Category Archives: President Obama

NYC Terror Plot Arrest May 12, 2011

May 12, 2011 – 5:55 pm

NYC terror plot arrests

The Associated Press reported today:

Two U.S. residents, including one who complained that the world was treating Muslims “like dogs,” bought guns and a grenade and wanted to carry out a terror plot against a New York synagogue, officials said Thursday.

One of the alleged homegrown terrorists also expressed interest in bombing the Empire State Building, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

But there was no indication that the plot orchestrated as part of a sting operation ever put New Yorkers in danger and no evidence that the men were affiliated with any terrorist organization.

Ahmed Ferhani, a 26-year-old of Algerian descent, and Mohamed Mamdouh, a 20-year-old of Moroccan descent, plotted to bomb a “major synagogue” in Manhattan and bought several weapons and an inert hand grenade from an undercover officer, city officials said in announcing the arrests.

Ferhani and Mamdouh were arraigned in Manhattan court late Thursday afternoon. Ferhani wore a pin-striped suit and carried a Yankees cap, Mamdouh was wearing jeans. They were being held without bail and face life in prison if convicted.

Their attorneys said the two denied the charges

“Mr. Ferhani tells me he hasn’t committed any crime at all,” said lawyer Stephen Pokart.

Mamdouh’s attorney, Steven Fusfeld, noted that even under the prosecutor’s version of the events, which he doesn’t think was true, Mamdouh’s alleged involvement is less than Ferhani’s and it wasn’t right to treat them both the same.

“My client says he is not guilty of these crimes,” he said. “He’s upset because he maintains he committed no crime.”

Officials said investigators had been using an undercover detective wearing a wire to track Ferhani for several months. They said the detective heard Ferhani say he hated Jews and was fed up with the way Muslims — especially Palestinians — were treated around the world.

“They’re treating us like dogs,” Ferhani said once, according to Kelly.

Ferhani is also the one who expressed interest in the Empire State Building attack, Kelly said.

According to a criminal complaint drafted under state terror laws, Ferhani told the detective about “his intent to participate in jihad,” meaning holy war, and that “he would become a martyr.”

Over time, Ferhani “showed a pattern of growing anger, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said.

“His plans became bigger and more violent with every passing week,” Vance said.

The undercover detective had several meetings with the men during which Ferhani discussed the idea of attacking a synagogue, the complaint said. Mamdouh emphasized the need for proper training, the complaint said, so they would not get caught like “the one that put the car in Times Square” — a reference to the failed bombing last year by Faisal Shahzad.

Ferhani suggested disguising himself as a worshipping Jew so he could infiltrate a synagogue and leave a bomb inside, the complaint said. He also discussed using grenades, “and described pulling the pins and throwing them into the synagogue,” it added.

On May 5, the undercover detective introduced the men to another officer pretending to be an illegal gun dealer at a meeting where Ferhani stated he needed the weapons “for the cause,” the complaint said.

“We gonna be victorious,” it quoted Ferhani as saying.

At a roadside meeting Wednesday on Manhattan’s West Side, one of the undercover officers handed Ferhani a bag holding three handguns, three boxes of ammo and the inert grenade. As soon as Ferhani put the bag into the trunk of a car, he was arrested, the complaint said. Mamdouh was picked up nearby.

New York City police have been on high alert for potential threats to the city since the U.S. raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden over a week ago, though Kelly said the men had no apparent link to al-Qaida.

“We are concerned about lone wolves acting against New York city in the wake of the killing of bin Laden,” Bloomberg said. “Those perhaps are the toughest to stop.”

Officials refused to give details on how the first undercover officer met Ferhani, who later introduced the officer to Mamdouh.

Ferhani, who had been arrested for a robbery in Manhattan last October, was known to the department through intelligence before the arrest. Police said they shared the information with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which declined to pursue the case federally.

New York passed its own anti-terrorism law within six days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but this case is the first time it has been used to prosecute suspected terrorism.

“New York City is an international symbol of freedom and liberty, and for that reason we will always be a target,” Bloomberg said. “And we will always be on guard to protect the people of this city.”

Authorities said Ferhani, who is unemployed, moved to the U.S. in August 1995 from Algeria with two siblings and his parents, who claimed asylum. He has been living in Queens and had been granted permanent resident status by authorities, but he is facing deportation.

Mamdouh, a tall lanky man who is a native of Casablanca, is a taxi service dispatcher. He came to the United States with his parents in August 1999 and is now a U.S. citizen, officials said. His attorney said he lives in Queens with his brother and sister, and his parents are local business owners.

