In the immediate aftermath of the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan (see May 2, 2011), Pakistani police detain up to 200 people in the Abbottabad area. Police are looking for anyone who knew Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, the courier who lived in the same compound with bin Laden, or his brother Abrar, who also lived in that compound. (Note that locally they were known by the aliases Arshad Khan and Tariq Khan, respectively.) Both men died in the US raid, but police are hoping to find accomplices. One Pakistani official says 31 have been arrested, but another official says as many as 200 have been. Pakistani police have a history in situations like this of detaining many people for questioning and then releasing most of them later without charge. One man detained, known locally as Tahir Javed, is said to have been the main contractor who built bin Laden’s compound in 2005 (see January 22, 2004-2005). He is quickly released. Other people detained are a major local landowner named Shamroz and his two sons. Neighbors says they are the people who knew those living in the compound the best. [ABC News, 5/6/2011] A follow-up story on June 28 will state that most of those detained have since been released, including Shamroz. It is not known if Pakistani officials still hold or suspect any neighbors at that time. [McClatchy Newspapers, 6/28/2011]
May 2, 2011 and After: Location of Bin Laden’s Hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Raises Questions
Shortly after the announcment of Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2, 2011 (see May 2, 2011), some commentators are surprised to find that bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is only 800 yards away from Kakul, an elite military academy that is Pakistan’s equivalent of the West Point academy in the US. [New York Times, 5/6/2011] This fact made targeting the compound with a drone strike very problematic. One unnamed CIA official says, “All [a drone-fired missile] has to be is about 1,000 yards off and it hits the Pakistan Military Academy.” Additionally, Abbottabad is home to two regimental compounds, and many military families live there. [Washington Post, 5/6/2011]
Too Long Not to Know – Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani official who now teaches at Columbia University, says that there was a tight net of security around Abbottabad because of concerns about terrorist attacks on the many sensitive military installations there. The town was thoroughly covered with security guards and soldiers. Abbas says, “If he was there since 2005, that is too long a time for local police and intelligence not to know.”
“Willful Blindness” at Best – Former CIA officer Arthur Keller, who worked on the search for bin Laden, says the locale of bin Laden’s compound raises questions. He says that bin Laden must have known that the area has a high concentration of military institutions, officers, and retired officers, including some from the ISI’s S Wing. The ISI is Pakistan’s intelligence agency, and the S Wing is the part of the ISI many experts believe has worked with and protected some Islamist militant leaders (see March 26, 2009). Keller says that bin Laden also had to be aware that the town has a higher level of security, checkpoints, and so on, than many other Pakistani towns. While living near a military academy helped ensure bin Laden’s compound would not get hit by a US drone, there were safer towns to hide from drones. According to the New York Times, Keller does not understand why bin Laden would live in Abbottabad “unless he had some assurance of protection or patronage from military or intelligence officers.” Keller says, “At best, it was willful blindness on the part of the ISI.” [New York Times, 5/6/2011]
May 2, 2011 and After: Some US Officials Question Pakistani Government’s Knowledge of Bin Laden’s Abbottabad Hideout
In the days and hours after the US Special Forces raid that kills Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad, Pakistan, hideout (see May 2, 2011), some US officials question whether anyone within the Pakistani government knew that bin Laden was hiding there. 
