Bin laden killed: Dramatic reconstruction of how hit squad finally took out Bin Laden

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Almost ten years after the horror of 9/11, Osama bin Laden must have thought he was safe.
He had moved from the remote, barren mountains on Afghanistan's inhospitable border to a comfortable $1million mansion in one of Pakistan's most picturesque and affluent cities.
Abbottabad - named after James Abbott, the British major who founded the town in 1853 - has such a pleasant climate that it is a major hub for tourists visiting the region.
And the former home of the Gurkhas is still a major military base so locals have no reason to feel threatened.
Behind the walls of his sprawling compound about 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Bin Laden had every reason to believe he was way beyond the searching eyes of the Americans he had taunted for so long.
His family was with him and a parade of couriers would bring him everything he needed from the city outside of more than a million people.
So confident was he that the huge three-storey house he was living in was eight times larger than most other homes in the area, hardly a low-profile hideaway for the most wanted man in the world.
But, according to U.S. intelligence sources, Bin Laden was taken completely by surprise by the special forces who had spent the best part of a decade stalking him.

He had, after all, survived two wars launched with the aim of capturing him and his followers.
The last time the Americans and the British got as close - a few months after the attacks on New York and Washington - Bin Laden managed to elude them on horseback through the caves and gullies in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
For most of the past ten years, Bin Laden lived up to the nickname of 'Elvis' he had been given by the CIA because there had been so many bogus and fanciful sightings.
But as long ago as last August, President Obama was told in an intelligence briefing that there was a possible lead that Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad.

It took eight months for U.S. and Pakistani agents to confirm for certain that the information was accurate.

Meticulous: Initial intelligence about bin Laden's location in Abottabad first emerged in August

Mr Obama and his national security chiefs wanted to be absolutely sure because the tip seemed so implausible.

After so many dead end enquiries, it was hard to believe that the elusive Al Qaeda chief would be so brazen as to live in a town favoured as a retirement spot for Pakistan's military and society elite.
The ten-foot walls and heavy security surrounding the compound made verification all the more difficult.

But a week ago, Mr Obama was given concrete photographic proof that Bin Laden was there.
After several run-throughs and the diplomatic blessing of the Pakistani government, a small special forces team of U.S. Navy Seals landed in the compound grounds yesterday with the explicit instruction - get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.
The raid on the compound, which was just 100 yards from a Pakistani military academy, was launched at about 1.15am in the morning, according to witnesses. Four U.S. helicopters took off from the Ghazi air base in northwest Pakistan.
Bin Laden's guards opened fire from the roof and one of the helicopters crashed.

During an operation that took just 40 minutes from start to finish, Bin Laden was shot in the head in a firefight as he tried to evade capture. Three of his men were also killed along with a woman they tried to use as a human shield. One of Bin Laden's eleven sons was said to be among the dead.

Stormed: An image from Geo TV shows flames from the compound where terror mastermind Bin Laden was shot

No Americans were hurt in the mission, but it didn't go without a hitch.

The helicopter they used to breach the mansion walls suffered a mechanical breakdown and couldn't fly the soldiers out.
The Seals burned the helicopter and had to carry Bin Laden's body out on foot, an ignominious ending for the terrorist chief after one of history's biggest manhunts.
It was also a major triumph for a special CIA and special forces team of up to 100 whose mission since September 11 has been to find and kill Bin Laden.

For years, they have had to brave the jibes aimed at both the Bush and Obama administrations over the failure to track down the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.
They worked closely with the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service for whom many CIA officials have a deep mistrust because of the agency's traditional ties with the Pashtuns of Waziristan, who were believed to have harboured Bin Laden for some of his years on the run.
After he evaded capture in mid-December 1991, there were precious few credible leads of his wherebouts.
But about four years ago, CIA agents managed to identify one of his most trusted couriers after a detainee at Guantanamo Bay gave them his nickname.
It took another two years for them to discover the area where the courier and his brother were operating.
By January this year, they found out that the courier and his brother were living in a mansion that appeared to be much larger than anything they could afford.
Suspicions were raised further by the thick walls around the compound.

Mission: U.S. President Barack Obama announces that America's most wanted man is dead

While other homes in the area put rubbish out to be collected, the trash was burned in the ground of the mansion, which did not have a telephone or internet service.
By February, U.S. intelligence officials were confident that Bin Laden and his family were living there and by March, Mr Obama was convening top secret meeting with his senior security staff.
The CIA believe that for many years before settling in Abbottabad, Bin Laden moved from village to village in Waziristan. He communicated only about once a month and never used a telephone.
When he reached a village with his bodyguards he would request a meeting with the local tribal leader and a substantial bribe would be paid.
Bin Laden would then be the guest of the village, where under Pashtun custom, he must be protected.
The main obstacle in finding him was that even if someone wanted to betray him and collect the $25 million reward - there was no one to turn to.