The case recalled another NYPD investigation that resulted in the conviction of a Pakistani immigrant on charges he plotted to bomb the subway station in Herald Square to avenge the wartime abuses of Iraqis.

The suspect, Shahawar Matin Siraj, had caught the attention of a police informant and an undercover officer — both assigned to track Islamic extremists following the Sept. 11 attacks — with his anti-American rants.

After plotting with the informant, Siraj and another man who later became a cooperator against him were arrested on the eve of the 2004 Republican National Convention carrying crude diagrams of the subway station situated below a dense shopping district that includes Macy’s flagship department store.

Siraj was sentenced in 2007 to 30 years in prison.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Fitzgerald, Chris Hawley and Tom Hays contributed to this report.

Osama bin Laden
 

Broadcast
As the U.S. fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bin Laden periodically released audio and video recordings (like this one, from 2007) calling for the destruction of America and its allies.

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Osama bin Laden knew big body count on level of 9/11 was needed to get U.S. forces to withdraw

May 11, 2011 – 11:18 pm

 

Osama bin Laden
 

Broadcast
As the U.S. fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bin Laden periodically released audio and video recordings (like this one, from 2007) calling for the destruction of America and its allies.

Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press reported today in her article, “Bin Laden’s diary shows he eyed new targets, big body count” :

Deep in hiding, his terror organization becoming battered and fragmented, Osama bin Laden kept pressing followers to find new ways to hit the U.S., officials say, citing his private journal and other documents recovered in last week’s raid.

Strike smaller cities, bin Laden suggested. Target trains as well as planes. If possible, strike on significant dates, such as the Fourth of July and the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Above all, kill as many Americans as possible in a single attack.

Though he was out of the public eye and al-Qaida seemed to be weakening, bin Laden never yielded control of his worldwide organization, U.S. officials said Wednesday. His personal, handwritten journal and his massive collection of computer files reveal his hand at work in every recent major al-Qaida threat, including plots in Europe last year that had travelers and embassies on high alert, two officials said.

They described the intelligence to The Associated Press only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about what was found in bin Laden’s hideout. Analysts are continuing to review the documents.

The information shatters the government’s conventional thinking about bin Laden, who had been regarded for years as mostly an inspirational figurehead whose years in hiding made him too marginalized to maintain operational control of the organization he founded.

Instead, bin Laden was communicating from his walled compound in Pakistan with al-Qaida’s offshoots, including the Yemen branch that has emerged as the leading threat to the United States, the documents indicate. Though there is no evidence yet that he was directly behind the attempted Christmas Day 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner or the nearly successful attack on cargo planes heading for Chicago and Philadelphia, it’s now clear that they bear some of bin Laden’s hallmarks.

He was well aware of U.S. counterterrorist efforts and schooled his followers in working around them, the messages to his followers show. Don’t limit attacks to New York City, he said in his writings. Consider other areas such as Los Angeles or smaller cities. Spread out the targets.

In one particularly macabre bit of mathematics, bin Laden’s writings show him musing over just how many Americans he must kill to force the U.S. to withdraw from the Arab world. He concludes that the smaller, scattered attacks since 9/11 had not been enough. He tells his disciples that only a body count of thousands, something on the scale of 9/11, would shift U.S. policy.

The handwritten journal included significant dates bin Laden noted as preferred for attacking American targets, including the Fourth of July and the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a U.S. official said. He also schemed about ways to sow political dissent in Washington and play political figures against one another, officials said.

The communications were in missives sent via plug-in computer storage devices called flash drives. The devices were ferried to bin Laden’s compound by couriers, a process that is slow but exceptionally difficult to track.

Intelligence officials have not identified any new planned targets or plots in their initial analysis of the 100 or so flash drives and five computers that Navy SEALs hauled away after killing bin Laden. Last week, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warned law enforcement officials nationwide to be on alert for possible attacks against trains, though officials said there was no specific plot.

Officials have not yet seen any indication that bin Laden had the ability to coordinate timing of attacks across the various al-Qaida affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq and Somalia, and it is also unclear from bin Laden’s documents how much the affiliate groups relied on his guidance. The Yemen group, for instance, has embraced the smaller-scale attacks that bin Laden’s writings indicate he regarded as unsuccessful. The Yemen branch had already surpassed his central operation as al-Qaida’s leading fundraising, propaganda and operational arm.

