has helped you think about the future of terrorism more rationally. thank you for watching. ♪ ♪

we will hear from the president of the united states a few moments from now. it will be a confirmation of a huge development. >> good evening. tonight, i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda. >> tonight we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who have worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. the american people do not see their work, nor know their names, but tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work.

>> i think women make fantastic analysts. we have patience and perseverance.

and we're not always looking for the sexy payoff immediately. trying to keep track of all the threads of various threats and which ones are real and which ones aren't real and what connects to what, people say why didn't you connect the dots. well, because the whole page is black. >> to pull a story out of all of this information, but there's no one single intelligence looking at all this information, it's a lot of different brains looking, so the more that you can bring people together and you know, share what's important, the better it works. at that time, the people who had really deep expertise in al qaeda, you know, they were women

and they did a job that at first did not make them very popular with their managers. >> i was counseled once in a performance review that i was spending too much time working on bin laden. they said we were obsessed, overly emotional, using all those women stereotypes. men throw chairs, women cry. i ask you which one is better. yes, we were borderline obsessed but i thought it was for a good reason. were we crusading? i wouldn't call it a crusade. were we passionate about what we were doing, absolutely. that's another bureaucratic norm at the time. you weren't supposed to be passionate about anything which i think is ridiculous. how can you do something like this without passion? you can't.

[ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] >> take a stand. we drove out the russians, we destroyed the russian empire. now we'll drive out the americans and we'll destroy the u.s. empire. it worked then, it will work here. he felt like the united states was driving a world movement against muslims, and was the driver for everything that was happening that was bad.

[ speaking foreign language ] >> your starting point is afghanistan. the godfather of the afghan jihad is the one who called everyone to go and fight in afghanistan against the soviets. he helped set up a council of charities to bring people and money to help with jihad and his partner, osama bin laden. >> we certainly didn't know that al qaeda existed. we didn't know there was a terrorist organization. we knew there was a very wealthy man named osama bin laden who

was funding a lot of terrorist groups. we knew that there were people from terrorist groups from all over the world hanging out in afghanistan and in bin laden's circle. >> so you start to see signs of what looks like an organization, but is this bin laden as a financial manager with a bunch of companies funding various terrorist groups, or is there a separate terrorist group here. that was a big question. >> alec station was a collection of people who had backgrounds in everything from analysis to operations. when you think about the cia, there's two different cultures

there. one is an analytic culture, people who try to assess things, figure out what is actually happening somewhere and project ahead, and an operational culture that is people who go out and collect intelligence, develop human spies, handle them, run them, if you will. the unique thing about alec station was the fusion of analysis and operations. we pushed the analysts and the operations people together so the operations people knew everything the analysts were thinking and the analysts knew everything the operations people were doing. >> the people i worked with in the beginning were six women. i walked in my first day there, i turned around to my colleagues, it's a bay of six analysts and i said does anybody have any tums and all these drawers opened with these gigantic bottles. oh, my god, what have i done to myself. >> when i moved over, there was

a group of women that i reached out to. >> we were trying to protect the united states, whether we could do that, it's a big burden. >> i was drawn to those women because of the job that they were doing. i mean, substantively they were so immersed in finding bin laden and tracking and some of them had been around working the subject matter for so long that they were the people i went to and wasn't even because they were women. >> the rest of the organization didn't necessarily think much of terrorism analysts. they said the terrorism people are just tracking things. that's not a real analysis. that's just tracking things. so we were lowly terrorism analysts. we were tracking things. >> you're going to have certain kinds of people who are going to be the first ones to see something. when you're the first one off the block, by definition, you're going to be in the minority. that's what we were.

