Since May 2, when U.S. special operations forces crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border and killed Osama bin Laden, international media have covered the raid from virtually every angle. The United States and Pakistan have also squared off over the U.S. violation of Pakistan’s sovereign territory and Pakistan’s possible complicity in hiding the al Qaeda leader. All this surface-level discussion, however, largely ignores almost 10 years of intelligence development in the hunt for bin Laden.
While the cross-border nighttime raid deep into Pakistan was a daring and
daunting operation, the work to find the target — one person out of 180 million
in a country full of insurgent groups and a population hostile to American
activities on its soil — was a far greater challenge. For the other side, the
challenge of hiding the world’s most wanted man from the world’s most funded
intelligence apparatus created a clandestine shell game that probably involved
current or former Pakistani intelligence officers as well as competing
intelligence services. The details of this struggle will likely remain
classified for decades.
Examining the hunt for bin Laden is also difficult, mainly because of the
sensitivity of the mission and the possibility that some of the public
information now available could be disinformation intended to disguise
intelligence sources and methods. Successful operations can often compromise
human sources and new intelligence technologies that have taken years to
develop. Because of this, it is not uncommon for intelligence services to try to
create a wilderness of mirrors to protect sources and methods. But using
open-source reporting and human intelligence from STRATFOR’s own sources, we can
assemble enough information to draw some conclusions about this complex
intelligence effort and raise some key questions.
The Challenge
Following the 9/11 attacks, finding and killing bin Laden became the primary
mission of the U.S. intelligence community, particularly the CIA. This mission
was clearly laid out in a presidential “finding,” or directive, signed on Sept.
17, 2001, by then-U.S. President George W. Bush. By 2005 it became clear to STRATFOR that bin Laden was
deep inside Pakistan. Although the Pakistani government was ostensibly a
U.S. ally, it was known that there were elements within it sympathetic to al
Qaeda and bin Laden. In order to find bin Laden, U.S. intelligence would have to
work with — and against — Pakistani intelligence services.
Finding bin Laden in a hostile intelligence environment while friends and
sympathizers were protecting him represented a monumental intelligence challenge
for the United States. With bin Laden and his confederates extremely conscious
of U.S technical intelligence abilities, the search quickly became a
human-intelligence challenge. While STRATFOR believes bin Laden had become tactically irrelevant since 9/11, he remained
symbolically important and a focal point for the U.S. intelligence effort. And
while it appears that the United States has improved its intelligence
capabilities and passed an important test, much remains undone. Today, the
public information surrounding the case illuminates the capabilities that will
be used to find other high-value targets as the U.S. effort
continues.
The official story on the intelligence that led to bin Laden’s Abbottabad
compound has been widely reported, leaked from current and former U.S.
officials. It focuses on a man with the cover name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, a
Pakistani Pashtun born in Kuwait who became bin Laden’s most trusted courier.
With fluency in Pashto and Arabic, according to media reports, al-Kuwaiti would
be invaluable to al Qaeda, and in order to purchase bin Laden’s property and run
errands he would also need to be fluent in Urdu. His position as bin Laden’s
most trusted courier made him a key link in disrupting the organization. While
this man supposedly led the United States to bin Laden, it took a decade of
revamping U.S. intelligence capabilities and a great deal of hard work (and
maybe even a lucky break) to actually find him.
The first step for U.S. intelligence services after Bush’s directive was
focusing their efforts on bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership. Intelligence
collection against al Qaeda was under way before 9/11, but after the attacks it
became the No. 1 priority. Due to a lack of human intelligence in the region and
allies for an invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA revived connections with
anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan and with Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) directorate in order to oust the Taliban government and
accrue intelligence for use in disrupting al Qaeda. The connections were built
in the 1980s as the CIA famously operated through the ISI to fund militant
groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet military. Most of these links were
lost when the Soviets withdrew from the Southwest Asian state and the CIA
nominally declared victory. Pakistan, left with Afghanistan and these militant
groups, developed a working relationship with the Taliban and others for its own
interests. A coterie of ISI officers was embedded with different militant
groups, and some of them became jihadist sympathizers.
U.S. intelligence budgets were severely cut in the 1990s in light of the
“peace dividend” following the fall of the Soviet Union, as some U.S. leaders
argued there was no one left to fight. Intelligence collection was a dirty,
ambiguous and dangerous game that U.S. politicians were not prepared to stomach.
John Deutch, the director of the CIA from 1995 to 1996, gutted the CIA’s sources
on what was known as the “Torricelli Principle” (named after then-Rep. Robert
Torricelli), which called for the removal of any unsavory characters from the
payroll. This meant losing sources in the exact kind of organizations U.S.
intelligence would want to infiltrate, including militants in Southwest Asia.
The CIA began to revive its contacts in the region after the 1998 U.S.
Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While the U.S.
intelligence community was looking for bin Laden at this time, he was not a high
priority, and U.S. human-intelligence capabilities in the region were limited.
The United States has always had trouble with human intelligence — having people
sitting at computers is less of a security risk than having daring undercover
operatives running around in the field — and by the end of the 1990s it was
relying on technological platforms for intelligence more than ever.
The United States was in this state on Sept. 12, 2001, when it began to ramp
up its intelligence operations, and al Qaeda was aware of this. Bin Laden knew
that if he could stay away from electronic communications, and generally out of
sight, he would be much harder to track. After invading Afghanistan and working
with the ISI in Pakistan, the United States had a large number of detainees who
it hoped would have information to breach bin Laden’s operational security. From
some mix of detainees caught in operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan
(particularly with the help of the ISI), including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Farj al-Libi, came information leading to an
important bin Laden courier known by various names, including Abu Ahmed
al-Kuwaiti. (His actual identity is still unconfirmed, though his real name may
be Sheikh Abu Ahmed.)
The efficacy of enhanced interrogation and torture
techniques is constantly debated — they may have helped clarify or obfuscate
the courier’s identity (some reports say Mohammed tried to lead investigators
away from him). What is clear is that U.S. intelligence lacked both a
sophisticated and nuanced understanding of al Qaeda and, most important, human
sources with access to that information. With the United States not knowing what
al Qaeda was capable of, the fear of a follow-on attack to 9/11 loomed
large.
Anonymous U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters the breakthrough came when
a man named Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq in 2004 by Kurdish forces and
turned over to the United States. Little is known about Ghul’s identity except
that he is believed to have worked with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and to have given
interrogators information about a man named “al-Kuwaiti” who was a courier
between al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda operational commanders in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Ghul was then given over to the Pakistani security services; he is
believed to have been released in 2007 and to now be fighting somewhere in the
region.
While U.S. intelligence services got confirmation of al-Kuwaiti’s role from
al-Libi, they could not find the courier. It is unknown if they gave any of this
information to the Pakistanis or asked for their help. According to leaks from
U.S. officials to AP, the Pakistanis provided the National Security Agency
(NSA), the main U.S. communications interception agency, with information that
allowed it to monitor a SIM card from a cellphone that had frequently called
Saudi Arabia. In 2010, the NSA intercepted a call made by al-Kuwaiti and began
tracking him in Pakistan. Another U.S. official told CNN that the operational
security exercised by al-Kuwaiti and his brother made them difficult to trail,
but “an elaborate surveillance effort” was organized to track them to the
Abbottabad compound.
From then on, the NSA monitored all of the cellphones used by the couriers
and their family members, though they were often turned off and had batteries
removed when the phones’ users went to the Abbottabad compound or to other
important meetings. The compound was monitored by satellites and RQ-170
Sentinels, stealth versions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were
reportedly flown over the compound. According to The Wall Street Journal, the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) even built a replica of the
compound for CIA Director Leon Panetta and other officials. The NGA is the
premier U.S. satellite observation agency, which could have watched the
goings-on at the compound and even spotted bin Laden, though it would have been
difficult to confirm his identity.
Some of these leaks could be disingenuous in order to lead the public and
adversary intelligence agencies away from highly classified sources and methods.
But they do reflect long-believed assessments of the U.S. intelligence community
regarding its advanced capability in technology-based intelligence gathering as
well as the challenges it faces in human-intelligence collection.
The Utility of Liaison Relationships
Historically, U.S. intelligence officers have been white males, though the
CIA has more recently begun hiring more minorities, including those from various
ethnic and linguistic groups important to its mission (or at least those who can
pass the polygraph and full-field background investigation, a substantial
barrier). Even when intelligence officers look the part in the countries in
which they operate and have a native understanding of the cultures and
languages, they need sources within the organizations they are trying to
penetrate. It is these sources, recruited by intelligence officers and without
official or secret status, who are the “agents” providing the information needed
back at headquarters. The less an intelligence officer appears like a local the
more difficult it is to meet with and develop these agents, which has led the
United States to frequently depend on liaison services — local intelligence
entities — to collect information.
Many intelligence services around the world were established with American
support or funding for just this purpose. The most dependent liaison services
essentially function as sources, acquiring information at the local CIA
station’s request. They are often made up of long-serving officers in the local
country’s military, police or intelligence services, with a nuanced
understanding of local issues and the ability to maintain a network of sources.
With independent intelligence services, such as Israel’s Mossad, there has been
roughly an equal exchange of intelligence, where Israeli sources may recruit a
human source valuable to the United States and the CIA may have satellite
imagery or communications intercepts valuable to the Israelis.
