(gentle suspenseful music)
Just four days
before the 2004 US presidential election,
a newly published tape appears on the news.
The election between George Bush and John Kerry
was dominated by foreign policy decisions
in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
- Al-Qaeda's key members and associates have been brought--
- Nation to destroy, capture, kill
Osama bin Laden and all of the terrorists.
- [Neo] This tape, published by "Al Jazeera,"
now shows a recovered Osama bin Laden
claiming responsibility for the attacks
much more directly than before.
The staging of this recording,
in which bin Laden tries to appear as some legitimate figure
directly addressing the nation that he attacked,
is a painful reminder that the most wanted man on the planet
must be feeling somewhat safe wherever he may be.
(suspenseful music)
(wind blowing)
At the very same time, at the CIA headquarters in Virginia,
where a special unit was tasked with finding bin Laden,
pretty much every lead had gone cold at this point,
a situation that was even more frustrating,
considering that almost three years ago,
they believed they were close to catching him.
(pensive music)
By the end of the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan,
al-Qaeda fighters had been pushed
into the eastern part of the country.
Here they barricaded themselves in the caves of Tora Bora,
and American intelligence agencies
suspected bin Laden to be amongst them.
Supported by the Americans,
local Afghan tribes fought through the terrain
and heavy airstrikes were carried out,
but by the time the battle was won,
bin Laden had already fled.
After the fighting ended, only about 20 people were arrested
and the CIA was left empty-handed,
having missed what may have been a unique opportunity
to capture al-Qaeda's leader.
(pensive music)
But at least one of the people arrested here
would eventually open a lead for investigators to follow.
(gentle violin music)
Prior to his capture,
Mohammed al-Qahtani was unknown to the investigators.
He himself denied any connection to al-Qaeda
and said that he was in Afghanistan
to pursue his interest in falconry.
But when investigators took his fingerprints,
they found a match in their system.
(plane engine roaring)
They found out that just a few weeks
before the September 11 attacks,
he had tried to enter the United States.
Carrying $2,800 in cash with him
and traveling on a one-way ticket,
the customs agent became suspicious of al-Qahtani
and denied him entry to the country,
fearing he might might be trying to illegally immigrate.
(gentle violin music)
The investigators also knew that on the very same day,
a call was placed from Orlando Airport
to an al-Qaeda telephone number in the United Arab Emirates.
This number had been monitored, and the fact that Qahtani
was at the airport at the same time,
made investigators scramble
to establish some sort of connection between these events.
(pensive music)
FBI agents worked their way
through piles of airport surveillance footage,
looking for more leads, and eventually they were successful.
They were able to identify a car
that was, at the time, rented by Mohamed Atta.
(intense violin music)
Atta was the ringleader of the September 11 attacks
and piloted American Airlines Flight 11
that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
It was concluded that Atta was waiting at the airport
to pick up Qahtani.
It is widely believed that Qahtani was intended
as one of the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93,
which is the flight that failed
to reach the attacker's intended destination
because it crashed in Pennsylvania
while the passengers were attempting to regain control.
With that knowledge, Qahtani was interrogated,
and he was one of several al-Qaeda captives
that in the coming months and years,
made it possible for investigators
to get a better picture of the group's inner workings.
(suspenseful music)
Abu Zubaydah, a logistician for the group,
was arrested in March, 2002, and offered the CIA information
that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
who was al-Qaeda's operational commander,
had planned the attacks on America.
One year later, he also was arrested.
And Qahtani revealed that in July, 2001,
in preparation for the attacks,
Khalid Sheik Mohammed introduced him
to a person previously unknown to the CIA,
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti,
who trained Qahtani in operational security.
(suspenseful music)
All this helped investigators
to understand al Qaeda's structure better,
with less trained operatives,
a command and planning layer, and bin Laden as the leader,
but they were still clueless as to bin Laden's whereabouts.
The CIA was mapping relationships
to understand who was in close contact with him
and how he communicated from his hiding place.
The private network of bin Laden, his family members,
were also looked at,
however, there was no contact between bin Laden
and those family members of him that could be located.
What the CIA knew
was that bin Laden continued to send messages though.
In the following years, new audio tapes appeared
and it was known that he was communicating
with members of leadership within al-Qaeda.
The strategy of the CIA, therefore,
was to look for the courier network,
people that transport information.
(intense violin music)
(woman gasping)
- Big and tasty.
- [Announcer] One shot!
- War with Iran.
- I'm running for governor.
(woman laughs)
- Exploded in the sky.
- Our congratulations on.
- An historic victory.
- [Neo] In mid-January 2004,
Kurdish security forces arrested a man named Hassan Ghul.
He was carrying a letter that was addressed to bin Laden.
Ghul was handed over to the Americans,
who interrogated him and received crucial information
indicating that a key person to finding bin Laden
had already been on the agency's radar.
Hassan Ghul claimed that it is Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti
who operates as bin Laden's personal courier.
As the focus of the investigation shifts to Kuwaiti,
investigators receive conflicting information
about his role within al-Qaeda.
While Hasan Ghul describes a larger role,
and that Kuwaiti was familiar
with both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
and with his successor Abu Faraj al-Libbi,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, on the other hand,
denies a major role of Kuwaiti,
and claims that this person has long since retired
and is inactive.
(suspenseful music)
In May, 2005, Abu Faraj al-Libbi himself
was also arrested in Pakistan,
and he, too, vehemently denied a larger role of Kuwaiti.
(suspenseful violin music)
Investigators were also questioning a guide
that goes by the name of Hambali, the former leader
of al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate group.
