SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden (33 page)

During the month of April, the CIA had deployed assets into Abbottabad to confirm that the compound was, indeed, occupied by Osama bin Laden. An apartment was rented close by as a listening post and photographic perch. In a slick but later obvious move, a Pakistani physician went door to door in the neighborhood offering free vaccinations for children. The strange people behind the high walls did not take the bait, but the doctor got a close look at their front gate and its multitudinous locks. His descriptions would be used later by the assaulters who would fabricate custom-made C4 charges to blast their way in.

The CIA’s “assets” who had surveyed Bin Laden’s compound were soon rolled up by Pakistani counterintelligence. The doctor and the landlord who rented the apartment were arrested, beaten, and tossed in prison. So was a military officer alleged to have CIA ties and six policemen suspected to have diverted traffic the night of the assault. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the CIA’s “boots on the ground” were so poorly compartmentalized that it took less than thirty-six hours for the Pakistanis to arrest everyone who had anything remotely to do with the operation.

The Pakistanis then held an auction for the chunk of Razor 1 that had been left behind. The Chinese won, paid cash, and were allowed to disassemble, photograph, and take material samples of the tail rotor and the scraps that were heaved up around the compound. Out of spite, the Pakistanis allowed the Iranians and the North Koreans to come have a look, as well.

Two weeks after the raid, Senator John Kerry traveled to Islamabad, hat in hand, to ask that the parts be returned. He came home with the wreckage.

*   *   *

On a sunny afternoon in May, Admiral Bill McRaven met President Obama on a runway in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The base is the home of the famed 101st Airborne Division and the Army’s TF-160 Special Operations Air Regiment, the pilots who flew the mission. SEAL Team Six had been flown in from Virginia and assembled in the conference rooms adjoining a hangar, far from the press. The Death Star, their base in Virginia, was deemed too sensitive for a presidential visit; this was, after all, a photo opportunity.

After the president made a speech to the 101st Division, Admiral McRaven and the commander in chief went into the locked hangar for a close-up look at a Ghost Hawk helicopter. The president met some of the members of Det Alpha and the staff of the Joint Operations Center. He was given a briefing by Frank Leslie, who ran through the operation on a scale model of the compound that had been used to train the assaulters. The president was allowed to pet Karo, Red Squadron’s K-9, though the Secret Service asked that the dog remain muzzled.

The president was given a 3 by 5 American flag signed by the SEALs and TF-160 pilots who conducted the raid. An inscription read: “From Joint Task Force Operation Neptune’s Spear, 01 May 2011: For God and country. Geronimo.”

President Obama promised to put their gift in a place that was “somewhere private and meaningful.”

Red Squadron had earlier presented Admiral McRaven with a 9 mm Marakov pistol taken from Osama’s bedside table. Inches from Bin Laden’s fingers, the Red Men also recovered Osama’s prized
suchka
machine pistol. That weapon now hangs on two nails driven into a wall in Red Squadron’s team room at the Death Star. Next to it are the pictures of a dozen Red Squadron operators who have been killed in action since the team went on line in 1981.

In the hangar that afternoon, the president seemed in no hurry. He posed for pictures and bestowed the Presidential Unit Citation on TF-160 and SEAL Team Six. He made a couple of jokes and everybody laughed.

The president made sure to shake the hands of each of the operators. As he was introduced to the men of Razor 1, the president asked, “So which one of you guys took out Osama?”

There was a respectful pause, and Frank Leslie said, “We all did it, sir. It was all of us.”

HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN

The primary sources for this history were the men of SEAL Team Six who told me what they saw, what they thought, and what they felt. The preparations and rehearsals for Neptune’s Spear spread over several months; in the weeks and months leading up to Neptune’s Spear, it was my privilege to help troops and platoons train for submissions, and run parallel HVT (high-value target) missions. Neptune’s Spear was a highly classified operation that hid its training evolutions in the “plain sight” of other SEAL Team exercises. Even in rehearsals, the Invisible Empire remains invisible. During a complex mission, no one SEAL can see all of an operation, or witness directly what happened in every corner of the target. Von Clausewitz calls this “the Fog of Battle.” Sometimes individual operators did not know what was happening on the other end of the compound. Sometimes they did. The story I have written seeks to draw together these fragments into a cogent narrative. I often had to “de-conflict” the statements of individual operators in order to gain a full picture of who saw what, where they saw it, and when it happened. To a great extent, it is the SEALs themselves who wrote this book. I have based my narrative on their stories, and, whenever possible, I have used their own words.

My research took me far afield. Since the operation, some of the mission commanders have become public figures—I have made use of their correct names. In every other case I have done my best to protect the identities of both operators and analysts, while at the same time drawing accurate pictures of them as people.

Like any endeavor regarding intelligence or counterterrorism there is a “white” side—open for business and overt; a gray side, a shadow state somewhere between being public and not being there at all; and then there is the dark side. The dark side is the realm of black programs, covert organizations, and hidden agendas. In the world of black programs, organizations don’t exist, people don’t have names, and things go bump in the night. I have thanks to give in all three shades, white, black, and gray, and I hope the reader will forgive me if I occasionally get a little vague.

About halfway through, I began to realize that the farther I got from the Beltway the more accurate the information I got. In Washington, politicians who traipsed through the nightly news congratulating themselves on “gutsy decisions” were suddenly struck dumb when I came calling. It was as though having cheered for and congratulated themselves, and after outing the SEALs, they tried to make up for their indiscretions by biting their tongues. I learned long ago to never be disappointed by people. Especially politicians.

This book details the events of the night of May 1, 2011, and has been based on the first-person accounts of members of SEAL Team Six.

For reasons of operational security, it has been necessary to obscure, rather than clarify, certain aspects of the mission at Abbottabad. The success or failure of future SEAL missions requires that some of the facts of the operation against Osama bin Laden remain secret. While this may be a passing annoyance to historians, it is necessary to protect men and women in the here and now. The fight against Al Qaeda is not over. The lives of America’s war fighters depend on keeping what they do, and how they do it, a mystery to an enemy who has sworn to kill them and bring terror to our own doorsteps.

Winston Churchill once said that the truth was so important that it had to be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. Almost sixty years after World War II secrets are still emerging about the special operations carried out by the forebears of SEAL Team Six, the Office of Strategic Services, the Jedberg Teams, Navy Combat Demolition Units, and the Underwater Demolition Teams. Likely it will be another half century before all is revealed about Operation Neptune’s Spear. Until the Joint Special Operations Command writes its own story, history must content itself with the few precious details that have come to light. This book has been written with the best information available. It will be left to some future historian to write the final story of Neptune’s Spear. It will also be the life’s work of another scholar to detail the inner machinations of Al Qaeda and the deadly rivalry between Ayman Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.

The best biographical material on Osama bin Laden may be found in Lawrence Wright’s magnum opus,
The Looming Tower
; it is the best and most reliable single source for details of his life and the 9/11 conspiracy. Other key foundations of the present history include
The Bin Ladens
by Steve Coll,
Holy War, Inc.
by Peter Bergen,
Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
by Richard Miniter,
Osama: The Making of a Terrorist
by Jonathan Randal,
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
by Yossef Bodansky, and
Inside Al Qaeda Global Network of Terror
by Rohan Gunaratna. A complete bibliography of reference books can be found on my Web site:
www.chuckpfarrer.com
. The work of these scholars, historians, and investigative journalists allowed me to accurately sketch the life and travels of Osama bin Laden. If the present history succeeds, it is because this work stands on the shoulders of giants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On the civilian side, I have to thank my literary agent, Julia Lord, who stayed with this project and found a home for it amid the honking and clattering of competing projects. Thanks also to my editor at St. Martin’s, Michael Flamini, who gave me a very long leash even if he couldn’t give me much time. Thanks and love to my mother and father and my wife, Louise, who cared for me, patched me up between trips, and kept the lights on. Louise applied her considerable talents as an editor and writing coach to make sure that this book was the best it could be. She spent many a late night correcting drafts and rewrites as well as turning the galley proofs around in record time. As Dante said,
Il Miglior Fabbro.
Thanks and love to my son, Paddy, who waited patiently and was brave while his dad was away. And thanks again to my own father, who researched open source material and help sift fact from fiction. Many thanks to Murray Neal of Dragon Skin, who put together my “armored vehicle.” I’m delighted that I didn’t have to put his body armor to the test. Thanks a million to the professionals at the Makko Group, especially Dylan Saunders, who made sure that I was well turned out for my travels in harm’s way. Thanks to Pinnacle Armor and the Makko Group, I am the envy of operators in three war zones.

