The Exile
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19. Author interview with General Jehangir Karamat, former chief of army staff (COAS), Lahore, February 2015. Also discussed during interviews with General Javed Alam Khan; General Ehsan ul-Haq, who described his predecessor, Islamabad, June 2014; General Pervez Musharraf, Karachi, February 2015; General Ali Jan Aurakzai, former chief of Pakistan Army Western Command, Rawalpindi, June 2014; General Ziauddin Butt, predecessor to General Mahmud Ahmed, Lahore, February 2015; General Masood Aslam, Islamabad, February 2015; and General Asad Durrani, Rawalpindi, June 2014.
20. Author telephone interview with Robert Grenier, March 2015.
21. Author interview with General Javed Alam Khan.
22. This vignette was described to the authors by Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, who was present, and by Omar bin Laden in Growing Up bin Laden.
23. Author interview with General Ziauddin Butt.
24. Author interview with General Ziauddin Butt and with Robert Grenier.
25. John Sifton, “A Brief History of Drones,” Nation, February 7, 2012.
26. Author interview with General Musharraf and with Huthaifa Azzam, son of Abdullah Azzam, Jordan, December 2016. Ramzi Yousef had been staying with Huthaifa when he was caught.
27. Ibid.
28. S-Wing was established during the Soviet war when the ISI and CIA worked together to train mujahideen groups to fight in Afghanistan. It has undergone various incarnations but is well known to be practically independent of and ungovernable by the ISI leadership. Former ISI director general Hamid Gul, who helped create S-Wing, retained a significant influence over it until his death in 2015. Multiple author interviews with General Gul, Rawalpindi, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
29. Author interview with General Musharraf.
30. This assessment is backed by multiple interviewees including Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, Nawaz Sharif, the late Benazir Bhutto, numerous senior U.S. officials including Bruce Riedel, and senior Pakistan Army officers formerly close to generals Pasha and Kayani who wish to remain anonymous.
31. “Gitmo Files: Ramzi bin al Shibh,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/10013; also see the files of others present, including Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/10011; Ammar al-Balochi, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/10018; and Walid Muhammad Salih bin Roshayed bin Attash, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/10014.
32. KSM quote from Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know.
33. Author interviews with Mahfouz and with Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
34. Author interviews with Huthaifa Azzam and with Samira Abdullah, widow of Abdullah Azzam, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
35. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
36. Abu Zubaydah’s diaries, dated from 1990 to 2002 and recovered in the U.S. and Pakistani raid that captured Zubaydah on March 28, 2002. Translated by the U.S. government and released to Al Jazeera by a former U.S. intelligence official. Al Jazeera America, “Original Documents: The Abu Zubaydah Diaries,” December 3, 2013. america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2013/11/original-documentstheabuzubaydahdiaries.html.
37. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
38. Abdullah Tabarak was sent to fetch Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who recounted this story and many others to his close friend Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed while both were held in detention in Iran. Author interviews with Mahfouz; also with Stanley Cohen, lawyer for Abu Ghaith, New York, October 2014.
39. Author interview with Stanley Cohen; also Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s statement to the FBI, March 2013, author copy.
40. Ibid. Also author interviews with Mahfouz, Nouakchott, 2014 and 2015.
41. Abu Ghaith FBI statement and recollections shared with Mahfouz, per author interviews with Mahfouz.
42. This conversation was described by Ahmad Zaidan, who asked a Pakistani general about Tomahawks before going to Mohammed bin Laden’s wedding; author interview.
43. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
44. This incident, which took place in Kandahar, was described by Omar bin Laden in Growing Up Bin Laden; also in author interviews with family members.
45. Author interviews with Samira Abdullah, widow of Abdullah Azzam and close friend of Khairiah and Seham bin Laden, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
46. Ibid.
47. They had been forced to leave when the Sudanese president came under pressure to hand over Osama. Some 250 Al Qaeda fighters had left, too.
48. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
49. This was coordinated by the Jalalabad-based Taliban commander Awal Gul.
50. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
51. Carmen bin Laden, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia.
52. The cleric was Rashad Mohammed Saeed. Tony Finn, “Osama Bin Laden Said: ‘Find Me a Wife,’ ” Guardian, May 11, 2011. Author interview with Saeed, Ibb, Yemen, 2013, and Osama’s former bodyguard Abu Jandal, Sana’a, Yemen, 2013. Abu Jandal also published a book under his real name, Nasser al-Bahri, with Georges Malbrunot, Guarding Bin Laden: My Life in al-Qaeda, trans. Susan de Muth (London: Thin Man Press, 2013). More details about the heritage of Osama’s father can be found in Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (New York: Penguin, 2008).
53. Amal’s father is called Ahmed Abdul-Fattah al-Sadeh; author interviews with al-Sadeh family members in Islamabad, 2012; Sana’a, 2013; and Saudi Arabia, 2014.
54. “Bin Laden’s Wife: ‘I’ll Stand with You,’ ” Asharq al-Awsat, May 12, 2011.
