghanistan, experts say that Petraeus and Pakistani intelligence officials know each other well enough not to like each other.

(Additional reporting by Rebecca Conway in Islamabad, Mark Hosenball and Phil Stewart in Washington, and Sanjeev Miglani in Singapore)

(Writing by Bill Tarrant; editing by Simon Robinson, Claudia Parsons and Jim Impoco)

 

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