A special thank-you to my oldest friend, Lisa Paul, herself a veteran of many a tough bivouac and a cool head under fire. Thanks also to my friends Doug Stanton, Pack, and Becca Fancher, and thanks always and again to the Doctors Brice, Charlie and Judy—a pair of psychiatrists and poets who are among the smartest and most loving people I know. Thanks to Emily and Anna Iannucci, who provided me with a safe house in a place no one would have found me. Friends are the riches of the world. Lance Moody and my comrade Panu Vesterinen are long-suffering friends as well as patriots, gentlemen, and scholars—their ship’s come in, and I congratulate them heartily. Thanks to Lee Wanaar and Rick Kosinsky—two fighters that never quit: you know what you did to make this book possible. Thanks to Dave and Erika DeTar, Otto Bebe and Terry Starr—we’ll eventually have that beer.

Other friends, in the gray world, also provided vital help. Sincere thanks to my teammate Jon Ciderquist for services rendered. Jon has been on the frontlines in the war on terror for the last fifteen years—and his contributions to the security of this nation could fill another book. Thanks to Steven Kitchen, and every operator from call sign Warlord: the Domingoes, the Eddies, Lance, Ren, Dave, Mike, Cap’n Cook, and
los tipos suaves
. In Washington, I owe thanks to KE and LE; KE is a friend and teammate of thirty years standing, and LE is one of the most stalwart wives in the history of Naval Special Warfare. It was my privilege to work for KE at SEAL Six, and then at the legendary National Red Team. KE was one of the most outstanding and heroic commanders to ever have served at Six, and is proudly entering his fourth decade of service to his country.

And now to thank the people who hardly exist; those on the dark side. Behind the scenes, book projects can often turn on the cooperation of a single person. In the Teams we say “One is none; two is one.” That goes for people as well as parachutes and helicopters. It’s always a good idea to have a backup plan—or two of them. There were many points at which this book almost didn’t happen. I regret to say, there were several people who did their best to make sure
SEAL Target Geronimo
was never written. I consider those who made their feelings known, and spoke to me directly, to be honorable men. We have differed only on whether the valor and achievements of our comrades should be made public. The events that took place in Abbottabad are the embodiment of the fighting spirit and professionalism of the United States Navy, and the facts of that operation are a vital part of our nation’s history. I am honored to tell the story. There were a small number of persons who worked behind the scenes to derail this history, and substitute one of their own making. Those efforts continue to this day. For some, the object of this rewrite was political, for others, the facts of Neptune’s Spear were squabbled over as commercial property to be exploited as rapidly as possible. The light of day shines on fact as well as fiction.

I have been blessed with friends and teammates who fought for me even as I faltered and it looked like this book would never happen. It is a brave person who risks his own neck to save a guy whose head looks to be already in the noose.

A special thanks to Ian Conway. Ian is a teammate and comrade in arms who has served with me around the world, and in close-combat in the deadly corridors of Washington. He’s a tougher man than I am.