In the annals of history, there has never been a man-hunt of the scope of that which was in place to find Osama Bin Laden, the man who was the driving force behind the September 11, 2001 airliner hijacking and suicide crashes into the New York City World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One could easily say that this attack was a seminal moment in US history. Now terrorism was a major part of American life and this act was used it to not only abrogate some basic rights, but also to ramp up an increased bureaucracy that was dedicated to locating those responsible, eliminate them, and ensure that this would not happen again. For those of us who have lived a while on this planet and also read science fiction, it was a situation that had been read about decades back in various books.

Osama Bin Laden was not unknown prior to 9/11. Born of a wealthy Saudi family, he used his part of the family fortune to fund various organizations after witnessing what was going on in Lebanon in 1982. His experiences there led him to become more and more radicalized, the result of which was the combining of several other organizations into what eventually became known as al-Queda (the base).

The US government had been tracking Bin Laden since 1995 and missed several opportunities to end him prior to 2001. Once the attack had happened, Bin Laden became very difficult to locate. He stopped using electronic methods of communication as those could lead to him. Instead he used trusted messengers to pass along information. A slower way to get things done, but very difficult to trace. 

After years of sleuthing with no results, it was decided to concentrate on those messengers rather than Bin Laden himself. Even then it was not an easy task as these messengers went under many assumed names and blended in well with their surrounds. Eventually, the CIA got wind of one and was able to verify that he was the head messenger for Bin Laden. He was eventually traced to a newly built compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, near the Pakistani Military Institute and close to the capital of Pakistan.

Then began the planning. There were many issues regarding getting to Bin Laden, one of which was that he was in Pakistan. The US could not ask the Pakistanis to help as their government had many leaks so it had to be done without their knowledge. The compound was also a goodly distance from any US controlled air bases in Afghanistan. There was a lot of dissent in the President's cabinet on how to perform the mission and the team needed to be chosen and trained. Thus began one of the most incredible missions of the 21st century. Though meticulously planned, there were glitches and it was thought for a time that things would go horribly awry.

The book's author has done a superlative job of covering the background as well as the mission itself, all thanks to some well done basic research. Many parts of the mission are still classified, and the author had to sift through everything available in terms of news articles, interviews with some of the members and some educated guesses. It all makes for one of the best books of this series, partly due to the recentness of the event. It is a book that I most highly recommend to you. 

October 2014

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