>> she was very dedicated to her job. she was there a lot. >> jennifer was one of that first group and she was always very intense, very focused. really passionate about it from the beginning and a real hard charger from the beginning. >> jennifer was focused on finding bin laden. she was adamant that she was going to stay around on that team until it was done. >> she could be really abrasive, yeah. but you know, teams are made up of people with all different kinds of personalities and in the end of the day, that doesn't really matter. what matters is getting the job done. she certainly could do that. >> we had a camaraderie. in the beginning, we were such a small organization that we really had a very close relationship. >> imagine if in 1937 the

japanese army had gone on nbc or rko and say hey, we are planning to attack the united states. pearl harbor might have turned out differently. these guys repeatedly said publicly we are planning to attack the united states and no one paid any attention.

at that time in '97, osama bin laden had declared war on the united states in an ab language newspaper and no one paid any attention.

the case that i made to them was you know, if you're going to declare war on the united states, don't do it on the bbc, do it on an american network, and you know, cnn is seen all around the world and also we have a reputation for being fair. it was a lengthy process. they were very concerned, are you agents of the cia, will you give osama bin laden a fair shake if we allow you to do this interview. eventually, after a month or so, we got the sort of coded message that we were going to go and see bin laden. >> they picked us up at dusk in a van sort of like this, right. >> yeah, very similar to this. but in the evening.

then they gave us sunglasses that had cardboard inside them. >> right. a sort of crude blindfold. did they put those on immediately on us? >> yep, they did. yeah. the interesting thing is that when you go to kabul, you go through these tunnels so the fact that we were blindfolded, you could feel the change in air pressure and i could hear the difference in sound through the tunnel. >> so you had something of a good idea of where we were heading. >> yeah. >> and on the other side of this, this is where al qaeda had its chemical weapons crew, chemical weapons facility. >> so we got to this plateau, i think it was about 6,000 feet up, maybe, or something like that. >> something like that. there was a small village, the type that would be used by

shepherds to put their sheep in at night. peter arnett was a correspondent. he was at the time arguably the most famous journalist in the world. >> they put carpets down so it made it respectable. >> as i recall, we waited for some period of time and had some sort of goat-like dinner. >> that's right. yeah. >> do you recall when he came in? >> yeah. >> he shook your hand, right? >> yeah. >> you remember what that felt like? >> it was sort of like a dead fish. it wasn't a strong grasp, cold. i compare it sometimes to a bank manager's shake. >> thank you, mr. bin laden. >> is there anything you would like to add? >> hm?

>> anything you would like to add? >> just relax a minute. just relax now. >> he's not used to this. >> well, mr. bin laden's voice is in good condition. it got better as you got more into the subject, as you talked about it. [ speaking foreign language ]

>> i did think that this was an amazing interview. he declared war on the united states for the first time to an english speaking audience. [ speaking foreign language ] >> we asked him why. he basically gave a laundry list of complaints about american foreign policy in the muslim world. we asked him to clarify did this mean a war against american soldiers or american civilians.

he sort of said american soldiers were the primary target. american civilians got in the way, that was their problem. >> he said that in his mind, the united states was as weak as the former soviet union. [ speaking foreign language ] >> and eventually, the united states if it was subjected to enough violent pressure would pull out of the middle east and basically he would get his wish. >> what are your future plans? [ speaking foreign language ] >> can we get a couple still

pictures now? some photographs? >> the impact of the interview at the time was, i would say, pretty muted. it didn't get a lot of play because at the time, of course, he hadn't really done anything. imagine if in 1937 the japanese army had gone on nbc or rko to say hey, we are planning to attack the united states, pearl harbor might have turned out differently. these guys repeatedly said publicly we are planning to attack the united states and no one paid any attention. >> there is no doubt in that office in that moment that this is what we were waiting for. this is it. those are the words that went through everybody's mind. this is it. this is bin laden. [ jackie ] it's just so frustrating...

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they're planning something, but where, when, what? is it going to be an armed assault? is it going to be a hijacking? is it going to be an assassination, a bomb, you know? where? there were no real answers. >> the cia did very good warning in that period of time.

there are dozens and dozens of reports in which we expressed the view that bin laden is intending to attack the united states. we would have weekly or biweekly meetings sometimes on exactly what was going on. >> so frustrating when you can't figure out date and time. >> there's always a large band of uncertainty and that's fertile ground for argument. >> if you warn about every little thing, then you're crying wolf and nobody pays attention to you at all. >> middle east, south asia, europe, the united states, where? you just don't know. >> we did not at this time and in this report have what i would call actionable intelligence. >> i want to know when, i want to know where, i want to know who. >> we could not determine time, target and method. >> you know, i really wish i could tell you when and where but it's not that easy with the clandestine organization.