John Brennan, the White House’s top counterterrorism adviser, says that bin Laden’s presence in the Abbottabad compound “raises questions” about what some Pakistani officials might have known. He adds that while Pakistani officials “seem surprised” to hear that bin Laden was hiding there, he wonders how “a compound of that size in that area” could exist without arousing suspicions. Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who was investigating al-Qaeda well before 9/11, notes that Abbottabad is heavily populated by current and former Pakistani military officers. He says, “There’s no way he could have been sitting there without the knowledge of some people in the ISI and the Pakistani military.” Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) similarly comments, “The ability of Osama bin Laden to live in a compound so close to Pakistan’s capital is astounding—and we need to understand who knew his location, when they knew it, and whether Pakistani officials were helping to protect him.” [MSNBC, 5/2/2011] Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) says that she is troubled by the possibility that the Pakistani government may be engaging in “duplicitous behavior” with the US. “It would be very difficult [for bin Laden] to live there for up to five or six years and no one know [he’s] there. I would have a hard time believing that they did not know,” she says. As chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she is one of only a small number of people in Congress given top secret security briefings. [Time, 5/3/2011] An anonymous senior Obama administration official says, “It’s hard to believe that [General Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani and [Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja] Pasha actually knew that bin Laden was there.” Kayani is the head of the Pakistani army and Pasha is the head of the ISI. “[But] there are degrees of knowing, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we find out that someone close to Pasha knew.” [New York Times, 5/6/2011] Richard Clarke, the US counterterrorism “tsar” on 9/11, says, “I think there’s a real possibility that we’ll find that there were former members of the Pakistani military and military intelligence who were sympathizers with al-Qaeda and with various other terrorist groups, and that they were running their own sort of renegade support system for al-Qaeda.” [ABC News, 5/7/2011] About one month after bin Laden’s death, Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) says he believes elements of the ISI and Pakistan’s military protected bin Laden. He says this is based on “information I’ve seen.” As chairperson of the House Intelligence Committee, he is one of only a small number of people in Congress given top secret security briefings. He adds that he has not seen any evidence that top Pakistani civilian or military leaders were involved in hiding bin Laden. [New York Times, 6/14/2011] Representative C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) says that some members of the ISI or Pakistan’s military were involved in hiding bin Laden. As the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, he also is one of only a small number of people in Congress given top secret security briefings. [New York Times, 6/23/2011]
However, most US officials are hesitant to openly accuse Pakistan, for political reasons. The New York Times reports, “One [unnamed] senior administration official privately acknowledged that the administration sees its relationship with Pakistan as too crucial to risk a wholesale break, even if it turned out that past or present Pakistani intelligence officials did know about bin Laden’s whereabouts.” [New York Times, 5/6/2011] Pakistani officials deny that the Pakistani government had any knowledge that bin Laden was living at the compound. [MSNBC, 5/2/2011]
May 2, 2011 and After: Neighbors Had Suspicions about Inhabitants of Bin Laden’s Hideout in Abbottabad
In the days after the US raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden (see May 2, 2011), neighbors to bin Laden’s compound are interviewed by journalists. The consensus appears to be that no neighbor claims to have suspected a prominent Islamist militant was living in the compound, much less bin Laden himself. Most thought the people in the compound were simply very religious and conservative. The inhabitants were seen as courteous, but distant and private. However, a lot of curious behavior was noticed that made people suspicious: [New York Times, 5/3/2011; Associated Press, 5/3/2011] Neighbors called the compound the “Waziristan Mansion” because it was owned by a man believed to be from Waziristan. Waziristan is part of Pakistan’s tribal region near Afghanistan, and it is the area where most of al-Qaeda’s leadership was believed to be hiding. [Wall Street Journal, 5/3/2011] One local farmer says: “People were skeptical in this neighborhood about this place and these guys. They used to gossip, say they were smugglers or drug dealers. People would complain that even with such a big house they didn’t invite the poor or distribute charity.” [Associated Press, 5/3/2011] A local ice cream vendor says: “If a ball went into bin Laden’s compound the children would not be allowed to get it. They were given money instead; 100-150 rupees ($2-$3) per ball.” This is several times more than the worth of such balls. Anyone who leaned against any of the compound walls was warned to keep moving. One local teen boy says, “There was a rumor in the neighborhood that the man who lived there was Baitullah Mahsud’s nephew.” (Mahsud was one of the militant leaders of Tehrik-i-Taliban (the Pakistani Taliban.) [Australian, 5/3/2011] The people in the compound give conflicting explanations for their wealth, and neighbors found this suspicious. For instance, one person in the compound says they had a hotel in Dubai managed by an uncle who sends them money. Another says they worked in the money-changing business. One man who frequently came and left the compound alternately told neighbors he was in the transportation business, or a contractor, or a money changer. [New York Times, 5/3/2011; Wall Street Journal, 5/3/2011] The family never invited anyone inside the compound and never visited neighbors’ homes. However, they did attend prayers in the mosque and local funerals. [New York Times, 5/3/2011] One neighbor says, “We thought maybe they had killed someone back in their village or something like that and were therefore very cautious.” [New York Times, 5/7/2011]
Shoftly After May 2, 2011: Bin Laden’s Death Reignites Debate over Usefulness of US Torture Techniques
Osama bin Laden’s killing by US forces on May 2, 2011 (see May 2, 2011) reignites the debate about the usefulness of the torture techniques used by US intelligence. The debate centers on how US intelligence learned about bin Laden’s location and whether the torture of prisoners helped find him.
