'We got him'

How painstaking intelligence work — and high-stakes decisions — finally ended the hunt for Osama bin Laden

A Muslim woman reads about Osama bin Laden's demise: The daring nighttime U.S. military raid that killed the terrorist mastermind was several months in the making.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco)

FOR YEARS, THE agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car’s license plate. The man in the car was bin Laden’s most trusted courier, and over the next month CIA operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital.

On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy SEALs snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial-recognition program.

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