if you just had more human assets, you did less analysis, then we would know all these things. well, that isn't true. >> you can say we're pretty sure it's going to happen but we can't make that decision to say you should do or not do. you can say our bottom line is it looks pretty dangerous. >> the headline says bin laden determined to strike in u.s. >> there were just warning after warning after warning all spring. >> well, you know, with the benefit of hindsight -- >> we knew something huge was going to happen. >> -- it would seem that this was a perfect warning in august of 2001 that the united states was about to be attacked. >> everybody was completely tense. >> why didn't we do something about this? >> the language being used by

these guys was like oh my god, what are they going to do. [ chanting ] ♪ [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ]

♪ [ singing foreign language ] >> on the morning of 9/11, i was

sitting in my office. my office was here. the office of the group chief was right next to it and i had my door open, and i looked and there was an analyst running through the row between the cubicles and it was one of the older analysts. and you don't see older analysts running. >> i was in jordan. >> i was at the cia. >> 9/11, i was in my office at nsa. >> i was at the executive office building for the white house. >> i was in the pentagon when it got hit. >> the first breaking news was coming in. >> somebody has it on real player at their desk. >> the report was saying a small aircraft had reportedly hit. >> right then the second plane into the second tower and i knew. >> there was no doubt in that office in that moment that this is what we were waiting for. this is it. those are the words that went through everybody's mind. this is it. this is bin laden. >> it's an attack, it's terrorism and it's al qaeda.

>> i knew who they were. i knew what their intentions were. >> this is it. they pulled this thing off. we're going to battle stations. >> and we were all evacuated after that second plane went in because we thought the next one, that is the shanksville plane, might be heading for us. it was complete chaos. >> plane flew in under my office, my two assistants looked out the window and saw a 757 fly in under their feet. >> the order then went out for the building to be evacuated. except for the counterterrorism analysts. >> we essentially decamped from the high-rises and moved on into the operations center. >> i said look, she says we can't go, but you know, if you want to leave, i'll cover for you. and not one of those people left.

>> 19 guys. look at their faces. think about the tragic terrible consequences. 19. only 19. 19 representing thousands who went through training camps in afghanistan. 19 representing all those who were sponsored and trained and blessed these young men on that day.

it's hard to talk. i have to say the worst moment of my life happened in about november, because right after the bombing, you're just so busy and everybody, cry at home, come to work, be professional, do your job, go home, cry at home, come to work, be professional, do your job. people were very focused running around getting the job done. about november, things started to slow down a little bit and the guilt sets in. that is just the worst. i'm sorry, i'm going to cry now.

feeling like you wish you could have done something, but especially when all the criticism starts to come in. people would say things in congress like you were negligent. i was like really? what did you know about bin laden before 2001? nothing. you didn't help us at all. now you're blaming us for having tried. >> this is not a matter of scapegoating. this is a matter of accountability. >> what does the term accountability mean to you? >> prior to september 11th, u.s. intelligence officials possessed terrorist information that if properly handled could have disrupted or possibly prevented the terrorist attack. >> it seems from your testimony -- >> the year 2002, fbi at that time -- >> has anyone in the cia been held accountable for the failures of september 11th or the events leading up to it?

>> jennifer called me not long after 9/11 screaming at me on the phone and we were just -- we were a two-second walk from each other, but you did this, this is your fault, you didn't report on so and so, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and i screamed back at her and slammed the phone down and at the time, i was really angry and i actually never really spoke to her again. but looking back on it, i think it's just -- it was just a manifestation of her passion. and her own sense of guilt. i mean, everybody felt it.

>> we were told to evacuate yemen. the entire team already boarded the plane and i was asked that i will stay, i should stay, and to talk to an individual. we showed him a photo book that has a lot of photos in it. identified zawahiri. he identified the usual suspects. there was no way he didn't know but he didn't identify anyone from the second tier. no one.