Al-Qaida has not named bin Laden’s successor, but all indications point to his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri. The question is whether al-Zawahri, or anyone, has the ability to keep so many disparate groups under the al-Qaida banner. The groups in Somalia and Algeria, for instance, have very different goals focused on local grievances. Without bin Laden to serve as their shepherd, it’s possible al-Qaida will further fragment.

British officials said the Americans had shared some information about the bin Laden cache but there had been nothing concrete yet to indicate his stamp on any of the recent terror attacks or plans in Britain — including a European plot last year involving the threat of a Mumbai-style shooting spree in a capital. Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

Britain’s two largest terror attacks and plots — the 2005 suicide bombings and the trans-Atlantic liquid explosive plot to blow up several airliners in 2006 — both had trails that led back to Pakistan and al-Qaida figures, but there was never a direct link to bin Laden himself.

Most of the recent plots, including the stabbing of a lawmaker last year, have been traced to al-Qaida in Yemen and specifically the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, British officials have said.

One British official said counterterror authorities had not been tracking bin Laden as they had other terrorists deemed more directly involved in operations — which may have been a mistake, from what they are now learning from bin Laden’s own words.

___

Kimberly Dozier can be reached on Twitter at kimberlydozier.

___

Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman in Washington, Paisley Dodds in London, Jamey Keaton in Paris and Al Clendenning in New York contributed to this report

Osama bin Laden
Naseer Ahmed / Reuters

The End
On May 1, 2011, President Obama announced that bin Laden had been tracked to a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed by a team of Navy Seals. Here, men in Quetta, Pakistan, watch Obama deliver to the world the news of the terrorist leader’s death.

Read more:
President Obama Monitors the bin Laden Mission
Pete Souza / The White House

The White House, May 1, 2011
Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama, along with members of the national-security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured.

President Obama Monitors the bin Laden Mission
Pete Souza / The White House

Focus
President Obama listens during one of a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against bin Laden on May 1, 2011. For 40 minutes, the President and his senior aides could do nothing but watch the video screens and listen to the operation and ensuing firefight on the other side of the world.


By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

2007 Interview with Jane Felix-Browne concerning her husband Omar bin Laden (pictures included)

May 11, 2011 – 8:18 am

 

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother and parish councillor from Cheshire has married a son of Osama bin Laden after a holiday romance
 
 
Jane Felix-Browne
 
A British divorcee said Wednesday she has married Omar bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader’s fourth son, after they met in Egypt last fall.Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother from Moulton, Cheshire, in northwestern England, told British media she met bin Laden, 27, while riding a horse near Egypt’s Great Pyramid and they married in April. The Times and Sun newspapers, which initially reported the story, said she was in Egypt for medical treatment for multiple sclerosis at the time.

The couple has held Islamic marriage ceremonies in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Felix-Browne said. She said she is his second wife

_______________________________________
In a July 11, 2007 interview with The Times, “Briton marries bin Laden’s son,” David Brown reported:
 
A British woman has married a son of Osama bin Laden after a holiday romance and is to apply for a visa so that he can visit Britain, The Times has learnt.

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother and parish councillor from Cheshire, has until now kept her marriage to Omar Ossama bin Laden, 27, secret from everyone apart from her immediate family and close friends. But she has now agreed to speak about her relationship with bin Laden’s fourth eldest son.

“It would be nice if, like any other married woman, I could stand up and say this is my husband and this is his name, but I have to be realistic about things,” she told The Times. “I hope people don’t judge me too harshly. I married the son, not the father.” 

Mrs Felix-Browne says she is aware that some people will be hostile to her marriage. Among the numerous terrorist plots linked to her new father-in-law are the London suicide bombings on July 7, 2005, the July 21 plot, and the recent attempted attacks in London and Glasgow. “I just married the man I met and fell in love with – to me he is just Omar,” she said. “I hope that people will take a step back and think what it was like when they fell in love. He is the most beautiful person I have ever met. His heart is pure, he is pious, quiet, a true gentleman, and he is my best friend.”

Mrs Felix-Browne, who has been married five times previously, met Mr bin Laden in Egypt in September while undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis. She says that their fairytale romance began when her future husband saw her riding a horse near the Great Pyramid. They were married in Islamic ceremonies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and are awaiting permission from the authorities in Riyadh to make their marriage official.

Mrs Felix-Browne is still coming to terms with the practical difficulties of being the daughter-in-law of a man with a $25 million (£12.5 million) bounty on his head. “Omar is wary of everyone. He is constantly watching people who he feels might be following him. Not without reason he is fearful of cameras. He is the son of Osama,” she said. “But when we are together he forgets his life.”

