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"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs
Seemed like a recitation of how we missed him, and nothing on how we got him.
I'm sure details will be released and the picture will be filled in, what I have been somewhat able to grasp is this much:
We got the name of the courier from KSM and Al-Libbi interrogations- they played down the courier's importance but their stories didn't match up. That raised suspicions, but we didn't have a good sense of how to find the guy.
We got lucky when he broke OBL's prime rule of no cell phone conversations. NSA intercepted a conversation with another AQ operative that we were surveilling, and we got the prepaid cell phone from that intercept. We staked out that phone with drone and satellite surveillance until one day we saw him get into a Suzuki jeep.
Then we followed that jeep 24/7 for several months, and saw it make repeated trips to OBL's house. We didn't know who lived there at the time, but thought it was someone big. Sometime last fall we saw OBL come outside, we got pics of him in the compound and knew we had him.
The congressional intel cmtes were briefed sometime around October or November of last year, and we started to plan the operation.
A replica of the OBL compound was built in Virginia and the assault was designed and practiced for a few months, until finally the determination was made to go.
The rest is history. Lots of overhead recon, lots of ELINT. Connecting a lot of dots. Persistence got him.
This is gleaned from interviews and press conferences, I don't think it treads too heavily on OPSEC, but mods feel free to use your own discretion.
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
I'm actually surprised that this managed to survive being leaked for over half a year
It's called professionalism ;) One slip, one out of place word or action and it would have all gone to the wall. The boys done good and I hope they have struck terror into the hearts of all terrorist, no matter where.
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