and then closed the book, don't have anything else. don't know anyone. so i asked him please, can you look at it again. but i just, please, look at it again. he was annoyed. listen, i just did, there was nothing. for friendship's sake. so he did. same thing. so i laughed. i went like -- >> to bob, i said see, i told you. i told bob, my friend, i told him that you're basically faking, you're not cooperating at all. and i think i won the bet. what are you talking about, i'm cooperating. come on, really? you're cooperating? do you think i just flew all the way from d.c. to talk to you about this kind of like small talk and i don't know who you are, i don't know what you know? this guy, for example, he was in your guest house in 1999, he was sick, you were taking care of him, putting soup on his lips, and you claim you have no idea

who this guy is. i know a lot about your organization. maybe some of these people in the book are in my custody. maybe some of the people in the book are friend of mine. maybe they are my sources. every time i ask you a question, most probably i know the answer for. and that's how i gauge if you're cooperating or not. so you want to start from the beginning. he said yes. so we showed him the book again. he identified almost everyone in the book. the embassy bombing, the "uss cole" to include eight of the hijackers. he still insisted that bin laden would never do anything like this. i said bin laden did it. he said bin laden did it, who told you. you did. he was mad. he was furious. because he thought i was putting words in his mouth. i said no, you told me that al qaeda was behind it, definitely.

and i took a manila envelope i had and i put the photos that he identified, the seven hijackers or eight hijackers, i put them all in front of him. i said you want to know the hijackers? those are the hijackers. you told me they were al qaeda members. you told me that. he was in total shock. he put his hand like this and he starts shaking. and he asked for, you know, five minutes. gave him five minutes, came back, said so what do you think now. he said i think the sheikh went crazy. what do you want. >> my job is to kill al qaeda. either get shoulder to shoulder, get with us or get out of our way.

[ speaking foreign language ]

a small group of people, many of them women, were blamed. they were blamed. they failed to connect the dots. connect the dots. if i hear that -- the washington machine turned on them and said it's your fault. do a line diagram and you failed to connect the dots. the dots were there. it's us who decide that we need to erase the dots. hello. they're coming at us. >> something that people don't fully grasp is how alone the cia felt in this period of time. just by virtue of the evolution of events and history, we ended up at this moment in time with kind of unique knowledge of this phenomenon, al qaeda. i think the feeling all of us had was this is on our shoulders

to prevent this from ever happening again. the day of 9/11, the president pulled us together and said i want to see a war plan here. well, we had been working on this for a long time. we were ready to go. >> the challenge when you look at al qaeda after 9/11 was to understand it well enough first to disrupt it and then dismantle it. we're not in the business of disruption alone, because if you disrupt an organization, the adversary is so committed, i mean, they believe that what

they do is inspired by a holy book, that they'll just go on and plot another attack. so the business really became dismantlement, how do we destroy it. that's a people business. how do you find the operators, financiers, trainers, et cetera and how can you know where they're going to be tomorrow so you can pick them up? the explosion of intelligence at cia after 9/11 is hard to imagine. you have a small group of people in alec station who are looking at the problem pre-9/11, they had limited resources. after 9/11, that small core group of people is dwarfed by the newcomers into the centerpost 9/11. it was a foundational change in the organization. >> they needed managerial horsepower to support the

increase in people and budget. i did not know enough about al-qaeda. just what little i had read in the press. it was not my specialty. but, you know, if you've had 25 years of experience, you come with a pretty good sense of what needs to be done, even if it's a new target for you. pretty quickly, you learn, but you need to learn about that target. i became the head of the computer center just about the time when we were dealing with all of these threats. i mean, it was daily, constant intelligence coming about a second wave of attacks. but i had a reputation for building strong teams.

>> the phone rang. a senior came on the line and basically said you need to come back. you need to come back and do what you do. >> basically, came back to be the senior manager for the al-qaeda. effort against i had a multidimensional responsibility. i had to protect my people, you know. we changed the rule book a bit. we were empowered more. we did things more aggressive. >> my job is to kill al-qaeda. either get shoulder-to-shoulder, get with us, or get out of our way.

>> we had been focussing on capturing him. he knew who the leadership was. he knew there were methods of attack, the targets. he was the highest al-qaeda terrorist that we had ever captured. we captured him in march. he was severely wounded and we knew we had to get him out of pakistan. and, in the past, the way the u.s. had dealt with issues like this was to transfer the terrorist to a friendly country for interrogation. but we needed to take responsibility for high-level terrorists ourselves. so we understood what we had to do. and we did it.

