How we really found Osama bin Laden

Did waterboarding and other coercive interrogation
techniques that were used on al Qaeda detainees in CIA
custody eventually lead to the Navy SEAL operation that
killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan early in the morning of
May 2, 2011?
The Senate Intelligence Committee report released
Tuesday has a simple answer to that: Hell, no!
According to the Senate report, the critical pieces of
information that led to discovering the identity of the bin
Laden courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, (Ahmed the Kuwaiti)
whose activities eventually pointed the CIA to bin Laden's
hiding place in Pakistan, were provided by an al-Qaeda
detainee before he was subjected to CIA coercive
interrogation, and was based also upon information that
was provided by detainees that were held in the custody of
foreign governments. (The report is silent on the interesting
question of whether any of these unnamed foreign
governments obtained any of their information by using
torture.)
Further critical information about the Kuwaiti was also
provided by conventional intelligence techniques and was not
elicited by the interrogations of any of the CIA detainees,
according to the report.
Even worse for the CIA -- which has consistently
defended the supposed utility of the interrogation program,
including in the hunt for bin Laden -- a number of CIA
prisoners who were subjected to coercive interrogations
consistently provided misleading information designed to
wave away CIA interrogators from the bin Laden courier
who would eventually prove to be the key to finding al
Qaeda's leader.
The Senate report provides the fullest accounting so far of
the exact sequence of intelligence breaks that led the CIA to
determine that the courier, the Kuwaiti, was likely to be
living with bin Laden in Pakistan.
This reads more like a careful Agatha Christie detective
story than a story about the efficacy of coercive
interrogations, which some have characterized as torture.
The report points out that the courier was in touch with
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of
the 9/11 attacks, and that it was SIGINT (signals
intelligence) from phones and email traffic that made this link
first in 2002, well before any CIA detainees made such a
connection.
Indeed, in a fascinating footnote, the report makes the case
that it was "voice cuts" of the courier that were first
collected in 2002 that were matched eight years later to the
Kuwaiti and were "geolocated" to an area of Pakistan in
2010 where he was traveling around. This was a crucial
lead that helped prompt the CIA to examine the mysterious
compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was
hiding.
In 2002, reports from four different detainees held by
foreign governments provided important information about
the courier's age, physical appearance and family,
information that was also acquired prior to any information
about the courier being obtained from CIA detainees.
Detainees held by foreign governments also said that the
courier was close to bin Laden.
It was Hassan Ghul, an al Qaeda operative captured in
Iraqi Kurdistan, who provided the most detailed account
of bin Laden's courier and his relationship to bin Laden in
January 2004, before he entered CIA custody.
According to a CIA official cited in the report, Ghul,
who was in Kurdish custody, "sang like a tweetie bird. He
opened up right away and was cooperative from the
outset."
Ghul described the courier as bin Laden's "closest assistant"
and "one of three individuals likely to be with" al Qaeda's
leader. And he correctly surmised that bin Laden would
have minimal security and "likely lived in a house with a
family somewhere in Pakistan."
If there was good intelligence coming from sources that
were not in CIA custody, the Senate report demonstrates
that the detainees who were in CIA custody and were
subjected to coercive interrogations made every effort to
hide the significance of bin Laden's courier.
Five of the most senior al-Qaeda detainees in CIA
custody, all of whom were subjected to some of the most
intensive coercive interrogation techniques, variously said
that the courier worked only with low level members of al
Qaeda; that he was not a courier for bin Laden; that he
wasn't close to al Qaeda's leader, and that he was focused
only on his family following his marriage in 2002. None of
this, of course, was true.
The CIA, of course, is not happy about the portrayal of
its work in the Senate report, and in a rebuttal on its
website on Tuesday the agency pushed back, saying that
detainees "in combination with other streams of intelligence"
played a role in finding bin Laden.
In particular the CIA cites a detainee, Ammar al-
Baluchi, who was coercively interrogated and provided
what it terms the first information indicating that the
Kuwaiti was indeed bin Laden's courier, rather than just
someone who was an ordinary member of al Qaeda.
The CIA rebuttal is not, however as persuasive as the
very detailed history laid out in the Senate report, which
is buttressed by copious source notes.
And, in any event, were interrogations of al Qaeda
detainees really the key to how bin Laden ultimately was
found? After all, it still took almost a decade after the first
identification of the courier to find bin Laden.
Indeed, there were a number of key breaks that had little
to do with the interrogations of al Qaeda detainees, which
I discovered in the course of reporting my book "Manhunt."
A large break, according to U.S. counterterrorism
officials, came in 2007, when a foreign intelligence service
that they won't identify told the CIA that the Kuwaiti's
real name was Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed.
It would still take three more years for the CIA to find
Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed in Pakistan, a country with a
population of 180 million. This involved painstaking work
going through reams of phone conversations to try to locate
him through his family and circle of associates.
In June 2010, the Kuwaiti and his brother both made
changes in the way they communicated on cell phone, which
suddenly opened up the possibility of the "geolocation" of
both their phones, according to U.S. counterterrorism
officials.
Finally, sometime in the late summer of 2010, the Kuwaiti
received a call from an old friend in the Persian Gulf, a
man whom U.S. intelligence officials were monitoring.
"We've missed you. Where have you been?" asked the
friend. The Kuwaiti responded elliptically. "I'm back with
the people I was with before." There was a tense pause in
the conversation as the friend mulled over that response.
Likely realizing that the Kuwaiti was back in bin Laden's
inner circle, the caller replied after some hesitation, "May
God facilitate."
The CIA took this call as a confirmation that the Kuwaiti
was still working with al Qaeda, a matter that officials
were still not entirely sure about.
The National Security Agency was listening to this
exchange and through geolocation technologies was able to
zero in on the Kuwaiti's cell phone in northwestern
Pakistan. But the Kuwaiti practiced rigorous operational
security and was always careful to insert the battery in his
phone and turn it on only when he was at least an hour's
drive away from the Abbottabad compound where he and
bin Laden were living. To find out where the Kuwaiti
lived by monitoring his cell phone would only go so far.
In August 2010, a Pakistani "asset" working for the CIA
tracked the Kuwaiti to the crowded city of Peshawar,
where bin Laden had founded al Qaeda more than two
decades earlier. In the years when bin Laden was residing
in the Abbottabad compound, the Kuwaiti would regularly
transit though Peshawar, as it is the gateway to the
Pakistani tribal regions where al Qaeda had regrouped in
the years after 9/11.
Once the CIA asset had identified the Kuwaiti's distinctive
white Suzuki SUV with a spare tire on its back in
Peshawar, the CIA was able to follow him as he drove
home to Abbottabad, more than two hours' drive to the
east.
The large compound where the Kuwaiti finally alighted
immediately drew interest at the agency because it didn't
have phone or Internet service, which implied its owners
wanted to stay off the grid.
Soon, some CIA officials would come to believe that bin
Laden himself was living there.
They were, of course, right.

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