The New Yorker: Getting bin Laden

YankeeFan · Aug 2, 2011

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle

Shortly after eleven o’clock on the night of May 1st, two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off from Jalalabad Air Field, in eastern Afghanistan, and embarked on a covert mission into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Inside the aircraft were twenty-three Navy SEALs from Team Six, which is officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. A Pakistani-American translator, whom I will call Ahmed, and a dog named Cairo—a Belgian Malinois—were also aboard. It was a moonless evening, and the helicopters’ pilots, wearing night-vision goggles, flew without lights over mountains that straddle the border with Pakistan. Radio communications were kept to a minimum, and an eerie calm settled inside the aircraft.

Fifteen minutes later, the helicopters ducked into an alpine valley and slipped, undetected, into Pakistani airspace. For more than sixty years, Pakistan’s military has maintained a state of high alert against its eastern neighbor, India. Because of this obsession, Pakistan’s “principal air defenses are all pointing east,” Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani Army and the author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within,” told me. Senior defense and Administration officials concur with this assessment, but a Pakistani senior military official, whom I reached at his office, in Rawalpindi, disagreed. “No one leaves their borders unattended,” he said. Though he declined to elaborate on the location or orientation of Pakistan’s radars—“It’s not where the radars are or aren’t”—he said that the American infiltration was the result of “technological gaps we have vis-à-vis the U.S.” The Black Hawks, each of which had two pilots and a crewman from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or the Night Stalkers, had been modified to mask heat, noise, and movement; the copters’ exteriors had sharp, flat angles and were covered with radar-dampening “skin.”

The SEALs’ destination was a house in the small city of Abbottabad, which is about a hundred and twenty miles across the Pakistan border. Situated north of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, Abbottabad is in the foothills of the Pir Panjal Range, and is popular in the summertime with families seeking relief from the blistering heat farther south. Founded in 1853 by a British major named James Abbott, the city became the home of a prestigious military academy after the creation of Pakistan, in 1947. According to information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency, bin Laden was holed up on the third floor of a house in a one-acre compound just off Kakul Road in Bilal Town, a middle-class neighborhood less than a mile from the entrance to the academy. If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle#ixzz1TsMQoMZp
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Boom_70 · Aug 2, 2011

Another example of how great The New Yorker is.

Blitz · Aug 2, 2011

It's 9 pages of sheer suspense ... a great read.

Midstory snippet: "On the morning of Sunday, May 1st, White House officials cancelled scheduled visits, ordered sandwich platters from Costco, and transformed the Situation Room into a war room."

The early portion, too, trumpets President Obama's commitment to finding Bin Laden - say what you will about The President, but he threw more bombs and emphasis at searching in Pakistan during one year than President Bush did in 8 years.

heyabbott · Aug 2, 2011

Blitz said:

It's 9 pages of sheer suspense ... a great read.

Midstory snippet: "On the morning of Sunday, May 1st, White House officials cancelled scheduled visits, ordered sandwich platters from Costco, and transformed the Situation Room into a war room."

The early portion, too, trumpets President Obama's commitment to finding Bin Laden - say what you will about The President, but he threw more bombs and emphasis at searching in Pakistan during one year than President Bush did in 8 years.
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Bush/Cheney didn't want to find him. Kill bin Laden, kill the support for multiple war contracts to Republican military-industrial corporations. I wanted bin Laden alive so he could answer the question:
Q"How much did Iraq and Saddam cooperate with Al Qaeda?"
A"Cooperate? We hated those fuckin guys more than we hated you?"

YankeeFan · Aug 2, 2011

Blitz said:

It's 9 pages of sheer suspense ... a great read.
Click to expand...

It's suspenseful, but like the Apollo 13 movie, you kind of know how it ends.

The Big Ragu · Aug 2, 2011

I didn't find it suspenseful, because so much of the operation has been reported, at least in broad details. This got into a bit more of the minutia than I had read before. But the story even failed to fill in some of the minutia everyone really wants to know, particularly what specifically happened inside the house during that 25 minutes or so, and who fired the kill shot. It was a good story, but it didn't go too far beyond what had already been reported.

Johnny Dangerously · Aug 2, 2011

I prefer my suspense opaque.

doubledown68 · Aug 2, 2011

The Big Ragu said:

I didn't find it suspenseful, because so much of the operation has been reported, at least in broad details. This got into a bit more of the minutia than I had read before. But the story even failed to fill in some of the minutia everyone really wants to know, particularly what specifically happened inside the house during that 25 minutes or so, and who fired the kill shot. It was a good story, but it didn't go too far beyond what had already been reported.
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The only people who'll ever know who double-tapped bin Laden were the very people in the room. When Obama asked Seal Team Six, the answer he got was something to the effect of "Just assume we all did."

qtlaw · Aug 2, 2011

doubledown68 said:

The Big Ragu said:

I didn't find it suspenseful, because so much of the operation has been reported, at least in broad details. This got into a bit more of the minutia than I had read before. But the story even failed to fill in some of the minutia everyone really wants to know, particularly what specifically happened inside the house during that 25 minutes or so, and who fired the kill shot. It was a good story, but it didn't go too far beyond what had already been reported.
Click to expand...

The only people who'll ever know who double-tapped bin Laden were the very people in the room. When Obama asked Seal Team Six, the answer he got was something to the effect of "Just assume we all did."
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The article says Obama never asked who shot Bin Laden. A fascinating read; thanks for posting.

Elliotte Friedman · Aug 2, 2011

New Yorker ipad subscription -- $60 per year. My wife bought me an actual magazine one for more than $100. Good deal.

doubledown68 · Aug 2, 2011

qtlaw said:

doubledown68 said:

The Big Ragu said:

I didn't find it suspenseful, because so much of the operation has been reported, at least in broad details. This got into a bit more of the minutia than I had read before. But the story even failed to fill in some of the minutia everyone really wants to know, particularly what specifically happened inside the house during that 25 minutes or so, and who fired the kill shot. It was a good story, but it didn't go too far beyond what had already been reported.
Click to expand...

The only people who'll ever know who double-tapped bin Laden were the very people in the room. When Obama asked Seal Team Six, the answer he got was something to the effect of "Just assume we all did."
Click to expand...

The article says Obama never asked who shot Bin Laden. A fascinating read; thanks for posting.
Click to expand...

Haven't read the article yet. Saw some special on the Discovery Channel, and that's what one of the talking heads said.

In any event, I'll wager a frosty beer that the identity of the shooter will remain a secret.

three_bags_full · Aug 2, 2011

Settling with power. I fucking knew it. 100 percent pilot error. Fucking 160th.

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The New Yorker: Getting bin Laden

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The New Yorker: Getting bin Laden

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