The local police would know Bin Laden was there and if anyone tried to report his presence they would quite likely be killed.

One local mullah from Waziristan agreed to send information about Bin Laden's movements and his beheaded body was found several weeks later with a message that his was the fate of spies.
While Operation Enduring Freedom was successful in liberating Afghanistan from Taliban control after 9/11, there was no doubt that the real prize was Bin Laden himself.
But the Al Qaeda chief had chosen his first redoubt with care. For several years before 2001, he had developed an intricate network of caves and dwellings 14,000ft up in the settlement known as Tora Bora.

The impenetrable mountains not only made it difficult for anybody to track him, they were also just a few miles from Pakistan, allowing him to escape easily as western troops moved in.
The commander of one U.S. military force told the '60 Minutes' news show how soldiers under his command found Bin Laden - but let him slip through their fingers.
The commander, calling himself Dalton Fury, expressed his frustration at having known where Bin Laden was, but feeling he was powerless to do anything.
At one point, he said, his forces were closing in on Bin Laden's men - but he decided to abort the mission because he did not have support from Afghan troops.
And in another incident Delta soldiers actually saw a tall man dressed in camouflage that they believed was Bin Laden - only to have the Al Qaeda leader escape their bombing campaign in the mountains.
Fury talked about a book he has written entitled 'Kill Bin Laden', detailing his memories of the campaign in Tora Bora in 2001.
'Our job was to go find him, capture or kill him, and we knew the writing on the wall was to kill him because nobody wanted to bring Osama bin Laden back to stand trial in the United States somewhere,' the mission commander told his interviewer.
He said the administration's strategy was to let Afghans do most of the fighting, however.
Using radio intercepts and other intelligence, he said, the CIA pinpointed Bin Laden's location in the Tora Bora mountains near Pakistan.
Fury's Delta team joined the CIA and Afghan fighters and piled into pick-up trucks. He claimed their orders were to kill Bin Laden and leave the body with the Afghans, keeping an Afghan face on the war.
However an audacious plan to come at Bin Laden from the back door was vetoed higher-up - Fury claimed he was never sure who.
And a second plan to drop hundreds of landmines over any escape route into Pakistan was also vetoed, with Fury claiming he had no idea why.
The only option left was a frontal assault. Fury said he had 50 men in Delta force up against Bin Laden's 1,000 - support from the Afghan forces was needed.

But, he claimed, many of the Afghan soldiers were not on board - seeing Bin Laden as a hero.

One night - alone without his Afghan allies - Fury said he was told Bin Laden was two kilometres away. Faced with overwhelming odds, he elected to stay away.

But the decision always nagged him. He wrote in his book: 'My decision to abort that effort to kill or capture Bin Laden when we might have been within 2,000 metres of him, about 2,000 yards, still bothers me.
'It leaves me with a feeling of somehow letting down our nation at a critical time.' But, he added, it wasn't worth the risk.
Fury had a second chance: Later, a Delta force named Jackal radioed they had Bin Laden in sight.

He wrote: 'The operation Jackal team observed 50 men moving into a cave that they hadn't seen before. The mujahideen said they saw an individual, a taller fellow, wearing a camouflage jacket. Everybody put two and two together, "okay, that's got to be Osama bin Laden egressing from the battlefield".
'They called up every available bomb in the air, took control of the airspace. And they dropped several hours of bombs on the cave he went into.

'We believe, it was our opinion at the time, that he died inside that cave.'
Later, however, he was proven wrong, when American forces were unable to find Bin Laden's body and the Al Qaeda leader began releasing radio and video footage again.

Fury told 60 Minutes he believes he knows what happened.
He said Bin Laden was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel from an American bomb, and was then hidden a town next to the Al Qaeda cemetery.

'We believe a gentleman brought him in - a gentleman, him and his family were supporting Al Qaeda during the battle. They were providing food, ammo, water.

'We think he went to that house, received medical attention for a few days then, and then we believe they put him in a vehicle and moved him back across the pass,' he was quoted as saying.

