Editorial By Adam J. Hebert, Editor in Chief Into the Rat Holes and Safe Houses

eople think bin Laden is hiding in The full might of the US national caught like a rat” when the deposed “Pthe Hindu Kush, but did you know security apparatus went into this mis- Iraqi dictator was found hiding in a hole that every day from 4 to 5 p.m. he hosts sion, which culminated with the May on a farm near Tikrit. It was December a show on C-SPAN?”—Comedian Seth 1 operation that killed bin Laden and 2003—nine months after the US inva- Meyers at the White House Correspon- seized a priceless stash of intelligence sion. dents’ Dinner, less than 24 hours before information. Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The brutal the raid that killed . Bin Laden felt he could drive the head of al Qaeda in Iraq led terror- US from Muslim lands, and eventually ist efforts during the darkest days of As it turns out, bin Laden was hid- topple moderate Arab governments, the war there, and was also behind ing in plain sight after all, in a large, because the US would turn and run the 2004 Madrid subway bombings. highly secure compound in the military when confronted. Zarqawi was killed in an air strike by town of Abbottabad, . It took He misread two events: the 1983 a pair of F-16s north of Baghdad. It 13 years for the US to find the world’s bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, was June 2006, nearly three years most wanted terrorist after al Qaeda after the US first offered a reward for bombed the US embassies in Kenya The US does not quit his whereabouts. and Tanzania—and nearly a decade when national interests The bin Laden success was clearly after the 9/11 terror attacks elevated are at stake. no anomaly. The US has proved time the manhunt to an entirely new level. and again that when the stakes are But there is a positive lesson to Lebanon, that killed 241 Americans, high, it will eventually get its man. The be learned from this: Contrary to bin and the 1993 “Black Hawk down” battle computers, flash drives, CDs, videos, Laden’s early beliefs, the United States in Mogadishu, Somalia, which left 19 and documents scooped up by the Navy does not quit when its national interests American troops dead. Presidents Rea- SEALs in Abbottabad will yield all sorts are at stake. gan and Clinton withdrew US troops of valuable new leads. Osama bin Laden had given the US from the scene shortly after each of “If I were Mullah Omar [the fugitive the slip before. In 1998, a cruise mis- those attacks. But bin Laden “failed to head of the Taliban], I’d certainly be sile attack on al Qaeda training sites understand that Beirut and Mogadishu worried,” said Marine Corps Maj. Gen. in Afghanistan just missed him. At the represented a peacekeeping and a Richard P. Mills, until recently the top end of 2001, he may have narrowly humanitarian mission, respectively,” Marine in Afghanistan, on May 5. escaped from Tora Bora and slipped noted National Journal’s James Kitfield, Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden’s long- into Pakistan. Then the trail went cold, “with limited national interests at stake.” time deputy, should also be looking over but the working assumption was that A common theme emerges when his shoulder. he was living, perhaps in a cave, in the looking at the international manhunts for Anwar al Awlaki, the American-born rugged and largely ungoverned frontier terrorists and thugs wanted by the Unit- head of al Qaeda in Yemen, certainly along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. ed States: The searches take months is. He narrowly avoided a Predator He made many changes to stay safe. or years, but they eventually pay off. A missile attack just days after the bin Bin Laden had once traveled by SUV handful of cases prove this point. Laden raid—and this was even before with bodyguards and communicated Mir Amal Kansi. In January 1993, analysts had a chance to pore over the by cell phone. He gave all of that up Kansi murdered two CIA employees in intelligence collected from bin Laden’s to make it more difficult for the US to their cars as they waited to turn into the compound. find him. His ultimate compound was agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters. The radical Islam advanced by al custom built with high walls, darkened He was picked up in Pakistan in June Qaeda and the Taliban is being rejected windows, and no clear lines of sight 1997—four-and-a-half years later. throughout the Arab world. The popula- from neighboring buildings. It was in Abd al Rahim al Nashiri. The mas- tion helped drive al Qaeda from Iraq, an area where people wouldn’t ask too termind behind the October 2000 bomb- the Taliban relies on terror to secure many questions. The compound had no ing of the Navy destroyer Cole while support in Afghanistan and Pakistan, phone service or Internet connection, it was docked in Yemen. Nashiri was and this year’s Arab Spring revolutions and its occupants burned their trash. captured in the United Arab Emirates show the Muslim world has a desire for Bin Laden himself never left it. Despite in November 2002, two years after the freedom, not extremism. all this, US intelligence professionals attack. Terrorists such as Mullah Omar, Ay- eventually tracked him down, and for . The man al Zawahiri, and Anwar al Awlaki this they are to be commended. principal architect of the 9/11 plot, with would be wise to take the advice given “Last August, after years of painstak- ties to the 1993 World Trade Center by Iraq’s Prime Minister when Zarqawi ing work by our Intelligence Community, bombing and the murder of Daniel Pearl. was killed five years back. Extremists I was briefed on a possible lead to bin “KSM” was picked up at a safe house in “should stop now,” Nuri al Maliki said. Laden,” President Obama said in an- Pakistan in March 2003, a year-and-a- “They should review their situation and nouncing the terror leader’s death. “It half after the Sept. 11 hijackings. resort to logic while there is still time.” was far from certain, and it took many Saddam Hussein. Army Maj. Gen. Failing that, sooner or later, the US months to run this thread to ground.” Raymond T. Odierno said Saddam “was will come for them. n

4 AIR FORCE Magazine / June 2011