Marc Ambinder, National Journal: The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden

[highplainsdem]

Found this via a tweet from Andy Kroll, retweeted by David Corn.


http://nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/the-secret-team-that-killed-bin-laden-20110502

The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden
By Marc Ambinder
May 2, 2011 | 9:39 a.m.
Updated: May 2, 2011 | 10:32 a.m.



From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.

-snip-

DevGru belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command, an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified standing task forces and special-missions units. They report to the president and operate worldwide based on the legal (or extra-legal) premises of classified presidential directives. Though the general public knows about the special SEALs and their brothers in Delta Force, most JSOC missions never leak. We only hear about JSOC when something goes bad (a British aid worker is accidentally killed) or when something really big happens (a merchant marine captain is rescued at sea), and even then, the military remains especially sensitive about their existence. Several dozen JSOC operatives have died in Pakistan over the past several years. Their names are released by the Defense Department in the usual manner, but with a cover story -- generally, they were killed in training accidents in eastern Afghanistan. That’s the code.

How did the helos elude the Pakistani air defense network? Did they spoof transponder codes? Were they painted and tricked out with Pakistan Air Force equipment? If so -- and we may never know -- two other JSOC units, the Technical Application Programs Office and the Aviation Technology Evaluation Group, were responsible. These truly are the silent squirrels -- never getting public credit and not caring one whit. Since 9/11, the JSOC units and their task forces have become the U.S. government’s most effective and lethal weapon against terrorists and their networks, drawing plenty of unwanted, and occasionally unflattering, attention to themselves in the process.

-snip-

The way JSOC solved this problem remains a carefully guarded secret, but people familiar with the unit suggest that McChrystal and Flynn introduced hardened commandos to basic criminal forensic techniques and then used highly advanced and still-classified technology to transform bits of information into actionable intelligence. One way they did this was to create forward-deployed fusion cells, where JSOC units were paired with intelligence analysts from the NSA and the NGA. Such analysis helped the CIA to establish, with a high degree of probability, that Osama bin Laden and his family were hiding in that particular compound.

-snip-

[FreakinDJ]

1. And Bush let him go to save his business dealing with Bin Laudin Family

I'll stick with the guy doing the right think to get re-elected

[JackRiddler]

4. I hate how they were laudin' the laidins.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Or, the Pakistanis gave him up

We will probabaly never know the real story.

[JackRiddler]

3. Hush, you insane man!

Shot in the head, instant DNA test, buried at sea. No Pakistani involvement. None, I tell you!!!

Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, the incubator babies, Saddam in his spider hole and the Niger document writers all agree!