Of course, this is not a simple game. It involves sophisticated players
trying to collect intelligence while deceiving one another about their
intentions and plans — and many times trying to muddy the water a little to hide
the identity of their sources from the liaison service. Even the closest
intelligence relationships, such as that between the CIA and the British Secret
Intelligence Service, have been disrupted by moles like Kim Philby, a longtime Soviet plant who handled the
liaison work between the two agencies.
Since most U.S. intelligence officers serve on rotations of only one to three
years — out of concern they will “go native” or to allow them to return to the
comfort of home — it becomes even more challenging to develop long-term
human-intelligence sources. While intelligence officers will pass their sources
off to their replacements, the liaison service becomes even more valuable in
being able to sustain source relationships, which can take years to build.
Liaison relationships, then, become a way to efficiently use and extend U.S.
intelligence resources, which, unlike such services in most countries, have
global requirements. The United States may be the world’s superpower, but it is
impossible for it to maintain sources everywhere.
Liaison and Unilateral Operations in the Hunt for Bin Laden
In recent years, U.S. intelligence has worked with Pakistan’s ISI most
notably in raids throughout Pakistan against senior al Qaeda operatives like Abu
Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Farj al-Libi. We
can also presume that much of the information used by the United States for UAV
strikes comes through sources in Pakistani intelligence as well as those on the
Afghan side of the border. Another example of such cooperation, also to find bin
Laden, is the CIA’s work with the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, an
effort that went awry in the Khost suicide attack. Such is the risk with liaison
relationships — to what extent can one intelligence officer trust another’s
sources and motives? Nevertheless, these liaison networks were the best the
United States had available, and huge amounts of resources were put into
developing intelligence through them in looking for major jihadists, including
bin Laden.
The United States is particularly concerned about Pakistan’s intelligence
services and the possibility that some of their officers could be compromised
by, or at least sympathetic to, jihadists. Given the relationships with
jihadists maintained by former ISI officers such as Khalid Khawaja and Sultan
Amir Tarar (known as Colonel Imam), who were both held hostage and killed by
Pakistani militants, and most famously former ISI Director Hamid Gul, there is
cause for concern. These three are the most famous former ISI officers with
links to jihadists, but because they were (or are) long retired from the ISI and
their notoriety makes them easy to track to jihadists, they have little
influence on either group. But the reality is that there are current ISI and
military officers sympathizing or working with important jihadist groups.
Indeed, it was liaison work by the CIA and Saudi Arabia that helped develop
strong connections with Arab and Afghan militants, some of whom would go on to
become members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. The ISI was responsible for
distributing U.S.- and Saudi-supplied weapons to various Afghan militant groups
to fight the Russians in the 1980s, and it controlled contact with these groups.
If some of those contacts remain, jihadists could be using members of the ISI
rather than the other way around.
Due to concerns like these, according to official statements and leaked
information, U.S. intelligence officers never told their Pakistani liaison
counterparts about the forthcoming bin Laden raid. It appears the CIA developed
a unilateral capability to operate within Pakistan, demonstrated by the Raymond Davis shooting in January as well as the
bin Laden raid. Davis was a contractor providing security for U.S. intelligence
officers in Pakistan when he killed two reportedly armed men in Lahore, and his
case brought the CIA-ISI conflict out in the open. Requests by
Pakistani officials to remove more than 300 similar individuals from the country
show that there are a large number of U.S. intelligence operatives in Pakistan.
Other aspects of this unilateral U.S. effort were the tracking of bin Laden,
further confirmation of his identity and the safe house the CIA maintained in
Abbottabad for months to monitor the compound.
The CIA and the ISI
Even with the liaison relationships in Pakistan, which involved meetings
between the CIA station chief in Islamabad and senior members of the ISI, the
CIA ran unilateral operations on the ground. Liaison services cannot be used to
recruit sources within the host government; this must be done unilaterally. This
is where direct competition between intelligence services comes into play. In
Pakistan, this competition may involve different organizations such as
Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau or Federal Investigation Agency, both of which
have counterintelligence functions, or separate departments within the ISI,
where one department is assigned to liaison while others handle
counterintelligence or work with militant groups. Counterintelligence officers
may want to disrupt intelligence operations that involve collecting information
on the host-country military, or they may simply want to monitor the foreign
intelligence service’s efforts to recruit jihadists. They can also feed
disinformation to the operatives. This competition is known to all players and
is not out of the ordinary.
But the U.S. intelligence community is wondering if this ordinary competition
was taken to another level — if the ISI, or elements of it, were actually
protecting bin Laden. The people helping bin Laden and other al Qaeda operatives
and contacts in Abbottabad were the same people the CIA was
competing against. Were they simply jihadists or a more resourceful and capable
state intelligence agency? If the ISI as an institution knew about bin Laden’s
location, it would mean it outwitted the CIA for nearly a decade in hiding his
whereabouts. It would also mean that no ISI officers who knew his location were
turned by U.S. intelligence, that no communications were intercepted and that no
leaks reached the media.