Mrs Felix-Browne already knew some members of the bin Laden family through her Islamic marriage to a Saudi man in London when she was 16. She believes that she actually met Osama bin Laden at a party in London in the 1970s.

Omar bin Laden left Saudi Arabia as a child when his father was expelled for his extremist beliefs, his wife said. Living in exile in Sudan and then Afghanistan, he saw at first hand the creation of al-Qaeda and its techniques. Mrs Felix-Browne said: “I never had any problem with his past. Omar did not do anything wrong. He was a child when he was in Afghanistan.”

She said that her husband left Afghanistan before the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. However, some reports claim that he split from his father only after the attack on New York and an argument about tactics.

Mrs Felix-Browne insisted: “He last saw his father in 2000 when they were both in Afghanistan. He left his father because he did not feel it was right to fight or to be in an army. Omar was training to be a soldier and he was only 19.

“He told me he has had no contact with his father since the day he left him. He misses his father. Omar doesn’t know if it was his father who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t think we will ever know.”

Apart from their religion the couple appear to have little in common. She has three sons and five grandchildren and is a respected parish councillor in the village of Moulton. She has had various jobs, including restoring houses and aircraft, and is a keen rider and scuba diver.

He works as a scrap metal dealer in Jedda and is one of at least 17 children fathered by bin Laden. His father’s reputation means that he has been ostracised by the wealthy and powerful bin Laden family and is under surveillance by the security services in Saudi Arabia.

Mrs Felix-Browne, who now uses the Islamic name Zaina Mohamad, says that she speaks to her husband for several hours every day over the internet or by telephone. During their conversations she refers to him repeatedly as “Habibi”, the Arabic for “my love”. She said: “I find it very difficult to live without him and I know he does too. But really we have the most normal life possible.”

She was aware before her marriage that her husband already had another wife and a two-year-old child. “I haven’t seen her but I have spoken to her for about an hour on the telephone,” she said. “She is fine about it.”

Mrs Felix-Browne was initially reluctant to discuss her new husband but news of their relationship inevitably began to leak out in Britain and the Middle East. “I don’t want any of my family distressed or upset by my actions,” she said. “I know that for everybody who likes me there will probably be a million enemies.”

Now she hopes that Mr bin Laden will come to Britain. “He would like to spend quite a bit of time here,” she said. “There is no reason why he should not come to live, but I don’t think he would like the weather.”

Mrs Felix-Browne said that the couple hoped to use their position to help to heal the wounds caused by her father-in-law. “All we want is peace in this world and I will do all I can to promote it.”

Mrs Felix-Browne, who has been married five times previously, met Omar Ossama bin Laden in Egypt in September 2006

Mrs Felix-Browne, who has been married five times previously, met Omar Ossama bin Laden in Egypt in September 2006

 
 
Mrs Felix-Browne met Mr bin Laden in Egypt in September
 
Jane Felix-Browne says that their fairytale romance began when her future husband saw her riding a horse near the Great Pyramid
By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (1)

Hamza bin Laden wants to keep his father’s family business of terror going

May 11, 2011 – 7:59 am
Osama's youngest son, Hamza, is believed to have escaped the compound where his terror fiend dad was killed by SEALs.

AP
Osama’s youngest son, Hamza, is believed to have escaped the compound where his terror fiend dad was killed by SEALs.

Osama bin Laden’s youngest known son — a budding teen terrorist groomed since childhood to wage jihad — likely escaped from the Pakistani compound where his father was killed by Navy SEALs.

Pakistani authorities say Hamza bin Laden, 19, has been unaccounted for since the May 1 raid in which his father, an older brother and two trusted family friends were killed.

Word of Hamza’s disappearance came as one of the older of bin Laden’s 20 or so children, Omar, yesterday blasted the United States for a “criminal mission” that “obliterated an entire defenseless family.” Omar threatened to sue while demanding proof that his father died.

Hamza’s mother, a Saudi named Khairiah Sabar, is one of three bin Laden wives who had been living in the Abbottabad compound. She, along with the other survivors, are in Pakistani custody.

Sabar told Pakistani authorities she hadn’t seen her son since the assault, London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

After the successful assault, the White House initially reported Hamza had been killed, but later said it was another son, Khalid, 24, who died.

Pakistani authorities confirmed that one household member is missing.

Hamza was implicated in the 2007 assassination of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who had written that the young bin Laden was organizing one of “four suicide bomber squads” targeting her.

While Hamza’s whereabouts were being questioned, bin Laden’s son Omar, in a statement posted on jihadi Web sites, accused the United States of having the “goal of killing and not arresting” his father.