55. Nasser al-Bahri, Guarding Bin Laden.
56. She arrived in Pakistan on July 17, 2000. Details from confidential statement of inspector general of police, Islamabad, 3/19/2012, report of Joint Investigation Team, author copy.
57. Nasser al-Bahri, Guarding Bin Laden.
58. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Allen Lane, 2006).
59. Confidential statement of inspector general of police, Islamabad, 3/19/2012, report of Joint Investigation Team, author copy.
60. Author interviews with bin Laden family members and relatives of Amal al-Sadeh, Islamabad, Sana’a, Ibb, and Jeddah, 2012–2014.
61. The brother-in-law was Salim Hamdan. For full details of their relationship and time in American detention see Laura Poitras’s 2010 documentary The Oath (New York: Zeitgeist Films).
62. He was arrested in February 2001.
63. Interviews with al-Sadeh family members in Yemen.
64. Author interview with Ahmed Abdul-Fattah al-Sadeh.
65. Author interview with General Musharraf.
66. Ibid.
67. Author interviews with retired Director General of ISI General Hamid Gul, Rawalpindi, 2014–2015.
68. Author interviews with General Musharraf and Robert Grenier.
69. Author interviews with General Javed Alam Khan and Robert Grenier; also Robert Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).
70. This account and that of the next meeting were provided to the authors by Mahfouz.
71. Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar.
72. U.S. Department of State, “President Bush Commemorates Foreign Policy Achievements and Presents Medal of Freedom to Ambassador Ryan Crocker,” georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090115.html.
73. Author telephone interview with Ryan Crocker, December 2014. More details can be found in Robin Wright, “The Adversary,”
New Yorker, May 26, 2014.
74. Dexter Filkins, “The Shadow Commander,” New Yorker, September 30, 2013.
75. Author interview with Ryan Crocker.
76. This quote comes from author interviews with Mahfouz, who said this was what Osama liked to say when planning attacks.
CHAPTER TWO
1. Abu Musab al-Suri, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance, published on jihadist websites in December 2004, news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/about-us/21-jihad/21-suri-a-mili.
2. Tora Bora was reached via a single dirt road starting at the village of Agam and running up through the Melawa Valley. Osama’s father’s company was the Saudi-based Binladin Group. Accounts of his building Tora Bora come from multiple sources, including author interviews with Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, Nouakchott, December 2014, January and June 2015; bin Laden family members in Islamabad, Jeddah, and Doha, 2012–2015; and General Javed Alam Khan, Rawalpindi, May 2015; also Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Allen Lane, 2006); Robert Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015); and Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (New York: Penguin, 2008).
3. This story was recounted by fighters loyal to Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who ran the main mujahideen camp at Jaji. Osama also recounted it later many times to Mahfouz, who repeated it in interviews with the authors. It is also told by Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower.
4. Osama states this sentiment in many letters, including an undated letter to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Documents recovered in the 2011 raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad translated, declassified, and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [hereafter ODNI] in May 2015, March 2016, and January 2017. This letter from the May 2015 release.
5. Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden (New York: St. Martin’s, 2009).
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Paul Cruickshank and Mohanad Hage Ali, “Abu Musab Al Suri: Architect of the New Al Qaeda,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 30, no. 1 (2007): 1–14; “Abu Musab al-Suri’s Military Theory of Jihad,” SITE Intelligence Group, translated and published 2011, news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/about-us/21-jihad/21-suri-a-mili.
9. Abu Musab al-Suri, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance, published on jihadist websites in December 2004, news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/about-us/21-jihad/21-suri-a-mili.
10. According to Azzam’s son Huthaifa, author interviews, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
11. Abu Musab al-Suri, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance.
12. In Syria as a student leader, al-Suri had railed against the Hafez al-Assad regime. During the 1980s he had run two training camps for Osama in Afghanistan but complained of Al Qaeda’s disorganization. “People come to us with empty heads and leave us with empty heads,” he said in 2003. More recently, he had been based in Europe, first in Spain—where he married a Christian woman, Elena Moreno, with whom he had four children—and then in London, where he worked for Abu Qatada, the famous Palestinian jihad preacher who was characterized as Al Qaeda’s go-to man in Europe. Al-Suri wrote for Qatada’s jihadi magazine and think tank, Al Ansar. When the British authorities began pursuing al-Suri as a suspect in the 1995 Paris Metro bombings, he returned to Afghanistan. He arrived in Tora Bora in November 1996.
13. Abu Musab al-Suri, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance. Also see “Rare Photos of Osama Bin Laden while Hiding in Tora Bora,” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/world/rare-photos-show-osama-bin-laden-while-in-hiding/2015/03/14/dd8db67a-c9c2-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_gallery. These pictures were taken by Abdel Bari Atwan, per author interview with Atwan, London, 2015.
