The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden by Mark Bowden

Author:Mark Bowden [Bowden, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Politics, History, War, Azizex666, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780802120342
Google: 3WhsyHVAYtEC
Amazon: 0802120342
Barnesnoble: 0802120342
Goodreads: 15811149
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

6

Disguised Uncertainty

Winter 2010–2011

At the White House in the fall of 2010, Ben Rhodes noticed a growing number of meetings to which he was not invited. As with the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Rhodes had become Obama’s go-to writer for speeches and statements explaining his decisions as commander in chief. Rhodes’s official title was “Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.” His hair had thinned on top, he rarely did anything but work, and he dressed every day in a suit and tie, but at thirty-two he had a job that anyone with his interests would envy. There were not many high-level national security discussions from which he was barred.

His desk was deep in the warren of small offices in the West Wing, just downstairs from the Oval Office and the primary corridors of power. Windowless and closet-like, his and the other offices of the national security staff were as humble as the jobs were important. Rhodes’s space was just big enough for his desk and chair, a waist-high bookshelf, and one more chair opposite the desk. It was as spare as an intern’s quarters at most law firms. Rhodes helped the president craft speeches, shape security policy, and decide how to frame critical issues for the public. He knew that John Brennan, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, had been holding frequent meetings now for months, and that Donilon, the president’s national security adviser, often sat in. The mystery sessions were simply called “John Brennan’s group.” Ordinarily there were cameras that monitored the conference rooms so that staffers and secretaries could keep track of where people were, but for John Brennan’s group the monitors went black. Rhodes wondered about that. Was the country about to be attacked again? Was it something serious related to nuclear weapons? There was a very short list of things that would engender that level of secrecy within the basement offices of the White House. One of the thoughts that occurred to him was that maybe they had found bin Laden.

After getting briefed in late summer on the compound in Abbottabad, Obama had left his intelligence chiefs with instructions to nail down who was living in it and report back. These regular reports documented heroic efforts to scrutinize the residence from afar. Using a variety of tools, including agents on the ground and surveillance platforms that were far enough away to avoid any possibility of notice, the agency was now able to flesh out life in the compound in far more detail. Other than occasional visits to the mosque, or taking their own children to the madrassa, the religious school attached to it, the “Khan” brothers kept to themselves. No one except a local handyman was ever invited inside the compound walls. Among the most religious people in Bilal Town—and the Khan brothers were clearly that—it was not uncommon to hide women away behind high walls and locked doors. Longer observation confirmed that the children of the hidden family, the ones who did not attend

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