The terror scion, 30, who in 2007 married a 54-year-old Briton, blasted “those forces [that] carried out their criminal mission and obliterated an entire defenseless family,” according to the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute.

Omar said the burial at sea of his father was “unacceptable humanely and religiously,” and the son threatened “to follow that crime through the American and international justice [systems] in order to determine the true fate of our vanished father.”

And in a separate statement to The New York Times, Omar wrote: “I Omar Ossama Binladin and my brothers the lawful children and heirs of the Ossama Binladin (OBL) have noted wide coverage of the news of the death of our father, but we are not convinced on the available evidence in the absence of dead body, photographs and video evidence that our natural father is dead.”

Omar also wrote the Times, “If he has been summarily executed, then we question the propriety of such assassination.”

Omar added, “As he [President Obama] condemned our father, we now condemn the president of the United States for ordering the execution of unarmed men and women.”

Meanwhile, the FBI and Homeland Security said there could be terror strikes by “lone wolves” to avenge Osama’s death.

Also, federal prosecutors said Rageh Ahmed Mohammed Al Murisi, a Yemeni who tried to barge into the cockpit of a Chicago-to-San Francisco flight Sunday night, was trying to bring the plane down.

An undated Al Jazeera television picture purportedly shows Hamza bin Osama bin Laden.

Reuters
CROWN PRINCE OF TERROR?: An undated Al Jazeera television picture purportedly shows Hamza bin Laden, one of the sons of Osama bin Laden, displaying what the Taliban claimed is wreckage from a US helicopter near Ghazni.
President Obama said no Americans were harmed in the operation. Three adult males were also killed in the raid, including one of bin Laden’s sons, whom officials did not name. One of bin Laden’s sons, Hamza, is a senior member of al-Qaida. U.S. officials also said one woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant, and two other women were injured.
By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (1)

Osama bin Laden’s sons think U.S. broke international law

May 10, 2011 – 4:13 pm
 

Omar bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, in his apartment in Al-Rahad city near Cairo in 2008

The New York Times reported today:

The adult sons of Osama bin Laden have lashed out at President Obama over their father’s death, accusing the United States of violating its basic legal principles by killing an unarmed man, shooting his family members and disposing of his body in the sea.

The statement said the family was asking why the leader of Al Qaeda “was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world.” Citing the trials of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, the statement questioned “the propriety of such assassination where not only international law has been blatantly violated,” but the principles of presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial were ignored.

“We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems,” the statement said, adding that “justice must be seen to be done.”

The statement, prepared at the direction of Omar bin Laden, a son who had publicly denounced his father’s terrorism, was provided to The New York Times by Jean Sasson, an American author who helped the younger Bin Laden write a 2009 memoir, “Growing Up bin Laden.” A shorter, slightly different statement was posted on a jihadist Web site Tuesday.

Omar bin Laden, 30, lived with his father in Afghanistan until 1999, when he left with his mother, Najwa bin Laden, who co-wrote the memoir. In the book and other public statements, the younger bin Laden denounced violence of all kinds, a stance he repeated in the sons’ statement to The Times. None of Osama bin Laden’s sons other than Omar was named in the statement, so it was unclear exactly who else had approved the message.

“We want to remind the world that Omar bin Laden, the fourth-born son of our father, always disagreed with our father regarding any violence and always sent messages to our father, that he must change his ways and that no civilians should be attacked under any circumstances,” the statement said. “Despite the difficulty of publicly disagreeing with our father, he never hesitated to condemn any violent attacks made by anyone, and expressed sorrow for the victims of any and all attacks.”

Condemning the shooting of one of the Qaeda leader’s wives during the assault on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the statement added: “As he condemned our father, we now condemn the president of the United States for ordering the execution of unarmed men and women.”

The sons’ statement called on the government of Pakistan to hand over to family members the three wives and several children of the terrorist now believed to be in Pakistani custody and asked for a United Nations investigation of the circumstances of their father’s death.

In addition to the statement, Ms. Sasson shared with The Times notes on what Omar bin Laden, who declined to be interviewed directly, has told her by phone in recent days. The notes describe Mr. bin Laden’s struggle, as he came of age, to understand and eventually reject his father’s embrace of religious violence.

Mr. bin Laden told Ms. Sasson the death of his father “has affected this family in much the same way as many other families in the past in the loss of a family member.”

Osama bin Laden
 

Broadcast
As the U.S. fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bin Laden periodically released audio and video recordings (like this one, from 2007) calling for the destruction of America and its allies.