Courier Provides the Key Lead – According to Obama administration officials, bin Laden was located through US intelligence agencies’ “patient and detailed intelligence analysis” of “a mosaic of sources,” including evidence garnered from detained inmates at Guantanamo Bay. The first clue to bin Laden’s whereabouts came when US intelligence learned of an al-Qaeda courier that worked with bin Laden, Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, who used the pseudonym “Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.” Ahmed is one of those killed during the Abbottabad raid. US intelligence had known of Ahmed since 2002, after a Kuwaiti detainee told interrogators about him, and it has taken this long for CIA and other intelligence officers to identify him, locate him, track his communications, and then follow him to the large and well fortified compound in Abbottabad.
Do Bush Administration Techniques Deserve Credit? – Some former Bush administration officials, such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Justice Department legal adviser John Yoo, claim that the Bush administration and not the Obama administration deserves the credit for finding bin Laden. According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, “the former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, said the first important leads about Kuwaiti came from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the third-ranking al-Qaeda leader at the time of his capture.” KSM was repeatedly waterboarded (see March 7 – Mid-April, 2003). [Christian Science Monitor, 5/5/2011] Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey states that the path to bin Laden “began with a disclosure from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information—including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/2/2011]
Rebuttal from CIA Director Panetta – However, according to information in a letter CIA Director Leon Panetta sends to Senator John McCain, these assertions are false or misleading. In the letter, Panetta says: “Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that bin Laden was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There was no one ‘essential and indispensible’ key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence—including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources—led CIA analysts to conclude that bin Laden was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the ‘only timely and effective way’ to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to bin Laden. Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting. In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.” [Washington Post, 5/16/2011]
Officials Says Torture Techinques Played No Role – Also, nine US military interrogators and intelligence officials state in an open letter: “The use of waterboarding and other so-called ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques almost certainly prolonged the hunt for bin Laden and complicated the jobs of professional US interrogators who were trying to develop useful information from unwilling sources like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Reports say that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Faraq al-Libi did not divulge the nom de guerre of a courier during torture, but rather several months later, when they were questioned by interrogators who did not use abusive techniques.” [Human Rights First, 5/4/2011]
May 3, 2011: Intelligence Officials Say ISI Used Abbottabad Area to Hide Assets in Safehouses
An unnamed “senior intelligence official” claims that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, has used Abbottabad, Pakistan, to hide assets in safehouses. “This area had been used as ISI’s safe house…” He even alleges the very compound Osama bin Laden hid in (see May 2, 2011) was used by the ISI, “but it was not under their use any more because they keep on changing their locations.” Another unnamed official says, “It may not be the same house, but the same compound or area [has been] used by the ISI.” It is not specified which country or countries these intelligence officials work for. [Gulf News, 5/3/2011]
May 4, 2011: President Obama Suggests ‘People inside of Government’ in Pakistan Could Have Known Osama bin Laden’s Location