>> we took a lot of bad guys off the streets. they got put up, and not to say it now, but public knowledge -- put up in nice little boutique locations. >> basically, you have two things you have to bring with you into the interrogation room. you have to bring knowledge and you have to bring empathy. if you don't have those two, i think most probably, you're going to fail. >> he gave us a couple pieces of information in that early phase. but then he stopped talking. and we became convinced we had

to come up with a new alternative because he was not working. you can't argue with success. and the fact is that we're extremely successful. once he became compliant, we started to collect incredible intelligence. >> announcer: you never know when, but thieves can steal your identity and turn your life upside down. >> hi. >> hi. you know, i can save you 15% today if you open up a charge card account with us. >> you just read my mind. >> announcer: just one little piece of information and they can open bogus accounts, stealing your credit, your money and ruining your reputation. that's why you need lifelock to relentlessly protect what matters most... [beeping...] helping stop crooks before your identity is attacked.

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eight of the twelve techniques, in my humble opinion, were pretty whimpy stuff, you know, like slapping.

give me a break. it might be unpleasant to slap somebody, but it's not torture. grabbing somebody from the lapels, bring him into you? it may be unpleasant and it's an attention grabber, but it's not torture. >> we didn't ask for this. we did not ask to get attacked. they did it. and so if we can't make them uncomfortable to save lives, then we've missed the boat here. >> i believe that the intention was we can never allow this to happen. let's do whatever needs to be done. >> just straight-up haters. there is no reasoning. >> some individuals who were, at the time, in places to make decisions believe that the only reason you deal with these individuals is by techniques like this. >> some of our hard core detainees, they may have become compliant and then we'd be jovial and engaging. but then if you ask them what we're going to do if you ever get out?

i'm going to come kill you, my friend. >> all the information that came we got before. >> most of these things came from traditional interrogation techniques by showing people evidence, by putting detainees against each other. so the traditional interrogation techniques work tremendously. >> we had the interrogators and we had the debriefers. interrogators would work with a detainee. and once they became compliant, they would step back and the debriefers, the interrogating analysts, the people who knew the most about the target would step in and would begin to question them. jennifer mathis was there asking him questions.

>> there is a big difference between being an expert behind a desk and being a field expert. >> you can't argue with success. and the fact of the matter is that we were extremely successful. once we started using these techniques and once he became compliant, we started to collect incredible intelligence. abu zubayda gave us the play book of how to go after these individuals. so, in short order, every chief of operations was either captured or killed. remember that guy? that was a nice one.

>> but they had him in a yuppie outfit. i said forget this. i want every guy down range to know what their future is. this is their mack daddy. this is their chief gangster. this is your future. >> they tried to quantity the numbers of pourings of water. and, eventually, the pourings of water used in water boarding became times. so 183 total pourings of water became 183 times, which is crazy. >> look, it's not f.b.i. versus c.i.a. i know for a fact that everything that we've been told that resulted because of water boarding.

that's not true. >> only three terrorists with american blood on their hands were ever water boarded. >> in many cases, it was just a few days. in these cases, it was just a few weeks. >> this program evolved. some of the stuff that they tried to do is not working. and during the evolution process, i realize that i shouldn't be part of this. i shouldn't be a witness to this. i reported it to headquarters and headquarters pulled us out. >> so you have to try to provide a lens of history that doesn't exist yet. i understand people are uncomfortable with this. but the options we had were not very good.

>> you can flirt with the idea that i can cross the line and go into the dark side and then i can come back because i'm going to the dark side for a good purpose. and there were times when that may be appropriate, but it is dangerous. it's easier next time to cross. hmm, it says here that cheerios helps lower cholesterol as part of a heart healthy diet. that's true. ...but you still have to go to the gym. ♪ the one and only, cheerios

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there's an aspect of the intelligence business called targeting. just in the past 10 years, the agency has a transition from strategic intelligence through tactical intelligence that helps you identify the movements and locations of one specific individual. i'm not just worried about want

al-qaida looks like strategically. i want an analyst who's spending all of their time looking at one target with one name. and people whose whole goal in life is following one human being. >> i went to targeting officers when i moved over, jennifer matthews and some of the other women who had already paved the way just to ask them how do i do this? i have to build this from the ground up, kind of like they did on the bin laden side. how do i do this? i built a spread sheet. and when i reached out to barbara and gina and a few other women, they just said that's how we do it. go for it. that's exactly how you get it done.

