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  To William, Caroline, James, Sabine, Livi, Jack, Teddy, and grandchildren still to come, in the hope it will encourage you to read this book someday.

  COUNTDOWN: 247 DAYS

  August 27, 2010

  Langley, Virginia

  Leon Panetta was speechless. It was almost too perfect. A top Central Intelligence Agency operations officer had just told him about a “fortress,” a three-story house at the end of a dead-end street in an upscale neighborhood in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Panetta fought back a wave of hope and excitement. He didn’t want to share his optimism with anyone else in the room. Not a smile. Not a high five. Not yet.

  As director of the CIA, one of the key parts of Panetta’s job was protecting the United States from foreign terrorist attacks. That meant overseeing teams of operators, analysts, and agents working all over the world, many of them in dangerous hot spots in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Every piece of information that crossed Panetta’s desk had to be carefully vetted before he passed it on to his boss, President Barack Obama. But it was hard not to be enthusiastic about this tip. After all, this house might be the hideout for the world’s most dangerous terrorist, a man who had all but dropped off the face of the earth: Osama bin Laden.

  Panetta took a few deep breaths. As he worked to keep his emotions in check, he realized that so much had changed so quickly. Just a half hour earlier, he had been wrapping up a routine meeting. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, some thirty intelligence analysts, experts, and case officers from the Counterterrorism Center would jam into a conference room down the hall from Panetta’s office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

  Like clockwork, the sessions would start at 4:30 p.m. and last more than ninety minutes. During the meetings, the team would update Panetta about the latest issues in the Middle East, problems that could ultimately threaten the security of the United States and its allies. They’d routinely jump from topic to topic—and today’s session had been no different. They discussed new developments in the war-torn nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They talked about the dangerous role the notorious terrorist group Al Qaeda was still playing in both countries.

  Maybe it was because it was late on a Friday afternoon in the waning days of summer, but this session seemed to drag on and on. So, when the meeting was over, the analysts, operators, and experts jumped up from their chairs and began filing out of the conference room. But as they grabbed their briefcases and papers, three men approached Panetta, Michael Morell, the CIA’s deputy director, and Jeremy Bash, the spy agency’s chief of staff.

  “We need to see you alone,” one of the men, Mike, the director of the Counterterrorism Center, said to them. That was a first.

  Panetta could sense something was up from Mike’s language and tone. If someone wanted to talk to Panetta or a deputy after a meeting, they’d casually ask, “Can we go small?” But Mike and two well-respected colleagues, Gary, the head of the Center’s Pakistan-Afghanistan Department (PAD), and Sam, the agency’s leading expert on Al Qaeda, were not feeling casual. Panetta could tell from the look on their faces. If they requested a private meeting, it had to be important.

  “Why don’t we go back to my office,” Panetta said.

  The group followed him out of the conference room and into the hallway. After a few steps, they reached one of the doors leading to the director’s office. Panetta opened it, revealing a larger room with dark brown wood paneling and a wide window that stretched the length of the back wall, letting in natural light. Outside was a view of the Virginia woods below.

  Panetta’s desk was pushed up against a wall on one side of the room. Above it was a tattered American flag in a frame, hung there by his predecessor. The flag came from the World Trade Center. For Panetta, it served as a daily reminder of 9/11, its victims, and the hunt for bin Laden. On the opposite side of the room was a conference table, chairs, and a television mounted on the wall above. That was usually where Panetta held meetings with dignitaries and foreign guests. But this afternoon, it was where Panetta would hold the impromptu session with his colleagues.

  Panetta sat at the head of the conference table, while Morell grabbed his usual chair at the other end. When everyone was seated, the three men wasted no time. They disclosed details about a courier they believed had close ties to Al Qaeda.

  “We’ve found this guy named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti,” Mike said.

  Panetta shrugged. He’d never heard of him. He looked over at Morell and Bash and could tell they hadn’t either. So Mike, Gary, a case officer, and Sam, an analyst, took turns recounting the history of al-Kuwaiti—the new lead that had taken almost a decade to develop.

  The trail went back to shortly after September 11, 2001—the day nineteen men hijacked four planes and carried out the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. The terrorists flew two of the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane hit the Pentagon just outside of Washington, D.C. A fourth crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. All told, almost 3,000 people were killed, including 2,606 when the Twin Towers collapsed.

  The United States quickly traced the attacks to Al Qaeda, a terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden, a sullen, bearded, rifle-toting Islamic revolutionary who had set up training camps in Afghanistan, a nation controlled by religious extremists known as the Taliban.

  Hours after the towers collapsed, President George W. Bush promised the nation in a televised address that America would take the fight to Al Qaeda. Less than a month later, a U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Enduring Freedom, a military offensive aimed at killing bin Laden, his terrorist followers, and dismantling the Taliban government, which had been supporting and protecting Al Qaeda for years.

  Osama bin Laden still photo from a propaganda video.

