One unwary phone call led US to bin Laden doorstep

WASHINGTON—When one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led US pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world’s most wanted terrorist.

That phone call, recounted Sunday by a US official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden’s personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt.

The courier, in turn, led US intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALS shot bin Laden to death.

The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden’s vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let Al-Qaeda foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.

In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago Al-Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden’s couriers, four former US intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.

One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as Al-Qaeda’s operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.

If they could find that courier, they could find bin Laden.

The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in US history.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier’s real name, which officials are not disclosing.

When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA’s sources didn’t know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.