Bin Laden Dead: How They Got Him -- And What Happens to al Qaeda Now

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The reports started coming in more than a month ago: Osama bin Laden was on the move, and the U.S. had its eye on him. Stressed by the turmoil sweeping his part of the world - tumult he had no roll in sparking - bin Laden was trying to bolster al Qaeda's credibility as young people Tweeted and Facebooked about a future that didn't involve him, or al Qaeda.

Surprisingly, he didn't die a standoff death from an unseen Predator drone, as most would have expected. Instead, a team of U.S. special-operations forces helicoptered into a high-walled compound deep inside Pakistan and killed him and four others in a firefight, including a son of bin Laden and a woman allegedly being used as a human shield. (Is Pakistan Losing Patience in the War on Terror?)

Dispatching a special-forces team into Pakistan makes two things crystal clear: the U.S. believed its intelligence was solid, and it wanted proof he was dead; they wanted his corpse. One of the choppers involved in the raid malfunction and was destroyed; no U.S. personnel were injured in the operation, which lasted about 40 minutes.

The whereabouts and fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, remain unknown. Whether bin Laden's death sparks a spasm of violence - or marks the end of al Qaeda as a potent terror force - also remains unclear. Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian-born doctor, recently encouraged Muslims to fight the U.S. and its allies in Libya. "I want to direct the attention of our Muslim brothers in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and the rest of the Muslim countries, that if the Americans and the NATO forces enter Libya then their neighbors in Egypt and Tunisia and Algeria and the rest of the Muslim countries should rise up and fight both the mercenaries of Gaddafi and the rest of NATO," Zawahri said, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

There was a quiet giddiness among U.S. military personnel late Sunday as word began to spread that Osama bin Laden had been killed. This is scant consolation to the survivors of the 3,000 killed that late summer day, but it represents sweet vindication nonetheless.

U.S. intelligence had learned that bin Laden might be holed up in a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, some 50 miles northeast of Islamabad, last August. Basically a suburb of the capital, the well-to-do city is home to many retired Pakistani military officers. That may explain the extraordinary secrecy surround the operation: few top officials in the U.S. government knew such an operation was afoot, and news of it wasn't shared with any allies, including Pakistan. How bin Laden was able to reside in a posh compound for months, if not years, surrounded by former Pakistani military officers remains unknown. (Pakistan-U.S. Border Spat: Crippling the Afghanistan Campaign?)

A U.S. official said a key clue to tracking bin Laden down was learning the name of a trusted courier, which led U.S. intelligence to the compound raided on Sunday. After noting the compound had few electronic links to the outside world - and incinerated its trash, rather than putting it out to be picked up - Obama gave the go-ahead last week for a helicopter raid into the compound. Bin Laden "did resist the assault force," the U.S. official said, but was shot in the head and killed "as our operators came into the compound."

It would be churlish, but accurate, to point out that he had eluded a worldwide manhunt for close to a decade after eluding a tightening, but fraying, U.S.-Afghan net at Tora Bora on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in December 2001. As hundreds crowded around the White House to celebrate bin Laden's demise, it's also relevant to note that bin Laden's impact peaked on 9/11, and has dwindled ever since. Nonetheless, the symbolic impact of his death cannot be under-estimated, either in the war on terror or on Obama's re-election prospects.

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The Pakistani firefight only codified what a younger generation, where women are playing a major role, has made clear: OBL was a force in a region ruled by autocrats in the 20th Century; he had much less resonance among the younger cohort now taking over.

Pentagon officials have said that al Qaeda has played only a minor role in Afghanistan in recent years. The Americans and their allies there are primarily fighting the Taliban, an indigenous force of Pashtuns whose homeland straddles the Af-Pak frontier.

Bin Laden's death only excises a tumor. The cancer that he represented remains in wide swaths of the world where local populations have been forced into have-not-dom while their leaders have lived well. Whether his demise marks the end of a particularly virulent strain, or will trigger a violent recurrence, remains unknown.

Bin Laden’s Dead, America Celebrates and Ignorance Reigns Supreme Continue reading at NowPublic.com: Bin Laden’s Dead, America Celebrates and Ignorance Reigns Supreme

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Osama bin Laden, Who the Associated Press calls "the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans", was killed in an operation led by the United States, This stated by President Barack Obama on Sunday.

The Fact is that Osama Bin Laden Never claimed responsibly for, and has NEVER been charged with the attacks that took place on September 11th 2001.
The grainy video that was used by the whole of American Media to claim the guilt rested on his shoulders, in fact shows Osama Bin Laden saying he was pleased with the attacks but not that he had any involvement in them.

