"I can only speak with authority through Feb. 15, 2009," said Michael Hayden, who was George W. Bush's last CIA director. "But at that point, when people would ask 'When's the last time you really knew where he was?' my answer was Tora Bora in 2001." Bush was no closer to capturing Bin Laden at the end of his term, than he was in 2001.. Much more went into the Bin Laden raid than most Americans realize... They needed to be sure that BinLaden was in the compound, with out drawing attention to the site. "Most of the actions the CIA could take to increase its confidence about the target would also unavoidably increase the odds that bin Laden or Pakistani intelligence officers would learn that the U.S. had discovered his whereabouts. More-advanced drones could provide better overhead photography of activity in the compound, but what if one crashed, as an RQ-170 did in Iran seven months later? A broadsheet of options included everything from surveilling the neighborhood with a miniaturized UAV that resembled a bird (so convincing that one was attacked by an eagle) to analyzing local sewage for genetic markers." (Time)  |
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