The 10-Year Hunt for Osama bin Laden: From 9/11 to Abbottabad

The hunt for Osama bin Laden was not a single continuous manhunt. It was a decade-long intelligence campaign that shifted from identifying al-Qaeda’s leadership to tracking bin Laden through Afghanistan, his courier network and, eventually, a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Before the 11 September 2001 attacks, US authorities had already linked al-Qaeda to the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the 2000 USS Cole attack. Bin Laden had been indicted and was already a major counterterrorism target, but his location remained uncertain. After 9/11, the FBI, CIA, NSA and US military launched parallel investigations and operations. Their immediate task was to identify the attackers, trace their network, locate al-Qaeda leaders and determine where bin Laden could be found. This account follows the investigation from the attacks through the raid that killed him in 2011.

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