  With coalition forces on the ground, bin Laden and his allies fled to Tora Bora, a remote mountainous area in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. U.S. Special Forces thought he was trapped in a cave. After a five-day battle, they took Tora Bora in December 2001. But when the smoke cleared, bin Laden was gone. He had disappeared.

  For nine years, Al Qaeda’s leader remained an elusive figure, always just beyond the grasp of his pursuers. Was he in eastern Afghanistan? Maybe Pakistan, plotting new attacks? Or in Saudi Arabia, where he was born? No one knew for sure.

  But then they got a lead from an unlikely source, Gary said.

  Since the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. had been interrogating Al Qaeda prisoners at both the U.S. Navy prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and CIA secret prisons. Sometimes they’d use interrogation techniques that many critics called torture, such as waterboarding, to get information. Interrogators would often ask detainees about Al Qaeda members who served as couriers.

  Gary said analysts believed bin Laden was too smart to let Al Qaeda senior commanders know where his hideout was. So if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them—someone whom bin Laden would trust with his life.

  During interrogations, one name kept coming up: Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Some detainees claimed he was an important courier with close ties to bin Laden. But others downplayed al-Kuwaiti’s significance.

  With Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, interrogators
waterboarded him 183 times, making sure he was in a “compliant state,” before asking him about al-Kuwaiti. He said, yes, he knew him, but denied al-Kuwaiti was a courier. And he said al-Kuwaiti had left Al Qaeda after 9/11.

  But KSM didn’t know the prison was bugged. So when he returned to his cell, interrogators heard him issue a warning to the other prisoners: Don’t mention “the courier.” Another prominent Al Qaeda member said he didn’t know al-Kuwaiti, then volunteered the name of a courier he said was working for bin Laden. Interrogators later concluded the name he had given them was fictitious. Gary said the misinformation only reinforced their belief that al-Kuwaiti was important to the terrorist group. Otherwise, why would they be protecting him?

  So, in Gary’s view, if they could locate the man known as al-Kuwaiti, there was a chance he would lead them to bin Laden.

  Gary looked at Panetta, Morell, and Bash. He could tell they were following every word. He explained that after years of painstaking detective work, the CIA in 2007 discovered al-Kuwaiti’s real name: Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed. He was a Pakistani man who was born in Kuwait and took on a nom de guerre when he joined Al Qaeda. Now, with al-Kuwaiti’s real family name, CIA operatives were able to track down people close to him in Pakistan and beyond and intercept their telephone calls and emails. They looked for any bit of information, any clue that could lead them to al-Kuwaiti.

  But Gary said every lead turned out to be a dead end—until June of 2010, just two months ago. That’s when they intercepted a telephone conversation between al-Kuwaiti and another suspected terrorist under U.S. surveillance. From that call, the CIA was able to get al-Kuwaiti’s mobile phone number, and trace the call to Peshawar, a major city in western Pakistan.

  While they had his number and monitored his calls, they still didn’t know where al-Kuwaiti lived. He was wily. He practiced strict operational security. After making a call from Peshawar, he’d turn off his cell phone and remove the battery so he couldn’t be tracked.

  They didn’t think he lived in Peshawar. But if they could find him there, in a city of two million people, they could come up with a way to track him back to his home. And that’s what happened.

  In August, they followed his phone signal and spotted al-Kuwaiti driving a white Suzuki Jimny, a mini sport utility vehicle with a picture of a rhinoceros on the spare-tire cover. But instead of following directly behind him, they placed people at key positions along the roads leading out of Peshawar. They watched as he passed. And if he didn’t drive by, they knew he had turned off and taken other roads. The next time, they’d place agents at locations along those side streets. It was a slow and tedious process, but it worked.

  They eventually tracked him ninety-five miles east to Abbottabad, the home of a military academy known as Pakistan’s West Point. With its lush scenery and proximity to the Himalayas, the city was a popular summer resort.

  Afraid that al-Kuwaiti would see them, the agents didn’t tail him to his house. But they continued to monitor his calls, and they soon discovered that he was secretive about every aspect of his life.

  During one call between al-Kuwaiti and an old friend, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. The friend asked al-Kuwaiti a series of innocuous questions: Where did he live now? What’s going on with his life? Al-Kuwaiti was vague. When his friend asked what he was doing for work, he reluctantly responded: “I’m with the same ones as before.”

  There was a pause, as if his friend already knew what al-Kuwaiti’s words meant. He was still working for Al Qaeda.

  “May Allah be with you,” the friend responded.

  At that point, Gary said their surveillance picked up pace. A few days later, agents tracked al-Kuwaiti to a dead-end street in an upscale neighborhood in Abbottabad. And then, there it was at the end of the street—a three-story house with twelve-foot-high concrete walls in the front, eighteen-foot-high walls in the back. The third-floor balcony was enclosed inside a seven-foot wall. The perimeter bristled with barbed wire. It was more than a house, Gary said. “It’s a fortress.”

  Panetta’s ears pricked up. After all these years, could this really be bin Laden’s hideout? Was he really living in suburbia? The CIA director was stunned.

