WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration used DNA testing and other means to confirm that elite American forces in Pakistan had in fact killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, officials said Monday, as the world absorbed the stunning news.
The officials said the DNA testing
alone offered a "99.9 percent" certainty that bin Laden was shot dead
in a daring U.S. military operation. Detailed photo analysis by the CIA,
confirmation by other people at the raid site and matching physical features
like bin Laden's height all helped confirmed the identification.
One official said there should be no
doubt in anybody's mind that the person killed was bin Laden.
The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter.
Still, it was unclear if the world
would ever get visual proof. Bin Laden's body was quickly buried at sea, and
administration officials were weighing the merit and appropriateness of
releasing a photo of bin Laden, who was shot in the head.
The face of global terrorism was killed
in a firefight with American forces. As spontaneous celebrations and
expressions of relief gave way to questions about precisely what happened and
what comes next, U.S. officials warned that the campaign against terrorism is
not nearly over — and that the threat of retaliation was real.
"The fight continues and we will
never waver," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday. Her
comments had echoes of former President George W. Bush's declaration nearly a
decade ago, when al-Qaida attacks against America led to war in Afghanistan and
changed the way Americans viewed their own safety.
Turning to deliver a direct message to
bin Laden's followers, she vowed: "You cannot wait us out."
President Barack Obama himself
delivered the news of bin Laden's killing in a dramatic White House statement
late Sunday. "Justice has been done," he said.
The president was expected to address
the topic again in a Medal of Honor ceremony shortly before noon EDT.
Officials say CIA interrogators in
secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that
ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The military operation that ended bin
Laden's life took mere minutes, and there were no U.S. casualties.
U.S. Blackhawk helicopters ferried
about two dozen troops from Navy SEAL Team Six, a top military
counter-terrorism unit, into the compound identified by the CIA as bin Laden's
hideout — and back out again in less than 40 minutes. Bin Laden was shot in the
head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards resisted the assault.
Three adult males were also killed in
the raid, including one of bin Laden's sons, whom officials did not name. One
of bin Laden's sons, Hamza, is a senior member of al-Qaida. U.S. officials also
said one woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant,
and two other women were injured.
The compound is about a half-mile from
a Pakistani military academy, in a city that is home to three army regiments
and thousands of military personnel. Abbottabad is surrounded by hills and with
mountains in the distance.
Critics have long accused elements of
Pakistan's security establishment of protecting bin Laden, though Islamabad has
always denied it, and in a statement the foreign ministry said his death showed
the country's resolve in the battle against terrorism.
The U.S. official who disclosed the
burial at sea said it would have been difficult to find a country willing to
accept the remains. Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with
Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial.
"I heard a thundering sound,
followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering,
then a big blast," said Mohammad Haroon Rasheed, a resident of Abbottabad,
Pakistan, after the choppers had swooped in and then out again.
Bin Laden's death came 15 years after
he declared war on the United States. Al-Qaida was also blamed for the 1998
bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people and the 2000
attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as
countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.
"We have rid the world of the most
infamous terrorist of our time," CIA director Leon Panetta declared to
employees of the agency in a memo Monday morning. He warned that "terrorists
almost certainly will attempt to avenge" the killing of a man deemed
uncatchable. "Bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is not," Panetta said.
Retaliatory attacks against the U.S.
and Western targets could come from members of al-Qaida's core branch in the
tribal areas of Pakistan, al-Qaida franchises in other countries, and
radicalized individuals in the U.S. with al-Qaida sympathies, according to a
Homeland Security Department intelligence alert issued Sunday and obtained by
The Associated Press.
While the intelligence community does
not have insight into current al-Qaida plotting, the department believes
symbolic, economic and transportation targets could be at risk, and small arms
attacks against other targets can't be ruled out.
In all, nearly 3,000 were killed in the
Sept. 11 attacks.
As news of bin Laden's death spread,
hundreds of people cheered and waved American flags at ground zero in New York,
the site where al-Qaida hijacked jets toppled the twin towers of the World
Trade Center. Thousands celebrated all night outside the White House gates.
As dawn came the crowd had thinned yet
some still flowed in to be a part of it. A couple of people posed for
photographs in front of the White House while holding up front pages of
Monday's newspapers announcing bin Laden's death.
The development seems certain to give
Obama a political lift as the nation swelled in pride. Even Republican critics
lauded him.
But its ultimate impact on al-Qaida is
less clear.
The greatest terrorist threat to the
U.S. is now considered to be the al-Qaida franchise in Yemen, far from
al-Qaida's core in Pakistan. The Yemen branch almost took down a U.S.-bound
airliner on Christmas 2009 and nearly detonated explosives aboard two U.S.
cargo planes last fall. Those operations were carried out without any direct
involvement from bin Laden.
The few fiery minutes in Abbottabad
followed years in which U.S. officials struggled to piece together clues that
ultimately led to bin Laden, according to an account provided by senior administration
officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
operation.
Based on statements given by U.S.
detainees since the 9/11 attacks, they said, intelligence officials have long
known that bin Laden trusted one al-Qaida courier in particular, and they
believed he might be living with him in hiding.
Four years ago, the United States
learned the man's identity, which officials did not disclose, and then about
two years later, they identified areas of Pakistan where he operated. Last
August, the man's residence was found, officials said.
"Intelligence analysis concluded
that this compound was custom built in 2005 to hide someone of
significance," with walls as high as 18 feet and topped by barbed wire,
according to one official. Despite the compound's estimated $1 million cost and
two security gates, it had no phone or Internet running into the house.
By mid-February, intelligence from
multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to "pursue an
aggressive course of action," a senior administration official said. Over
the next two and a half months, the president led five meetings of the National
Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and,
if so, how to get him, the official said.
Obama made a decision to launch the
operation on Friday, shortly before flying to Alabama to inspect tornado
damage, and aides set to work on the details.
Panetta was directly in charge of the
military team during the operation, according to one official, and when he and
his aides received word at agency headquarters that bin Laden had been killed,
cheers broke out around the conference room table.
Administration aides said the operation
was so secretive that no foreign officials were informed in advance, and only a
small circle inside the U.S. government was aware of what was unfolding half a
world away.
In his announcement, Obama said he had
called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari after the raid, and said it was
"important to note that our counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan
helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding."
Associated Press writers Ben Feller,
Matt Apuzzo, Erica Werner, Pauline Jelinek and Eileen Sullivan contributed to
this story.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