Robert Muller the then head of the FBI, stated precisely that the reason Osama Bin Laden has never been charged in the World Trade Center attack was because; "We have no evidence to support the accusation (by George Bush and his cabinet members) that Osama Bin Laden had any involvement with the events that took place on September 11th 2001, at the World Trade Center." On the wanted poster for Osama Bin Laden posted by the FBI there is no mention of the World Trade Center Attacks.

According to the Associated Press (AP)

"A small team of Americans carried out the attack and took custody of bin Laden's remains, the president said in a dramatic late-night statement at the White House."

The president has been quoted as stating: "Justice has been done"

September 11th and the events on that day have been the staging point for a great deal of change in the American intelligence community; because of it we changed our entire information gathering structure. It was the catalyst for the creation of Home Land Security which is now the largest and broadest such entity of its kind. It has enormous sums of money at its disposal. In fact, just how much money is involved in this endeavor is not quite known.

What has been abundantly clear is the profit that has been made from the escalation of America's involvement in no less than four (4) wars since September 11th. This allowed for the defense industry known as "The Military Industrial Complex" to in effect, write their own check with the tax payers money. Congress, stirred by the FEAR (emphasis needed) that was reiterated by virtually every media outlet, and vote seeking politician in the country, gave every single corporation with a brand new gadget that kills people a literal 'ton' of money.

The wars that have been fought by young American soldiers, some British, and a dozen or so enlisted men from Turkey; have been based on speculation, bad intelligence, and outright lies.

-Iraq, which has been proven to be a war that has taken on the characteristics of Viet Nam. Both Iraq and Viet Nam were initiated on the premise of a lie, by those very high in our governmental power structure. It was the Weapons of Mass Destruction fairy tale that was told by Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell.

(Viet Nam, for those who are not old enough to remember, it was the Gulf of Tonkin incident where it was claimed by high ranking government officials (which may have included President Lyndon B. Johnson) That a North Vietnamese Navy vessel fired upon the USS Maddax. This, in turn lead congress to pass a bill that allowed then President Lyndon B. Johnson, to engage North Vietnam in war. In 2005 Documents were declassified that proved the incident never actually happened.)
The war in Afghanistan which has been defined by American soldiers hunting civilians, killing them and mutilating their bodies.

-Pakistan where drones have tallied up a kill ratio of 50 dead civilians to 1 dead insurgent.

-Libya is the new manner of aggression for the American war machine which is continually being defined as reports of civilian deaths from American bombs are dropped with "precision" targeting.

Al-Qaida organization was not wanted for the September 11th attacks, but they have been sought for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.

Even today the media that caters to the President and any politician with influence is blatantly passing over the facts. CBS, NBC, Associated Press, Reuters, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CNN, And every major newspaper in the country has printed Osama Bin Laden was "the mastermind behind the September 11th Attacks." The fact is that that there was never enough evidence to even charge him with the crime.

Now America is in celebration of the death of what they have seen, and been shown, by a manipulative government, and corporate owned media, as to be their greatest threat to security.
In the name of security Americans have allowed their civil liberty to be cast aside in the name of false senses of safety. The Patriot act took any semblance of privacy and with its extension that has been granted by congress we have another nine months of illegal wire tapping, warrant less searches, and illegal detention to look forward to.

America is celebrating because they are under the impression that Osama Bin Laden was their sworn enemy and he is dead and defeated. They fail to see that their real enemy is alive and well in the halls of Congress catering to lobbyists while they pander to corporations for the crumbs that are left over devouring their country and all that it entails from within.

 

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A crowd of perhaps 1,000 has gathered in lower Manhattan at the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

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Special Report: Death of Osama Bin Laden

With chants of "USA, USA," revelers celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden, the man behind the attacks, have spilled into the street, bringing traffic to a standstill.

"It's like the World Series down here," CBS News chief national correspondent Byron Pitts reported from the celebration.

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Osama Bin Laden is dead

Osama Bin Laden Dead Picture

For Ashley Smith, the news of Bin Laden's death brings a bit of closure. She worked two blocks from Ground Zero on the day of the attacks and was forced to run from her office for safety when the buildings collapsed. She joined the impromptu rally in lower Manhattan.

Key dates in the hunt for Osama bin Laden

She was skeptical of the U.S.'s response initially but now says it was all worth it. "I felt like we had all of our money fighting this endless war over there, now it totally validates it," said Smith.