Osama bin Laden
Naseer Ahmed / Reuters

The End
On May 1, 2011, President Obama announced that bin Laden had been tracked to a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed by a team of Navy Seals. Here, men in Quetta, Pakistan, watch Obama deliver to the world the news of the terrorist leader’s death.

Read more:
President Obama Monitors the bin Laden Mission
Pete Souza / The White House
By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

President Obama on 60 minutes yesterday

May 9, 2011 – 12:46 pm

 

President Obama Monitors the bin Laden Mission
Pete Souza / The White House
 
The White House, May 1, 2011
Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama, along with members of the national-security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured.

Yesterday on 60 minutes:

The president also revealed that prior to issuing the order for the special operations to move on the bin Laden compound, his national security team was still uncertainty about whether to proceed with the military operation. “This was still a 55-45 situation,” Obama said.  “I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been some significant consequences.”

Obama also told Kroft that the safety of the individuals carrying out the mission was foremost on his mind.

He conceded that, given the risks some members of his team counseled against proceeding with the raid. Obama explained to Kroft that he made a point of taking these dissenting views into account as he approved the mission.

“The fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information.”

Ultimately, Obama said, “I concluded that it was worth it.”

“And the reason that I concluded it was worth it was that we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al Qaeda, ever since 2001. And even before, with the embassy bombing in Kenya … I said to myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly disabling al Qaeda, then it was worth both the political risks as well as the risks to our men.”

Sunday’s interview also included now widely circulated comments from the president regarding photos of bin Laden’s corpse.

Obama explained why the administration is not planning to release the images:

It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence– as a propaganda tool. You know, that’s not who we are. You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies… we don’t need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk. And I’ve discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree.

He added that there is no question bin Laden is dead: “The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walking on this earth again.”

Inside the White House during bin Laden raid

President Obama Monitors the bin Laden Mission
Pete Souza / The White House
President Obama listens during one of a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against bin Laden on May 1, 2011. For 40 minutes, the President and his senior aides could do nothing but watch the video screens and listen to the operation and ensuing firefight on the other side of the world.
By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (1)

Details of how Osama bin Laden was caught

May 9, 2011 – 7:05 am
Osama bin Laden
Bin Laden was born in 1957, reportedly the 17th of the 57 children of Mohammed bin Laden, the owner of the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia. He was raised under conservative Wahhabi tenets and, while enrolled at King Abdel Aziz University in Jidda, developed a belief in pan-Islamicism, a philosophy that stresses a united Islamic world. This photo was taken in 1988.
Exclusive footage reveals conditions inside Abbottabad mansion.

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post commented on May 6, 2011:

 It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend.

Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?

Kuwaiti’s response was vague but heavy with portent: “I’m back with the people I was with before.”

There was a pause, as if the friend knew that Kuwaiti’s words meant he had returned to bin Laden’s inner circle, and was perhaps at the side of the al-Qaeda leader himself.

The friend replied, “May God facilitate.”

When U.S. intelligence officials learned of this exchange, they knew they had reached a key moment in their decade-long search for al-Qaeda’s founder. The call led them to theunusual, high-walled compound in Abbottabad, a city 35 miles north of Pakistan’s capital.

“This is where you start the movie about the hunt for bin Laden,” said one U.S. official briefed on the intelligence-gathering leading up to the raid on the compound early Monday.

The exchange and several other pieces of information, other officials said, gave President Obama the confidence to launch a politically risky mission to capture or kill bin Laden, a decision he took despite dissension among his key national security advisers and varying estimates of the likelihood that bin Laden was in the compound. The officials would speak about the collection of intelligence and White House decision making only on the condition that they not be named.

U.S. intelligence agencies had been searching for Kuwaiti for at least four years; the call with the friend gave them the number of the courier’s cellphone. Using a vast number of human and technical sources, they tracked Kuwaiti to the compound.

The main three-story building, which had no telephone lines or Internet service, was impenetrable to eavesdropping technology deployed by the National Security Agency.

U.S. officials were stunned to realize that whenever Kuwaiti or others left the compound to make a call, they drove some 90 minutes away before even placing a battery in a cellphone. Turning on the phone made it susceptible to the kind of electronic surveillance that the residents of the compound clearly wished to avoid.

As intelligence officials scrutinized images of the compound, they saw that a man emerged most days to stroll the grounds of the courtyard for an hour or two. The man walked back and forth, day after day, and soon analysts began calling him “the pacer.” The imagery never provided a clear view of his face.

