Detective work - bin Laden w/UpDate

This is what should have happened directly after and as to 9/11! Terrorism is a criminal offense, international criminal terrorism is an international crime. We had the backing of most of the World then, meaning working with them and their resources added to ours. There should never have been Iraq and all that went with that as well as the added recruiting tools in Afghanistan. Once the Taliban were driven from there we should have worked to reign in the ghost al Qaeda while helping to rebuild Afghanistan after decades of war destruction, as we promised. But we walked away once again, like we did after the Afghan/Soviet debacle, rest is the present history as we created the next generations of bin Ladens!!

May 3, 2011 - For years, the agonizing search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the CIA 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, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound about 35 miles from the Pakistani capital.

On a moonless night eight months later, 79 U.S. commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, the officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and wouldn't take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their U.S. allies, scrambled jets as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave. The body of Osama bin Laden, America's enemy No. 1, was placed in a helicopter and flown away.

The raid was the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, including the interrogation of CIA detainees in secret prisons. Intelligence agencies eavesdropped on telephone calls and emails of the courier's Arab family and pored over satellite images of the compound in Abbottabad to determine whether a raid would be worth the risk.

Administration officials split over whether to launch the operation, whether to wait and continue monitoring until they were more sure that bin Laden was there, or whether to go for a less risky airstrike. In the end, President Barack Obama opted against a bombing that could do so much damage it might be uncertain whether bin Laden was really hit. Instead, he chose to send in commandos. {continued}

Simply put, Clinton did use intelligence agencies pre 9/11 when we didn't have the use of others as united in a search for but may have been sharing some possible intelligence finds.

The bush didn't when we had the World's total backing after 9/11, they sought to destroy an innocent country and people as they talked about doing prior to on the day of and the years after.

Obama did use intelligence agencies, for an almost clean takedown, one helo lost, whether others were involved we'll probably never know but be assured others who have had criminal terror attacks on their countries people were as active as we were under this administration so you can bet there was much more sharing from those rebuffed by the previous admin!

By the way, as to Pakistan, i believe some in that country knew where he was and probably were helping him. But remember the criminal terror elements within our own borders, one mentioned last night on Rachel's show, the uni-bomber, and how long it took to finally capture him.

UpDate:Came in after posting this and have been going through the links as well as uploading a 1999 report. Thought this relevant, very relevant.

Washington, D.C., May 2, 2011 - The Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, killed in Pakistan by U.S. special operations forces yesterday, ranked as “one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic terrorist activities in the world” as early as 1996, according to declassified U.S. documents posted on the web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

The Osama Bin Laden File includes the CIA’s 1996 biographic sketch, the infamous President’s Daily Brief from 6 August 2001 warning “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” a State Department issue paper from 2005 reporting that “some Taliban leaders operate with relative impunity in some Pakistan cities,” the 400-page Sandia National Laboratories profile of Bin Laden focusing on the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2006 State Department cable on the Taliban’s regrouping in Pakistan’s tribal areas making them “a sanctuary beyond the reach of either Government,” the demands made on Pakistan right after 9/11 by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and the only known conversation between the U.S. government and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

 

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President's Daily Brief, August 6, 2001, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" {click on doc for 2page pdf}

One of the earlier publicly available documentary mentions of Bin Laden comes from a 1996 CIA bio sketch entitled “Usama Bin Laden: Islamic Extremist Financer.” It describes Bin Laden, “who joined the Afghan resistance movement in 1979,” as “one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world.” According to The New York Times, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the CIA actually helped Bin Laden – who supplied construction equipment from his family’s company in Saudi Arabia – to construct the Tora Bora complex as a base to fight the Soviets. According to Bin Laden, “The [Mujahidin’s] weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis.”

Almost a decade later, Bin Laden would make good use of his earlier investment. A 1997 State Department cable reported that he had likely retreated into hiding at Tora Bora, stating "bin Ladin had lived in caves south of Jalalabad in Tora Bora and the Taliban had become suspicious." In December 2001, US troops engaged in a fierce firefight at Tora Bora, hoping to smoke out the Al Qaeda leader. The Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were overrun but Bin Laden was not among the killed or captured.

The earlier CIA bio indicates that after the 1989 victory over the Soviets, Bin Laden, while living in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, created “a network of al-Qaida recruitment centers and guesthouses in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and has enlisted and sheltered thousands of Arab recruits.” The document also accused Bin Laden of “providing financial support” for the 1992 bombings against US servicemen in Somalia, “at least three terrorist training camps in Sudan” and one in Afghanistan, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. {more with backlinks to further docs and info.}