14. Multiple author interviews with Mahfouz.
15. Undated copy of Osama bin Laden’s will. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in March 2016.
16. Multiple author interviews with Mahfouz.
17. This allegation was made by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who is related to Mahfouz by marriage and who traveled with him to Afghanistan in 1991. See his file at “Gitmo Files: Mohamedou Ould Slahi,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/760; and Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Larry Siems, Guantánamo Diary (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). Other Guantánamo detainees also claimed Mahfouz tried to involve them in the operation. Author interviews with Larry Siems, Brooklyn, 2014–2015.
18. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
19. Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer, The Hunt for KSM (New York: Little, Brown, 2012).
20. One of those he worked for was Abdul Sayyaf, the victor at Jaji in 1984.
21. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
22. World Islamic Front statement, “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” February 23, 1998, accessed on fas.org, fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm.
23. Author interviews with Huthaifa Azzam, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
24. This man was the future courier and Osama’s companion in Abbottabad.
25. Some of the hijackers also trained at the new Al Farouk camp; see note 30.
26. Author interviews with Brigadier (Ret.) Asad Munir, ISI station chief Peshawar (1999–2003), Islamabad, June 2014.
27. Omar Nasiri, Inside the Jihad (London: Basic Books, 2006), describes Qatada’s links to Zubaydah. Also author interviews with Abu Qatada, Amman, November 2014 and September 2016.
28. Author interviews with bin Laden family members; also see Guy Lawson, “Osama’s Prodigal Son: The Dark, Twisted Journey of Omar bin Laden,” Rolling Stone, January 20, 2010.
29. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
30. This shura took place at the new Al Farouk camp located in Helmand Province after the old site near Khost had been destroyed in 1998 by cruise missiles.
31. This shura took place at a new location called Compound Six, situated on the banks of a reservoir northeast of Kandahar. Osama had just moved in with his family, having decided that Tarnak Qila was overexposed.
32. He had written Osama a stern seven-page letter after the African embassy bombings explaining why those attacks had been wrong.
33. Al-Suri quotes referenced in Lawrence Wright, “The Master Plan,” New Yorker, September 11, 2006.
34. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
35. Those who opposed the attack included Saif al-Adel and his colleagues from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri and Abu Mohammed al-Masri, along with Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s financial chief.
36. Author interviews with Mahfouz. Also described in a letter from former shura member Noman Benotman to Osama bin Laden after 9/11, reproduced with Benotman’s permission in Foreign Policy magazine, September 1, 2010.
37. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hafs the Commander were also busy with something they had code-named Project al-Zabadi (curdled milk): obtaining nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Two Pakistani scientists had arrived in Kandahar promising to steal materials from the state nuclear program at Kahuta, outside Islamabad.
38. Yosri Fouda, narrator. Top Secret: The Road to September 11. (Al Jazeera, 2002).
39. Al-Masri’s daughter Asma was married to Saif al-Adel, Al Qaeda’s military chief.
40. Author interviews with Mahfouz, who witnessed the attack as he lived across the road.
41. Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and al-Qaeda (New York: Crown, 2005).
42. Author
interviews with Robert Grenier, also his book 88 Days to Kandahar. Author interview with William Murray, former CIA director, Virginia, October 2014.
43. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith FBI testimony under FBI interrogation. Author copy of the FBI transcript and author interview with Abu Ghaith’s lawyer, Stanley Cohen, New York, October 2014.
44. Abu Walid al-Masri (Mustafa Hamid), unpublished book in Arabic, “The Cross in the Sky of Qandahar,” 2004, author copy provided by Alex Strick van Linschoten.
45. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
46. He worked like this always according to all those around him, including son Omar, who described his father’s habits in Growing Up Bin Laden. Also author interviews with Mahfouz.
47. Khaled al-Harbi, a visiting Saudi cleric, sat on one side of Osama and on the other was Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.
48. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
49. Author interviews with Hamid Mir, Islamabad.
50. Author interview with General Ehsan ul-Haq, Islamabad, June 2014.
51. Manoj Joshi, “India Helped FBI Trace ISI-Terrorist Links,” Times of India, October 9, 2001.
52. Glen Johnson, “Bush Fails Quiz on Foreign Affairs,” Washington Post, November 4, 1999.
53. Author interview with General Pervez Musharraf, Karachi, February 2015.
54. Author interview with General Ehsan ul-Haq, Islamabad, June 2014.
55. By ten P.M., the Sheikh was back in Jalalabad, seeking out the city’s Taliban governor, Maulvi Abdul Kabir. Mary Anne Weaver, “Lost at Tora Bora,” New York Times Magazine, September 11, 2005.
56. Ibid.
57. His name was Mohammed al-Hallabi. His brother Abu Abdallah al-Hallabi was married to Fatima’s sister Khadija bin Laden. The driver was Salim Hamdan, brother-in-law of Abu Jandal, Osama’s Yemeni chief bodyguard. See “Gitmo Files,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/149, for more information.
58. Author interviews with bin Laden family members. Hamzah bin Laden also described this scene in a letter to his father written in June 2009. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.