Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--From 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter L. Bergen Page A
Authors: Peter L. Bergen
Tags: United States, History, Political Science, Terrorism, Political Freedom & Security, Intelligence & Espionage, 21st Century
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force of analysts from various intelligence agencies who would meet regularly over the course of several weeks to brainstorm ideas about how to track down bin Laden. Sude had near-iconic status among the tight-knit group of veteran al-Qaeda analysts in the intelligence community, as she had been theprincipal author of the highly classified President’s Daily Brief delivered to President Bush on August 6,2001, entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the U.S.,” which made the case in some detail that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on the homeland. It would be another two years before the 9/11 Commission made that document public and many more years until Sude was firstidentified as its author.Sude had the reputation of being an “analyst’s analyst,” with a dispassionate interest in the facts, and of having a near-photographic memory of the many hundreds of reports produced by the intelligence community on al-Qaeda.
Sude remembers that, by early 2002, it was obvious to her and her colleagues that bin Laden’s trail had gone cold, so the best hope to find him was to try to map out the relationships of those who knew him best: What were his family connections? What were his links to the Afghan mujahideen groups that had fought the Soviets? Whom else did he trust? The analysts created a baseline assessment of bin Laden’s family and associates and a time line of all his activities. They circulated photos of what bin Laden might look like if he shaved off his beard and wore a Western-style pinstriped suit. “He was so weird looking,” Sude remembers. They also discussed the reward for bin Laden, which at the time stood at $25 million. Some analysts felt that many in Afghanistan couldn’t conceive of that kind of money in a country that was one of the poorest on the planet. Might it make sense actually to
lower
the reward? The reward remained where it was.
The analysts also produced papers examining whether it would be better tokill bin Laden or to capture him. Bin Laden would likely become a martyr in death, which could well provoke retaliatory attacks, but he would, after all, be
dead
. A captured bin Laden would try to turn his trial into a soapbox for his poisonous views. There was also the possibility that bin Laden’s followers would try to kidnap Americans around the world as bargaining chips for springing their leader from captivity. And what if he died of some disease while inan American prison? Or was somehow killed by a fellow prisoner? Robert Dannenberg, the head of CIA counterterrorism operations, says that capturing bin Laden was never really on the table because of those concerns: “We wanted to make sure that we didn’t find ourselves in a situation where we were obliged to capture, not kill bin Laden.… We would much rather give him the five-hundred-pound bomb on his complex and pick up his DNA someplace than put him on trial.”
From the founding of the bin Laden unit in December 1995—the first time that the CIA had established a “station” targeting a specific individual—female analysts such as Barbara Sude played a key role in the hunt for al-Qaeda. The founder of the unit, Michael Scheuer, explains, “They seem to have an exceptional knack for detail, for seeing patterns and understanding relationships, and they also, quite frankly, spend a great deal less time telling war stories, chatting, and going outside for cigarettes than the boys. If I could have put up a sign saying, ‘No boys need apply,’ I would’ve done it.”
Jennifer Matthews, one of Scheuer’s top deputies, focused on the all-important Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Her work wascritical to the spring 2002 arrest of Abu Zubaydah, a key al-Qaeda logistician, who provided the first information that it was KSM who had masterminded the 9/11 attacks. This came as a complete surprise to the CIA, where KSM had been largely seen as a peripheral figure in al-Qaeda. Matthews knew Islamic history cold, and how
Sude remembers that, by early 2002, it was obvious to her and her colleagues that bin Laden’s trail had gone cold, so the best hope to find him was to try to map out the relationships of those who knew him best: What were his family connections? What were his links to the Afghan mujahideen groups that had fought the Soviets? Whom else did he trust? The analysts created a baseline assessment of bin Laden’s family and associates and a time line of all his activities. They circulated photos of what bin Laden might look like if he shaved off his beard and wore a Western-style pinstriped suit. “He was so weird looking,” Sude remembers. They also discussed the reward for bin Laden, which at the time stood at $25 million. Some analysts felt that many in Afghanistan couldn’t conceive of that kind of money in a country that was one of the poorest on the planet. Might it make sense actually to
lower
the reward? The reward remained where it was.
The analysts also produced papers examining whether it would be better tokill bin Laden or to capture him. Bin Laden would likely become a martyr in death, which could well provoke retaliatory attacks, but he would, after all, be
dead
. A captured bin Laden would try to turn his trial into a soapbox for his poisonous views. There was also the possibility that bin Laden’s followers would try to kidnap Americans around the world as bargaining chips for springing their leader from captivity. And what if he died of some disease while inan American prison? Or was somehow killed by a fellow prisoner? Robert Dannenberg, the head of CIA counterterrorism operations, says that capturing bin Laden was never really on the table because of those concerns: “We wanted to make sure that we didn’t find ourselves in a situation where we were obliged to capture, not kill bin Laden.… We would much rather give him the five-hundred-pound bomb on his complex and pick up his DNA someplace than put him on trial.”
From the founding of the bin Laden unit in December 1995—the first time that the CIA had established a “station” targeting a specific individual—female analysts such as Barbara Sude played a key role in the hunt for al-Qaeda. The founder of the unit, Michael Scheuer, explains, “They seem to have an exceptional knack for detail, for seeing patterns and understanding relationships, and they also, quite frankly, spend a great deal less time telling war stories, chatting, and going outside for cigarettes than the boys. If I could have put up a sign saying, ‘No boys need apply,’ I would’ve done it.”
Jennifer Matthews, one of Scheuer’s top deputies, focused on the all-important Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Her work wascritical to the spring 2002 arrest of Abu Zubaydah, a key al-Qaeda logistician, who provided the first information that it was KSM who had masterminded the 9/11 attacks. This came as a complete surprise to the CIA, where KSM had been largely seen as a peripheral figure in al-Qaeda. Matthews knew Islamic history cold, and how
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