Intelligence officials were reluctant to bring in other means of technical or human surveillance that might offer a positive identification but would risk detection by those in the compound. The pacer never left the compound. His routine suggested he was not just a shut-in but almost a prisoner.

Was the pacer bin Laden? A decoy? A hoax? A setup?

Bin Laden was at least 6-foot-4, and the pacer seemed to have the gait of a tall man. The White House asked the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides and analyzes satellite imagery, to determine the pacer’s height. The agency said the man’s height was somewhere between 5-foot-8 and 6-foot-8, according to one official.

Another official said the agency provided a narrower range for the pacer’s height, but the estimate was still of limited reliability because of the lack of information about the size of the building’s windows or the thickness of the compound’s walls, which would have served as reference points.

In one White House meeting, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Obama and other top national security officials that the general rule in gathering intelligence was to keep going until a target such as the Abbottabad compound ran dry.

Panetta said that point had been reached, arguing that those tracking the compound were seeing the pacer nearly every day but could not conclude with certainty that it was bin Laden, officials said. Panetta noted that there was no signals intelligence available and contended that it was too risky to send in a human spy or move any closer with electronic devices.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the agency established a safe house in Abbottabad for a small team that monitored the compound in the months leading up to the raid.

The decision

Obama and his advisers debated the options, officials said. One option was to fire a missile from a Predator or Reaper aerial drone. Such a strike would be low-risk, but if the result was a direct hit, the pacer might be vaporized and officials would never be certain they had killed bin Laden. If the drone attack missed, as had happened in attacks on high-value targets, bin Laden or whoever was living in the compound would flee and the United States would have to start the hunt from scratch.

Panetta designated Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, who had headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly three years, to devise a boots-on-the ground plan for the special forces that became known as “the McRaven option.”

McRaven had increased the intensity of Special Operations raids, especially in Afghanistan. During his first two years as head of JSOC, the “jackpot rate” — when the strikes got their intended target — jumped from 35 percent to more than 80 percent.

His decision to assign the operation to the Navy SEALs, a Special Operations unit with extensive experience in raids on high-value targets, was critical. SEALs have a tradition of moving in and out fast, often killing everyone they encounter at a target site. Most members of the SEAL team in the bin Laden raid had been deployed to war zones a dozen or more times.

A “pattern of life” study of the compound by intelligence agencies showed that about a dozen women and children periodically frequented it.

Specific orders were issued to the SEALs not to shoot the women or children unless they were clearly threatening or had weapons. (During the mission, one woman was killed and a wife of bin Laden was shot in the leg.) Bin Laden was to be captured, one official said, if he “conspicuously surrendered.”

The longer such raids take, the greater the risk to the SEALs. One senior official said the general philosophy of the SEALs is: “If you see it, shoot it. It is a house full of bad guys.”

Several assessments concluded there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that bin Laden was in the compound. Michael Leiter, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was much more conservative. During one White House meeting, he put the probability at about 40 percent.

When a participant suggested that was a low chance of success, Leiter said, “Yes, but what we’ve got is 38 percent better than we have ever had before.”

The assault

Officials said Obama’s national security advisers were not unanimous in recommending he go ahead with the McRaven option. The president approved the raid at 8:20 a.m. Friday.

During the assault, one of the Black Hawk helicopters stalled, but the pilot was able to land safely. The hard landing, which disabled the helicopter, forced the SEALs to abandon a plan to have one team rope down from a Black Hawk and come into the main building from the roof. Instead, both teams assaulted the compound from the ground.

The White House initially said bin Laden was shot and killed because he was engaged in a firefight and resisted. Later, White House press secretary Jay Carney said bin Laden was not armed, but Carney insisted he resisted in some form. He and others have declined to specify the exact nature of his alleged resistance, though there reportedly were weapons in the room where bin Laden was killed.

A senior Special Operations official said that SEALs would avoid providing more details about the raid, to prevent the disclosure of methods central to their success. The individuals who took part in the raid, the official said, would not grant interviews and had signed nondisclosure agreements about their classified work.

“They are interested in closing ranks and getting on with business,” he said.

SEALs scooped up dozens of thumb drives and several computer hard drives that are now being scrutinized for information about al-Qaeda, especially an address, location or cellphone number for Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second in command.

But officials said the delicate process of sifting this intelligence bonanza is made more challenging because of worries that using the wrong passwords could trigger a pre-planned erasure of digital information.

In the White House Situation Room on Sunday night, the president and his national security team watched a soundless video feed of the raid.

When bin Laden’s corpse was laid out, one of the Navy SEALs was asked to stretch out next to it to compare heights. The SEAL was 6 feet tall. The body was several inches taller.