Diane Massaroli lost her husband, Michael, nearly 10 years ago on 9/11. She only comes to Ground Zero once a year on the anniversary of the attacks but felt compelled to come tonight.

"We can never celebrate ever since this happened. [Tonight] is sad also but it's a celebration," Massaroli said.

President Barack Obama said in an address from the White House late Sunday night that a small team of Americans carried out the operation to kill bin Laden in Pakistan, and that cooperation from Pakistani authorities was crucial.

"Shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda," Mr. Obama said. "Tonight, we can say to those who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror, justice has been done."

Osama bin Laden Killed; ID Confirmed by DNA Testing

Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight.

The president called the killing of bin Laden the "most significant achievement to date" in the effort to defeat al Qaeda.

Bin Laden was located at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was monitored and when the time was determined to be right, the president said, he authorized a "targeted operation."

"A small team of Americans carried out the operation," Obama said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

DNA testing confirmed that it was bin Laden, sources told ABC News.

Sources said the attack was carried out by Joint Special Operations Command forces working with the CIA.

A Pakistani intelligence official tells ABC News that this was a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation and that last night at 1:30am local time, two American helicopters swooped into Abbottabad, a town about 100 miles from Islamabad.

One of the helicopters was shot down, according to this Pakistani official.

Vice President Biden briefed Republican congressional leaders this evening on the operation, which had been kept secret until shortly before the president's announcement tonight.

Former President George W. Bush said in a statement tonight that Obama called him to inform him of the news of bin Laden's death.

Bush called the operation a "momentous achievement" that "marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.

"I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude," the former president said in a statement. "The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done."

Outside the White House, a crowd of about 200 people has gathered with American flags. They are singing the Star Spangled banner and chanting "USA USA"

His death brings to an end a tumultuous life that saw bin Laden go from being the carefree son of a Saudi billionaire, to terrorist leader and the most wanted man in the world.

Bin Laden created and funded the al Qaeda terror network, which was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Saudi exile had been a man on the run since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan overthrew the ruling Taliban regime, which harbored bin Laden.

In a video filmed two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden gloated about the attack, saying it had exceeded even his "optimistic" calculations.

"Our terrorism is against America. Our terrorism is a blessed terrorism to prevent the unjust person from committing injustice and to stop American support for Israel, which kills our sons," he said in the video.

Long before the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden was known as an enemy of the United States. He was suspected of playing large roles in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000.

In addition, authorities say bin Laden and his al Qaeda network were involved in previous attacks against U.S. interests -- including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, failed plots to kill President Clinton and the pope, and attacks on U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia.

Bin Laden also used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines and Afghanistan, sending "holy warriors" to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia.

Until the capture of one of his top al Qaeda lieutenants in March 2003, there had been no confirmation of his whereabouts -- or even that he was still alive -- since late 2001, when he appeared in a series of videotapes later released to news organizations.

In recent years, several audio recordings of bin Laden have been authenticated by U.S. officials and made public. In an 18-minute videotape weeks before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, bin Laden threatened fresh attacks on the United States as well as his intent to push America into bankruptcy.

Young Man With a Privileged Life

Born in 1957, bin Laden was a son of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest construction magnate. Saudi sources remembered him as a typical young man whose intense religiosity began to emerge as he grew fascinated with the ancient mosques of Mecca and Medina, which his family's company was involved in rebuilding.

Bin Laden attended schools in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, and was encouraged to marry early, at the age of 17, to a Syrian girl and family relation. She was to be the first of several wives. He attended King Abdul-Aziz University and was slated to join the family business. He soon chose a different path, however.

Former classmates of bin Laden recall him as a frequent patron of nightclubs, who drank and caroused with his Saudi royalty cohorts. Yet it was also at the university that bin Laden met the Muslim fundamentalist Sheik Abdullah Azzam, perhaps his first teacher of religious politics and his earliest radical influence.

Azzam spoke fervently of the need to liberate Islamic nations from foreign interests and interventions, and he indoctrinated his disciples in the strictest tenets of the Muslim faith. Bin Laden, however, would eventually cultivate a brand of militant religious extremism that exceeded his teacher's.

He began his relationship with fundamental Islamic groups in the early 1970s. His religious passion exploded in 1979 when Russia invaded Afghanistan. Bin Laden left his comfortable Saudi home for Afghanistan to participate in the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against the Soviet Union -- a cause that the United States funded, pouring $3 billion into the Afghan resistance via the CIA.

