‘We’re now in an age in which our primary adversary is easy to kill, he’s just very hard to find’ - Michael V. Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2007)[1]
by Ricardo Ehe
When US President Donald Trump announced on the 27th of October 2019 the death of the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, one might have been reminded of the search for and killing of another central figure in Islamic terrorism: Al-Qaeda founder and former leader Osama bin Laden (OBL). Similar to Baghdadi today, the bin Laden case had extensive (western) media coverage on the US raid itself but put less emphasis on the preceding intelligence efforts to find him in the first place. While all the details of the Baghdadi case are still to be revealed, the bin Laden case shows in hindsight the centrality of intelligence analysis. Analysing the search for OBL in more detail gives insight into what the intelligence community is generally capable of. This following provides a short overview and analysis of the lesson learned in one of the most central intelligence operations of the 21st century.
Summary
After the US’ decision to invade Afghanistan in its declared ‘Global War on Terror’, one specific objective was to capture or kill OBL. Three months after 9/11 this objective became achievable when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) indicated that OBL’s location was likely to be Tora Bora, a cave complex near the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan which also served as al-Qaeda’s headquarters.[2] In early December 2001, as the US approached and fought at Tora Bora, OBL was able to escape through the mountains into Pakistan. According to the Abbottabad Commission Report, OBL went to various places across Pakistan before he ultimately moved with some of his wives and children into the ‘custom-built compound’ in Abbottabad in 2005.[3]
In the beginning, analysts were divided on the question of whether he was hiding in a rural, cave-like compound in the mountains or in a safe-house within an urban environment. A game changer in the first phase of the search was to shift the key question from ‘where is bin Laden?’ to ‘how does he communicate?’. Through various sources, the CIA was able to verify that OBL was using a single, trusted, personal courier to communicate with the outside world and did not use any kind of electronic communication device. Ultimately, through an intercepted phone call, the courier was located in north-western Pakistan which later led the CIA to the compound in Abbottabad. From then on, the challenge was to verify whether OBL was actually there or not. Until right before the raid, the presence of OBL at the Abbottabad compound remained an ‘educated guess’ and could not be undoubtedly confirmed.[4] Eventually, Operation Neptune Spear with the aim to capture or kill OBL was successful. Under the direction of the CIA, a Navy Seals Team entered the Abbottabad compound and killed OBL on 2nd May 2011.[5]
Lesson learned
When Barack Obama became the US President in 2009, he made the bin Laden search the CIA’s number one priority for fighting al-Qaeda. But even before that the US was not hesitant to commit ‘money, technology and ingenuity to the problem’.[6] After OBL’s escape from Tora Bora, CIA’s Counterterrorism Center increased their personnel from 340 to 1,500, utilised various computer systems, and offered a bounty of twenty-five million dollars.[7] With this in mind it becomes clear that the US was not lacking the political will to deploy any resources available and considering that the CIA is one of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies, their assets were extensive. However, as Dahl points out, simply throwing money at a problem does not necessarily lead to success. The fact that the CIA was not able to find OBL for almost a decade shows that even ‘the best technology, the most money, and the most-brilliant thinking is not always enough’.[8]
This lesson can be drawn from two important findings of the bin Laden search. First, it can be deduced from the attempt to ‘flood the zone’ in Operation Cannonball. When in 2006 the CIA was still clueless about the location of OBL, they decided to send a significant amount of personnel into Afghanistan and Pakistan. The underlying notion clearly followed the logic of ‘the more the better’. A logic that originates from traditional Cold War tactics which was, for instance, applied in the Korean War when the CIA sent 200 officers into the country in an attempt to produce high amounts of human intelligence. As most commentators agree, Operation Cannonball provided only very limited clues on OBL’s whereabouts.[9] Instead, ‘the more agents the CIA deployed to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the more leads were generated and the more wild goose chases resulted’.[10] Considering that OBL was CIA’s top priority, every single lead had to be tracked down even though it did not result in any beneficial outcomes.[11]
Second, this lesson can be similarly deduced from the attempt to verify OBL’s presence in the compound after it was located in Abbottabad. US intelligence agencies (most notably the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) applied all technical means in their arsenal to confirm the target. However, since the compound had no internet connection or telephone line, their success was limited.[12]
The takeaway from this lesson is certainly not to say that the high prioritisation of the bin Laden search and the resources deployed were overvalued, rather, it relates to the intelligence strategy itself. As Deniston suggests, sometimes you have to follow ‘parallel search tracks’ or apply strategies independent of their starting point.[13] In a scenario where traditional tradecraft does not result in the aspired goal, it is the variation that can make a difference. It is important to emphasise, as mentioned before, that more assets can also lead to negative results, as the overload of input can increase noise and is likely to obscure a clear view in a sea of information.
Sources
[1] Michael V. Hayden, ‘A Conversation with Michael V. Hayden’ (Council on Foreign Relations, 9 July 2007), https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-michael-v-hayden-0.
[2] Peter Bergen, ‘The Account of How We Nearly Caught Osama Bin Laden in 2001’, The New Republic, 30 December 2009, https://newrepublic.com/article/72086/the-battle-tora-bora.
[3] Doug Stanglin, ‘Leaked Pakistan Report Details Bin Laden’s Secret Life’, usatoday, 7 August 2013, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/07/08/pakistan-commission-osama-bin-laden-al-jazeera-leaked-report/2498565/.
[4] Erik J. Dahl, ‘Finding Bin Laden: Lessons for a New American Way of Intelligence’, Political Science Quarterly 129, no. 2 (26 June 2014): 179–210, https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.12183, 191.
[5] Schmidle, Nicholas. ‘Getting Bin Laden’, 1 August 2011. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/getting-bin-laden.
[6] Dahl, ‘Finding Bin Laden’, 183.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 205.
[9] Ibid., 185.
[10] Ibid., 201.
[11] Ibid., 183.
[12] ‘Osama Bin Laden Killed: Phonecall by Courier Led US to Their Target’, 3 May 2011, sec. World, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8489078/Osama-bin-Laden-killed-phonecall-by-courier-led-US-to-their-target.html.