After the information was relayed to Obama, he turned to his advisers and said: “We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?” 

Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this report.

(Pictures below from Time Magazine)

Osama bin Laden
 

 

The U.S.S. Cole
In October 2000, a boat filled with explosives crashed into an American warship in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack, which was widely attributed to al-Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attack
9/11
The most devastating of all al-Qaeda attacks claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people.
Osama bin Laden
 

Leaders Group
Bin Laden, second from left, sits with, from left, al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith; Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, at the time this photo was taken in late 2001, was regarded as al-Qaeda’s No. 2 operative; and Muhammad Atef, who allegedly was, until his death in 2001, the military chief of the organization.

 
 
By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

President Obama: Osama bin Laden probably had support network in Pakistan

May 8, 2011 – 10:28 pm

 

Pakistani policemen walk

Pakistani policemen walk past a compound, surrounded in red fabric, where locals reported a firefight took place overnight in Abbotabad, located in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province May 2, 2011. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan on Sunday, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide hunt for the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Obama said U.S. forces led a targeted operation that killed bin Laden in Abbotabad north of Islamabad

Yahoo News reported today:

 Osama bin Laden likely had “some sort” of a support network inside Pakistan, President Barack Obama said on Sunday, but added it will take investigations by Pakistan and the United States to find out the nature of that support.

Obama’s interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program comes a week after bin Laden was killed by U.S. commandos in a garrison town a short drive from Islamabad, raising questions about whether Pakistan’s government had known of the al Qaeda leader’s whereabouts.

“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,” Obama said.

“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 added.

Asked whether he did not warn the Pakistani government or the military, or even the Pakistani intelligence community, of the impending raid, because he did not trust them, Obama replied:

“I didn’t tell most people here in the White House. I didn’t tell my own family. It was that important for us to maintain operational security. If I’m not revealing to some of my closest aides what we’re doing, then I sure as heck am not going to be revealing it to folks who I don’t know.”

Obama said he agonized over the decision to go ahead with the mission for fear of the loss of American life and because it was inside sovereign Pakistan.

“And so if it turns out that it’s a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who’s in this compound and, you know, we’ve sent special forces in — we’ve got problems,” he said.

But he added: “The one thing I didn’t lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil — didn’t deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.”

Pakistan’s government has “indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had,” Obama said. “But … it’s going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.”

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider in Chak Shah Mohammad and Chris Allbritton in Islamabad; Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Sandra Maler)

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

CIA Chief Leon Panetta said harsh interrogation techniques yielded some of the information that led to Osama bin Laden

May 8, 2011 – 11:07 am

 

George Bennett in his article “Waterboarding and the trail to lin Laden: CIA chief acknowledges, West supports,: May 3, 2011, PostOnPolitics.com , notes: 

 

Panetta

CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques yielded some of the information that helped the U.S. find and kill Osama bin Laden.

 

Panetta said it’s an “open question” whether the same intelligence could have been obtained through other means.

Earlier in the day, U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, said he favors “any means that ensures that the American people are protected.” West’s 22-year Army career ended after a 2003 incident in which he fired a pistol near the head of an Iraqi detainee to get him to talk about a suspected ambush.

 

West

In an interview Tuesday with online PJTV, West was asked about the harsh interrogation techniques that were approved by former PresidentGeorge W. Bush and criticized byPresident Obama.

 

Said West: “Any means that ensures that the American people are protected, they are safe, as well as our allies are safe, I’m all for that. And I don’t see anything wrong with waterboarding. I think that when you look at these non-state, non-uniform belligerents that we are capturing on the battlefield, we need to prosecute every means possible that we can ensure that we are protecting the American people.

“I think that this administration needs to stand up and understand this is not about appeasing their left-wing liberal base. He’s the president of the United States of America, not just the president of the liberals.”

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Al Qaeda confirms Osama bin Laden is dead

May 8, 2011 – 7:38 am

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Not only do we have the word of President Obama that Osama bin Laden is dead, but now Al Qaeda sources have confirmed it. 

 

CNN reported on May 6, 2011:

Al Qaeda released a statement on jihadist forums Friday confirming the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist websites.

The development comes days after U.S. troops killed bin Laden in a raid on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The statement, translated by SITE, lauded the late militant, threatened to take action against the United States, and urged Pakistanis to “rise up and revolt.”

Bin Laden’s death will serve as a “curse that chases the Americans and their agents, and goes after them inside and outside their countries,” the message said.

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)