Free The Hunt for bin Laden by Tom Shroder Page B

friction with followers. In handwritten journals and long-winded compositions saved on hard drives, officials said, bin Laden always seemed to be searching for a way to replicate the impact of al-Qaeda’s most devastating strike.
    In the words of one official, he exhorted followers to explore ways to recruit non-Muslims “who are oppressed in the United States” — particularly African Americans and Latinos — and to assemble a plot in time for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
    Even while sealed inside his cement compound, bin Laden functioned like a crime boss pulling strings from a prison cell, regularly sending messages to his most trusted lieutenants and strategic advice to far-flung franchises, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. Some followers pledged their fealty to him, but others chafed at his warnings to remain focused on U.S. targets instead of mounting less-risky operations in places such as Yemen, Somalia and Algeria.
    When bin Laden’s corpse was laid out, one of the Navy SEALs was asked to stretch out next to it to compare heights. The SEAL was 6 feet tall. The body was several inches taller.
    After the information was relayed to Obama, he turned to his advisers and said: “We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?”
    Bin Laden’s body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson, where U.S. officials performed the rituals of Islamic burial, including wrapping it in a white shroud, before tipping it into the Arabian Sea. Officials said the decision was made to comply with the Islamic mandate to bury a body within 24 hours after death. A burial at sea also ensured that bin Laden would have no grave site for his followers to use as a shrine.
    U.S. officials said DNA tests confirmed with 99.9 percent certainty that the body removed from the one-acre compound was indeed that of bin Laden.
    Around the world, many leaders expressed a sober satisfaction with the raid. In addition to bin Laden, the firefight killed his son Khalid, a woman and two men who were harboring the 54-year-old Saudi national within the high walls of the compound. .
    There were conflicting reports about whether bin Laden used one of his wives as a shield. While John Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, suggested at one point that he had, he later allowed that it was not clear “whether or not bin Laden or the son or whatever put her there or she put herself there.”
    Press secretary Jay Carney later offered yet another version of that account, saying that bin Laden’s wife had “rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”
    Carney and others defended the administration’s assertion that the team of 25 U.S. Navy SEALs and other operatives was prepared to take bin Laden alive. “He resisted the U.S. personnel,” Carney said. When pressed on how he did so without a weapon, Carney said that “resistance does not require a firearm.”
    Panetta said that the rules of engagement would have required U.S. forces to take bin Laden into custody if he had “thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn’t appear to be representing any kind of threat.”
    But, he said, “I don’t think he had a lot of time to say anything,” adding that when the lead Navy SEAL reached the third-floor unit where bin Laden was located, “there were some threatening moves that were made . . . and that’s the reason they fired.”
    A U.S. official briefed on the raid said the first SEAL to confront bin Laden perceived a hostile intent. “He was not lying on the floor or trying to surrender,” the official said.
    Bin Laden’s wife, who identified the al-Qaeda leader’s body after the raid, was treated for her injuries and placed in the custody of Pakistan’s intelligence service. A U.S. official said she told Pakistani authorities that bin Laden had lived in the complex, at least part of the time, since