Turning Against the Saudi Elite

His active opposition to the Soviet Union and his monetary support in purchasing arms, establishing training camps, and building houses, roads and other infrastructure, cemented his position as a hero among many people.

In 1988, he and the Egyptians founded al Qaeda, ("The Base"), a network initially designed to build fighting power for the Afghan resistance.

Bin Laden's politics became more radical during the war. Upon returning to his home in Saudi Arabia, he was widely honored as a hero. But he returned to a country that he perceived had stepped away from the fundamentals of Islam. He declared the Saudi ruling family "insufficiently Islamic" and increasingly advocated the use of violence to force movement toward extremism.

Bin Laden saw American influence in Saudi Arabia as counter to everything he believed. He fell into disfavor with the Saudi government and moved his family to Sudan where he established terrorist camps -- training and equipping terrorists from a dozen countries.

Bin Laden would not compromise his religious beliefs and after three years of continued criticism of the Saudi royal family, his own family disowned him.

Saudi Arabia stripped bin Laden of his citizenship in the mid-'90s for his alleged activities against the royal family, after he had left the country for Sudan. He later was expelled from Sudan under U.S., Egyptian and Saudi pressure. In 1996, he took refuge in Afghanistan.

Back to Afghanistan

Former mujahideen commanders close to the Taliban said that, in Afghanistan, bin Laden bankrolled the hard-line Islamic militia's capture of Kabul under the leadership of Mullah Mohammed Omar. He became one of Omar's most trusted advisers.

One of bin Laden's main strengths among the Muslim people was that followers saw him as a true believer in the faith. In their eyes he transcended other leaders who are viewed as dictators who care little for Islam or the people they lead. Bin Laden entered their lives with a message they can follow and he had the cash at his disposal to carry out that message.

Bin Laden was said to personally control about $300 million of his family's $5 billion fortune. His role as a financier of terrorism is pivotal, experts said, because he revolutionized the financing of extremist movements by forming and funding his own private terror network.

In 1998, he issued an edict openly declared war on America: "We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it."

Bin Laden committed himself to expelling all Americans and Jews from Muslim holy lands. "Osama bin Laden may be the most dangerous non-state terrorist in the world," Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, told ABC News.

Most Wanted Man on Earth

His place in American history is relatively new, but in a short time he left a violent mark.

In 1993, bin Laden was linked by U.S. officials to the bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six people. He is also believed to have orchestrated at least a dozen attacks, some successful, some not. Among the worst of these were two truck bombings, both on Aug. 7, 1998, of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Clinton responded with cruise missile attacks on suspected al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. In November 1998, the U.S. State Department promised $5 million to anyone with information leading to bin Laden's arrest.

Despite attempts to apprehend him, bin Laden eluded the American government and continued plotting against it.

The same group, with bin Laden at the helm, is widely believed to be responsible for the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

Then came the stunning Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. On a clear, late-summer morning, two hijacked commercial jets flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. About an hour later, another hijacked airliner slammed into the Pentagon in the nation's capital. A fourth hijacked jet did not reach its target, crashing in western Pennsylvania instead.

When the massive towers collapsed in flames, nearly 3,000 people perished. Among those lost in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania were the 19 hijackers, most of whom have been linked to al Qaeda operations. Bin Laden denied involvement in the attacks, but he praised the hijackers for their acts. The U.S. government nevertheless regarded the terrorist leader as its prime suspect and stepped up the manhunt.

In March 2005, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf admitted that bin Laden had been in Pakistan in the spring of 2004 and was almost captured. Intelligence officials said they believed he was hiding in the rugged mountains that straddle the border with Afghanistan. The U.S. government even launched a series of television and radio ads in Pakistan trumpeting the $25 million reward for his capture.

In January 2006, a purported Bin Laden audio tape was released where a male voice threatens the United States with more attacks on U.S. soil.

Obama tells nation bin Laden is dead

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Osama bin Laden is shown in Afghanistan, In this April 1998 file photo

Osama bin Laden, the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was killed in an operation led by the United States, President Barack Obama said Sunday

A small team of Americans carried out the attack and took custody of bin Laden's remains, the president said in a dramatic late-night statement at the White House.

A jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House as word spread of bin Laden's death after a global manhunt that lasted nearly a decade.

"Justice has been done," the president said.

The development comes just months before the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, orchestrated by bin Laden's al-Qaida organization, that killed more than 3,000 people.

The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and America's entire intelligence apparatus was overhauled to counter the threat of more terror attacks at home.

Al-Qaida organization was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.