He claimed that Kuwaiti did play a role,
as he was the one managing a safe house in Karachi
around the time the Taliban fled from Afghanistan.
If anything, the many contradicting statements
about the role of Kuwaiti made him all the more interesting.
The problem was that other than his name,
not much was known about him,
and even the name itself is not uniquely identifiable
as it is not his real name, but an alias that translates
as the Father of Ahmed from Kuwait.
(somber music)
While some important information
was obtained for the interrogation of prisoners,
the techniques used were highly controversial.
Many of the prisoners were subjected
to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
That means abusive treatment including torture,
such as in the form of water boarding.
A 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report
examining the individual interrogations
concluded that these techniques were ineffective
and did not help to obtain information about bin Laden.
Apart from that, there is the question
of whether the display of the CIA's actions,
seemingly freed from the rule of law,
doesn't itself damage the national security of the country.
It is a discourse
that's bigger than the scope of this video,
but with investigators stuck yet again,
the next pieces of information
will not come from their own work.
(intense violin music)
- And other sides.
- Peace and stability.
- [Announcer] Blockbuster Total Access and Netflix.
Essentially, they work the same way.
(people cheering)
- [Reporter] The latest cyber drug of choice
is called Twitter.
- The war that should have never been waged.
- [Steve] Rolling out the iPhone.
- [Neo] In 2007, the CIA
received the information they were looking for:
the true identity of the Kuwaiti.
It does not come from their own research,
but from a foreign intelligence service, which is not known.
The information reveals the true name of the Kuwaiti
to be Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed,
a Pakistani whose family had only moved to Kuwait.
But while they have waited two years to get the name,
it will take further years
until they are able to locate him.
(somber piano music)
- President elect.
- For victory!
(dramatic music)
- [Reporter] For bankruptcy.
♪ Love game intuition ♪
(people cheering)
- I'm gonna let you finish.
- Michael Jackson has died.
- [Reporter] The rescue effort begins.
- [Reporter] This guy is great, as good as we've seen.
(people cheering)
(dramatic violin music)
- [Neo] In June, 2010, the Kuwaiti and his brother
changed the way they communicate with their cell phones,
a fact that made it possible
to determine the geolocation of the calls placed.
The NSA had received telephone numbers
suspected of being connected to Kuwaiti
from a third country, which were now intercepted.
Amidst the countless conversations monitored,
one man stood out because he fit the profile of Kuwaiti.
He spoke a mix of Arabic and Pashto,
the language spoken in northwestern Pakistan,
and in a conversation with a friend in the Persian Gulf,
the man dodged the question of his whereabouts,
cryptically replying
that he is with the people he was with before.
In addition, the investigators recognized
that this individual goes to great lengths
to prevent being tracked.
His cell phone was switched off for most of the time
and it seems that he only put the battery in it
when he was in the area around the city of Peshawar.
As it became increasingly certain that this is Kuwaiti,
efforts began to follow him on the ground.
In August, 2010, a Pakistani CIA agent
managed to identify him in his car in Peshawar.
From there, he was secretly followed on his way home.
(intense dramatic music)
(gentle suspenseful music)
The large house surprised investigators.
The agents had assumed
that now that Kuwaiti had been identified,
they would be monitoring him
until he approached bin Laden's hideout.
(low suspenseful music)
But when you look at the massive compound
in which Kuwaiti lives,
investigators thought that they might already be there,
that Kuwaiti may be living under the same roof as bin Laden.
(crickets chirping) (suspenseful music)
Even though Washington
wasn't entirely sure about it at the time,
bin Laden was located,
and a man hunt that has had top priority
since the September 11 attacks, comes to its final stage.
The task now was no longer with the intelligence agents,
but with a team of special units
who knew very little about what to expect
when raiding this compound.
(helicopter whirring) (suspenseful music)
On May 1st, 2011 at 11:00 PM local time,
two Black Hawk helicopters
equipped with secret stealth technology,
take off from Jalalabad Air Field
and head towards bin Laden's compound.
The mission is complicated
by the fact that the United States government
had decided not to inform Pakistan of the operation,
which means the Navy Seals had to avoid getting noticed,
which seems especially challenging
considering that bin Laden's complex
is located right next to a Pakistani military academy.
(pensive music)
The story of how this raid unfolded is truly fascinating,
which is why I have produced
another full length video about this operation,
creating detailed models of the mission's plan
and mapping out how it played out during that night.
But unfortunately, due to the violent nature of this topic,
if I uploaded this video to YouTube,
it would certainly get demonetized and age-restricted.
(intense violin music)
Luckily, though, I was still able to make the video,
thanks to the power of Nebula,
where you can watch it right now.
(intense violin music)
With the mission not going to plan,
a live video feed is streamed to the White House
where the president and his top security advisors
are following the operation.
This is just one of tons of exclusive videos
only available on Nebula.
I've also created a video
about the construction of the Twin Towers,
and another one telling the story
of Flight MH17 that was shot down over Ukraine,
and you also get access
to all the other amazing stuff on Nebula.
Because what's truly special about Nebula
is that it is a creator-owned platform,
built by me and other YouTubers and podcasters,
and because it's a subscription service,
we get to work on larger, higher budget productions
than we ever could on YouTube.
- Players, welcome to the show.
- [Mustard] The most sophisticated flying machine.
- [RealLifeLore] The Bush administration
decided to focus on attacking Afghanistan.
- Oh boy.
- [Neo] If you sign up using my link on screen right now,
you will get a $10 discount a year,
which means it will cost you only $3.33 each month.
That way you will support the ambitious project
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Thank you so much for watching.