  Panetta was a larger than life figure with big Italian emotions and gestures. When he thought something was funny, his laugh came straight from his gut. He liked to greet friends with big hugs. More important in the world of Washington, Panetta was a highly effective and shrewd bureaucrat who got things done. He was the ultimate D.C. insider, with friends on both sides of the aisle. Over the years, Panetta had been an influential congressman, President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, and now President Obama’s CIA director. He was never tainted by scandal. And the sometimes fiery director was never at a loss for words, either—especially four-letter ones. But now he didn’t know what to say. This was totally unexpected.

  While Panetta thought about the possibilities, Gary reached into a folder and pulled out satellite images of the compound. He handed copies to Panetta and the others. As they stared at the pictures, the officers told them what else they knew.

  CIA satellite image of compound, Abbottabad, Pakistan.

  Al-Kuwaiti lived in the compound, which was much larger than any of the surrounding homes. It was so large, secluded, and secure, they believed al-Kuwaiti was sheltering a high-value target—but they didn’t know for sure. There was no way to see inside the house from the ground or from above. The windows were made of an opaque material.

  Of all the things in the surveillance photos, Panetta’s eyes kept coming back to the balcony on the third floor, which was shielded by a privacy wall. The whole purpose of a balcony is to stand outside and soak in the view. That was especially true in Abbottabad, which was called the City of Pines because of all the trees.

  Who puts a privacy wall around a balcony? Panetta asked. But he already knew the answer. So did Morell, his chief deputy, who purposely sat at the other end of the conference table from Panetta at most meetings so he could inconspicuously watch the staff’s reaction to the director’s comments. By now, the information made the hair on the back of Morell’s neck stand up. No one stated the obvious—the name was never mentioned. But they were all thinking the same thing: The wall was erected to protect someone very important. Maybe, someone like bin Laden.

  Panetta didn’t want to get too far ahead of himself. Yes, it was a compound, but so what? It didn’t prove bin Laden lived there. It could be another high-value terrorist or a crime lord. Who knows? They needed proof. This compound was in Pakistan, a sovereign nation. They couldn’t just knock on the door. No, they had to be sure before they could do anything.

  And there was something else. Just two months earlier, Panetta had been pressed on ABC News about bin Laden. What was the United States doing to find him? Panetta said that the last time the CIA had “precise information” on bin Laden was “the early 2000s.”

  “He is, as is obvious, in very deep hiding. He’s in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The terrain is probably the most difficult in the world,” Panetta said. “If we keep that pressure on, we think ultimately we can flush him out.”

  If bin Laden was in the Abbottabad fortress, the CIA had been wrong all along, he thought. He wasn’t going to focus on the negative. They had this new lead, the best in a long time. And as much as he wanted to alert President Obama, he knew he couldn’t tell him yet. They had to dig deeper, look closer.

  “We need to know more—a lot more,” Panetta said. “It requires deeper investigation. I want every possible operational avenue explored to get inside the compound.”

  But Panetta knew that would be easier said than done.

  COUNTDOWN: 236 DAYS

  September 7, 2010

  Virginia Beach, Virginia

  Robert O’Neill checked off the last item on his list. He had finished with his power of attorney, updating his will and life insurance. There were a few weeks to go before his deployment to Afghanistan, but he knew it was never too earl
y to take care of business.

  O’Neill was a details guy. He was that way about everything in his life. If he did things the right way and worked hard, he could handle any situation.

  So far, it had worked. He was thirty-three years old, a fifteen-year member of the U.S. Navy’s Sea, Air and Land Forces, an old man in the elite unit. Sure, he wasn’t as young as the fresh-faced “Meats” who’d just completed intense SEAL training, but that didn’t matter. He still kept up. Besides, he didn’t look his age. He was a badass.

  O’Neill was six feet tall, two hundred pounds, with the barrel chest and thick arms and legs characteristic of most SEALs, but his blue eyes and reddish-blond hair gave him a baby-faced charm. He was outgoing, funny, charismatic, a natural-born leader.

  He was going to need it all on his next deployment. He was headed to Afghanistan again, this time as a team leader. He’d probably spend most of his time at a base in Jalalabad, monitoring missions instead of hunting bad guys in the middle of the night. After years of life-threatening operations, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. But O’Neill knew he’d miss the action.

  He leaned back in his chair and sighed. It was late. His wife and little girls were asleep in the next room. He had reached a point in his life where saying goodbye to them had become routine. Hell, this was his seventh deployment in five years. When he enlisted back in 1995, he had never heard of bin Laden, or Al Qaeda. Afghanistan? Wasn’t that where Sylvester Stallone fought the bad guys in Rambo III?

  O’Neill considered himself a simple kid from Butte, Montana, a mining town in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. His parents divorced when Rob was six. The four children lived with their mom and enjoyed an idyllic childhood, playing outdoors with neighborhood friends. They acted out scenes from 1980s action movies, ambushing one another with toy guns, leaping off rooftops like ninja warriors chasing the bad guys.