Read Online The Hunt for bin Laden by Tom Shroder - Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Shroder
Tags: Current Events
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$25 million reward. One courier who would rather his kids grow up in the United States. One dealmaker “and this could all change.”
The break, when it eventually came, would be less dramatic, but in a way more impressive than that.
Missile Raids Miss Zawahiri
Analysts at the HV Unit were learning more about how al-Qaeda worked, and that led them to think about networks in which information doesn’t get passed up through a hierarchy but rather is shared across all ranks.
The network idea was catching on in the military as well. In 2006, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal launched raids against al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq as well as in Yemen and Afghanistan, said a former White House official. To make those raids happen, McChrystal needed information to move in new ways, and he adopted a networked structure modeled on what he called al-Qaeda’s “alarming” ability to grow quickly and shore up weak spots.
“To defeat a networked enemy,” McChrystal wrote in Foreign Policy, “we had to become a network ourselves.”
That meant instantly sharing intelligence with people throughout the battlefield rather than sending it up the chain of command. Video from drones was now delivered not just to analysts who controlled the unmanned flying cameras but also to combat teams on the ground. The result was a dramatic increase in the number of raids and their success rate.
But there were drawbacks. In January 2006, the CIA ordered a missile strike against a house in the village of Damadola, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Pakistani and American officials thought Zawahiri to be hiding based on information from interrogations.
The missile killed 13 civilians and several suspected terrorists. But Zawahiri was not among them. The strike “could have changed the destiny of the war on terror. Zawahiri was 100 percent sure to visit Damadola . . . but he disappeared at the last moment,” one Pakistani intelligence official said at the time.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American demonstration near Damadola, shouting, “Death to America!”
“Once again, we have lost track of Ayman al-Zawahiri,” the Pakistani intelligence official said. “He keeps popping on television screens. It’s miserable, but we don’t know where he or his boss are hiding.”
Within days, a videotape emerged of Zawahiri. He called Bush the “butcher of Washington” and “a curse” on the United States in a speech that was broadcast in excerpts on the satellite television channel al-Jazeera. Zawahiri called U.S. policy in Iraq a failure and warned of more bloodshed.
In his speech, Zawahiri referred directly to comments made by bin Laden in an audiotape broadcast on al-Jazeera on Jan. 19, as well as to the attempt on his own life in a Pakistani border village Jan. 13.
“Bush, do you know where I am?” asked a taunting Zawahiri, dressed entirely in white and speaking in front of a pitch-black background. “I am among the Muslim masses.”
Analysts noted the professional production quality of the tape. “This was not done in some cave,” one senior administration official said.
The survival of al-Qaeda’s top leadership by no means meant the organization was unscathed. An al-Qaeda operative described by U.S. intelligence sources as the third-ranking figure in the terrorist organization was captured in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Officials said he had plotted two assassination attempts against Pakistan’s president.
Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan, was seized with three other men after a shootout in the town of Mardan, about 40 miles northeast of the city of Peshawar, a major strike against the group’s latest generation of leaders. Although al-Libi had been unknown at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the officials said, he took a principal role in al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan after the March 2003 arrest of his mentor, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11
The break, when it eventually came, would be less dramatic, but in a way more impressive than that.
Missile Raids Miss Zawahiri
Analysts at the HV Unit were learning more about how al-Qaeda worked, and that led them to think about networks in which information doesn’t get passed up through a hierarchy but rather is shared across all ranks.
The network idea was catching on in the military as well. In 2006, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal launched raids against al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq as well as in Yemen and Afghanistan, said a former White House official. To make those raids happen, McChrystal needed information to move in new ways, and he adopted a networked structure modeled on what he called al-Qaeda’s “alarming” ability to grow quickly and shore up weak spots.
“To defeat a networked enemy,” McChrystal wrote in Foreign Policy, “we had to become a network ourselves.”
That meant instantly sharing intelligence with people throughout the battlefield rather than sending it up the chain of command. Video from drones was now delivered not just to analysts who controlled the unmanned flying cameras but also to combat teams on the ground. The result was a dramatic increase in the number of raids and their success rate.
But there were drawbacks. In January 2006, the CIA ordered a missile strike against a house in the village of Damadola, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Pakistani and American officials thought Zawahiri to be hiding based on information from interrogations.
The missile killed 13 civilians and several suspected terrorists. But Zawahiri was not among them. The strike “could have changed the destiny of the war on terror. Zawahiri was 100 percent sure to visit Damadola . . . but he disappeared at the last moment,” one Pakistani intelligence official said at the time.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American demonstration near Damadola, shouting, “Death to America!”
“Once again, we have lost track of Ayman al-Zawahiri,” the Pakistani intelligence official said. “He keeps popping on television screens. It’s miserable, but we don’t know where he or his boss are hiding.”
Within days, a videotape emerged of Zawahiri. He called Bush the “butcher of Washington” and “a curse” on the United States in a speech that was broadcast in excerpts on the satellite television channel al-Jazeera. Zawahiri called U.S. policy in Iraq a failure and warned of more bloodshed.
In his speech, Zawahiri referred directly to comments made by bin Laden in an audiotape broadcast on al-Jazeera on Jan. 19, as well as to the attempt on his own life in a Pakistani border village Jan. 13.
“Bush, do you know where I am?” asked a taunting Zawahiri, dressed entirely in white and speaking in front of a pitch-black background. “I am among the Muslim masses.”
Analysts noted the professional production quality of the tape. “This was not done in some cave,” one senior administration official said.
The survival of al-Qaeda’s top leadership by no means meant the organization was unscathed. An al-Qaeda operative described by U.S. intelligence sources as the third-ranking figure in the terrorist organization was captured in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Officials said he had plotted two assassination attempts against Pakistan’s president.
Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan, was seized with three other men after a shootout in the town of Mardan, about 40 miles northeast of the city of Peshawar, a major strike against the group’s latest generation of leaders. Although al-Libi had been unknown at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the officials said, he took a principal role in al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan after the March 2003 arrest of his mentor, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11
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