>> you're leaving a digital trail every day. so are terrorists when that person travels, when that person gets on a phone, when we get information from a courier in al-qaida and who he's touching and we bounce it against information we might have found out two years ago. they're looking at a human terrorist and it rulgts against an action in that target the next day. somebody who wants to fight. that's what a target is. >> you have to intimately know the target you're going after. how that person is going to act, react, what they're going to do that day, what their strategy is, who they're going to talk to, what are their priorities in life. is it wife number one? is it wife number two?

>> i was in baghdad shortly after the war started. it was kind of like being in the wild west. it was complete chaos. mine was initially excited about this. this is something that, at the time, he couldn't pull off.

he was happy to support the endeavor. >> he was such a brutal terrorist, i just felt like we owed it to people of iraq to remove them. >> my former colleagues were basically calling him my boyfriend. >> i felt like i knew him probably too well.

he was a quiet guy in a pathological sort of way. he was a monster. every time he set off an ied or targeted a mosque or anything. you know, i was thinking about him 24/7. and it wasn't pleasant after a while. >> the model, to me, is very clear. operators were working it hand-in-hand. they were down range. they were down range in our fuel stations assisting in

operations, bringing that expertise there, the lessons and the ability to take intelligence operations combined with special operations to create a synergy, a deadly synergy. >> point on the ground or something up above to be a target and be as accurate as possible. >> for me, war is something, like, radioactive that you shouldn't touch unless you've done a tremendous amount of understanding of just the damage that it will do. you can flirt with the idea that i can cross the line and go into the dark side and i can walk back because i'm going to the

dark side for a good purpose. there are times when that may be appropriate. but it is dangerous. it's easier next time to cross. >> i did not like being abraised. i was an analyst. i just didn't -- i -- >> i think there are questions about an intelligence organization that slowly gets involved in executing these types of global operations, that's a real mind set change. the war was not an agnostic video game. it was a personal game where you know you're responsible not only for the lives of americans, but for going up against an adversary that you've got to kill or capture. >> august, 2004, i think we did 18 raids. two years later, 2006, in iraq,

also, we did 300 raids. >> our ability to collect intelligence, act on intelligence and then collect on intelligence had taken home an industrial size and speed to it. >> so it was that evolution, in particular, with the cia in ways that we just couldn't have imagined. it's absolutely critical, as it turns out, in being able to meet this thread. >> you definitely need to know what your moral center is and how you define that for yourself in being able to do that job. i worked in a center where my job was to hunt a person down to capture or kill.

i had to be okay with that. and the paradox of wanting to save the women and children of iraq and kill someone in order to do that wasn't lost on me, by any means. but i can justify that for myself. >> he jumped back. his body language jumped back. he changed. and he said no, no, no. look. we all know even as little kids, if suddenly you're going to go no, no, no. it probably means yes, yes, yes. #%tia[

the war on terror. how can you have a war on terror when it's a tactic. when you have a war against people. so the question immediately becomes who were the people that we're fighting the war against. and i think, still, most people don't understand by the hatests. some strikes are necessary. but if our solution to this kind

of problem is to just strike without trying to take effective efforts to prevent the rise of threats, it's endless. >> it does not end wars on ter rigs. it only creates more terrorism. people become more radicalized. >> rules on terror should be fought under the radar as little as possible. >> we were working closely with the bin laden unit. it sort of turned a lot of

assessments on what was happening. bin laden didn't know, i'm sure, what he was getting into. >> he did not have the same academic background that a lot of the al-qaida scholars had. he didn't have the same -- for lack of a better way to put it, professional sense of jihad, as al-qaida did. he didn't understand the rules of the game. he just thought he could enact in a strategy regardless of how brutal it was.