On the other hand, if someone within the ISI was protecting bin Laden and
keeping it from the rest of the organization, it would mean the ISI was beaten
internally and the CIA eventually caught up by developing its own sources and
was able to find bin Laden on its own. As we point out above, the official story
on the bin Laden intelligence effort may be disinformation to protect sources
and methods. Still, this seems to be a more plausible scenario. American and
Pakistani sources have told STRATFOR that there are likely jihadist sympathizers
within the ISI who helped bin Laden or his supporters. Given that Pakistan is
fighting its own war with al Qaeda-allied groups like Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan,
the country’s leadership in Islamabad has no interest in protecting them.
Furthermore, finding an individual anywhere, especially in a foreign country
with multiple insurgencies under way, is an extremely difficult intelligence challenge.
Assuming the official story is mostly true, the bin Laden raid demonstrates
that U.S. intelligence has come full circle since the end of the Cold War. It
was able to successfully collect and analyze intelligence of all types and
develop and deploy on-the-ground capabilities it had been lacking to find an
individual who was hiding and probably protected. It was able to quickly work
with special operations forces under CIA command to carry out an elaborate
operation to capture or kill him, a capability honed by the U.S. Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) in the development of its own capture-and-kill capabilities in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The CIA is responsible for missions in Pakistan, where, like
the JSOC, it has demonstrated an efficient and devastating capability to task
UAV strikes and conduct cross-border raids. The bin Laden raid was the public
proof of concept that the United States could collect intelligence and reach far
into hostile territory to capture or kill its targets.
It is unclear exactly how the U.S. intelligence community has been able to
develop these capabilities, beyond the huge post-9/11 influx of money and
personnel (simply throwing resources at a problem is never a complete solution).
The United States faced Sept. 11, 2001, without strategic warning of the attacks
inspired by bin Laden, and then it faced a tactical threat it was unprepared to
fight. Whatever the new and improved human-intelligence capabilities may be,
they are no doubt some function of the experience gained by operatives in a
concerted, global campaign against jihadists. Human intelligence is probably
still the biggest U.S. weakness, but given the evidence of unilateral operations
in Pakistan, it is not the weakness it used to be.
The Intelligence Battle Between the U.S. and Pakistan
The competition
and cooperation among various intelligence agencies did not end with the
death of Osama bin Laden. Publicity surrounding the operation has led to calls
in Pakistan to eject any and all American interests in the country. In the past
few years, Pakistan has made it difficult for many Americans to get visas,
especially those with official status that may be cover for intelligence
operations. Raymond Davis was one of these people. Involved in protecting
intelligence officers who were conducting human-intelligence missions, he would
have been tasked not only with protecting them from physical threats from
jihadists but also with helping ensure they were not under the surveillance of a
hostile intelligence agency.
Pakistan has only ratcheted up these barriers since the bin Laden raid. The
Interior Ministry announced May 19 that it would ban travel by foreign diplomats
to cities other than those where they are stationed without permission from
Pakistani authorities. The News, a Pakistani daily, reported May 20 that
Interior Minister Rehman Malik chaired a meeting with provincial authorities on
regulating travel by foreigners, approving their entry into the country and
monitoring unregistered mobile phones. While some of these efforts are intended
to deal with jihadists disguised within large groups of Afghan nationals, they
also place barriers on foreign intelligence officers in the country. While
non-official cover is becoming more common for CIA officers overseas, many are
still traveling on various diplomatic documents and thus would require these
approvals. The presence of intelligence officers on the ground for the bin Laden
raid shows there are workarounds for such barriers that will be used when the
mission is important enough. In fact, according to STRATFOR sources, the CIA has
for years been operating in Pakistan under what are known as “Moscow rules” —
the strictest tradecraft for operating behind enemy lines — with clandestine
units developing human sources and searching for al Qaeda and other militant
leaders.
And this dynamic will only continue. Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman
Bashir told The Wall Street Journal on May 6 that another operation like the bin
Laden raid would have “terrible consequences,” while U.S. President Barack Obama
told BBC on May 22 that he would authorize similar strikes in the future if they
were called for. Pakistan, as any sovereign country would, is trying to protect
its territory, while the United States will continue to search for high-value
targets who are hiding there. The bin Laden operation only brought this
clandestine competition to the public eye.
Bin Laden is dead, but many other individuals on the U.S. high-value target
list remain at large. With the bold execution and ultimate success of the
Abbottabad raid now public, the overarching American operational concept for
hunting high-value targets has been demonstrated and the immense resources that
were focused on bin Laden are now freed up. While the United States still faces
intelligence challenges, those most wanted by the Americans can no longer take
comfort in the fact that bin Laden is eluding his hunters or that the Americans
are expending any more of their effort looking for him.
The Bin Laden Operation: Tapping Human Intelligence
is republished with permission of STRATFOR