Three days after Osama bin Laden was allegedly killed by US special forces in Pakistan, President Obama is interviewed by CBS’s 60 Minutes. He is asked if he thinks anyone in the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding. He replies: “We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don’t know who or what that support network was. We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that’s something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate.” He adds: “[T]hese are questions that we’re not gonna be able to answer three or four days after the event. It’s going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.” [60 Minutes, 5/8/2011; Daily Telegraph, 5/9/2011]
May 4, 2011: Afghan Government Says Pakistani Government Must Have Known of Bin Laden’s Hideout
The government of Afghanistan says that the Pakistani government must have been aware of Osama bin Laden’s location prior to the US raid that killed him (see May 2, 2011). Defense Ministry spokesperson General Mohammad Zahir Azimi says, “Not only Pakistan, with its strong intelligence service, but even a very weak government with a weak intelligence service would have known who was living in that house in such a location.” Relations are tense between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2008, the Afghan government blamed the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, for a role in a bombing in Kabul that killed 54 (see July 7, 2008). The US and other countries have also blamed the ISI for that bombing (see August 1, 2008). The Afghan government also complains in general that Pakistan is giving sanctuary to Taliban militants. [Associated Press, 5/4/2011]
May 5, 2011: Senator Levin Says Location of Bin Laden, Other Militants Known at ‘High Levels’ of Pakistani Government
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says that he believes even senior Pakistani officials knew where Osama bin Laden was hidden (see May 2, 2011) and they still know the location of other top militants.
Knowledge at High Levels – Levin says: “At high levels, high levels being the intelligence service… they knew it.… I can’t prove it. [But] I can’t imagine how someone higher up didn’t know it. The thing that astounds me more than anything else is the idea that people in Pakistan higher up in the intelligence service [the ISI] or their police or their local officials didn’t know he was there. I find that difficult to believe.”
Possible Hearings – He says that the Senate Armed Services Committee has started a preliminary investigation into the issue of Pakistan’s possible knowledge of bin Laden’s location before his death, and the committee may hold public hearings on the issue in the future.
Pakistan Shelters Other Militant Leaders – Levin adds that he has “no doubt” that people at the highest levels of Pakistan’s government are protecting others, including top Taliban head Mullah Omar and leaders of the Haqqani network, which is a semi-autonomous part of the Taliban. He says that Omar and others “live openly” in Pakistan. “They cross the border into Afghanistan and kill us. And the Pakistan government knows where they’re at, they’re openly living in north Waziristan. The Pakistan government knows where the so-called Quetta Shura is, which is the Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan.”
Denials Predicted – He concludes: “[T]he government of Pakistan is going to continue to say they didn’t know bin Laden was there. It’s kind of hard to believe that higher level people didn’t know, but they’ll continue to say that. But what they won’t say is that they don’t know where the Haqqani terrorists are because they do know, and they’ve told us they know.” [ABC News, 5/5/2011]
May 6, 2011: Alleged Al-Qaeda Statement Confirms Bin Laden’s Death, Vows Revenge
A statement allegedly by al-Qaeda confirms the death of top al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and vows revenge. The statement is dated May 3, 2011, one day after the reported time of bin Laden’s death (see May 2, 2011), but it is posted on Islamist militant websites on May 6. The statement reads, in part: “The blood of the holy warrior sheik, Osama bin Laden, God bless him, is too precious to us and to all Muslims to go in vain.… We will remain, God willing, a curse chasing the Americans and their agents, following them outside and inside their countries.… Soon, God willing, their happiness will turn to sadness… their blood will be mingled with their tears.” The 11-paragraph statement emphasizes the continuation of al-Qaeda despite bin Laden’s death. “Sheik Osama didn’t build an organization to die when he dies.… The soldiers of Islam will continue in groups and united, plotting and planning without getting bored, tired, with determination, without giving up until striking a blow.” The statement’s authenticity cannot be independently confirmed, but it is posted on websites the group usually uses to put out its messages. [Associated Press, 5/6/2011]