>> it was surprising to hear that zirkowie was not being indifferential. >> he was actually bringing over another letter from al-qaida central to zircowie about how he should be conducting operations in iraq. we realized that he would be traveling to iraq. we decided this was an

opportunity for us. so we actually planned an operation with, it was my team with our base and the curdish government to capture him. and we -- the curdish government kept him and we definitely gained a lot of information and the role he played with bin laden. did that answer? >> it was significant information. even though we knew that the pseudonym was a throw away. it's lake saying it was a purt ree can. it could be anybody. the key is what he told us about bin laden, not using any other means of communicating.

we asked muhammad about the information of the courier. and he kind of just jumped back. his body language jumped back and changed. and we said no, no, no. we know it as little kids. if suddenly you react and go no, no, no, probably it's yes, yes, yes. >> he had not been truthful. but, later, and this is the benefits of having black sides, we intercepted the communication, thereby, telling us a lot about the courier. that he was of tremendous importance.

and that we were onto something. >> jim matthews was the chief of the c.i.a. base down there. i asked her, do you think we're going to get him? she smiled and said we'll get him eventually. and i hope i'm a part of it.

in late 2007, the bin laden cell came to be. some of these people had been doing this well before 9/11. they go all the way back to alex station. these people had spent their lives on this target. they said we're going to try another approach. it's got to be the courier network. we've got some information on

couriers. we're going to begin to build from that. the way it works is information comes in, you catalog it, you organize it. that little nugget there could sit on your shelves for four or five years until something else that comes in that's very illuminating about something that you may have had for a very long period of time. that actually happened and the work we did to hunt for bin laden by trying to track his courier. it took years for the agency to recruit the human source that eventually gave us the true name. that's why we were in the business of condensing human intelligence because, in many

cases, all of these fancy gadgets and everything else won't give you the information that you really need. a true name. and we finally got his true name. which is whatever it is. whatever arabic name, you know. but the true name we were able to find out a lot about him from. from then on, the agency was able to do what it does so well. track the guy and find him. >> very soon after that, i briefed the president. i said i've got to tell you, mr. president. my guys, they seem optimistic about this. they actually think this could lead somewhere.

>> you're projecting force, intelligence and assets across that border. and that's what post-represented. that's where the enemy was. >> jim matthews was the chief of base, of the c.i.a. base down there. she was there to have her fingers on the pulse of the information that was coming through the base. she never announceuated that, so to speak. in such stark terms. but my sense was she was there to target and kill senior al-qaida leaders. i asked her, do you think we're going to get him? she smiled and said we'll get

him eventually and i hope i'm a part of it. >> he gets out of the car on the wrong side and he's chanting the words in arabic god is great. he fumbles for his detonator. hmm, it says here that cheerios helps lower cholesterol as part of a heart healthy diet. that's true. ...but you still have to go to the gym. ♪ the one and only, cheerios ♪ the one and only, cheerios

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he's not at all what you'd expect. he's a doctor. he's working in a refugee clinic. it turned out he had this very dangerous hob bee on the side. over a period of months, he becomes one of the most visible writers on the internet and the c.i.a. and the joint

intelligence go all out and recruit to be a spy. every several weeks, they'd convince him to go to work for them. >> balowie finds his way into pakistan. very likely, someone suspected him as being an informant and

maybe cut his head off. nobody hears anything for three months. suddenly, he's back on the radar screen again saying i've gotten inside. he's a doctor. he's now beginning to treat the number 2 leader of al-qaida. when he sends this information to the cia headquarters, the place goes crazy. this young man is going to take us right to number 2, maybe even number one. >> the meeting has to take place in a place where the c.i.a. can completely control the environment. and, by default, this becomes the c.i.a. basic coast. the problem is nobody in the

c.i.a. has met with him. they make arrangements for him to come into the base without him being searched or checked. >> people have been too quick to blame jennifer. and that i reject totally because there were many people in this operation.

people wanted to believe that the source was good. >> there were also pressures coming from the white house and saying pursue, pursue, pursue. >> i'm sure there were voices out there saying maybe not. maybe we should slow down. >> that happens in many operations. it didn't happen in this one. >> so they set up a plan to get him through the check points without him even being looked at by the guards. he gets further into the base, goes through a second check point, goes to a third check

point and gets all the way into the innermost heart of the base, the inner sanctum. >> he gets out of the car on the wrong side and he's chanting the words in arabic, got is great. >> he hits the switch, blows himself up and there's a terrific explosion that kills almost everybody who's within direct sight of him at the time of the explosion. >> i knew the base had been hit.

we knew that someone had gotten inside the base and we knew that it was the agency that had been hit. and we knew it was bad. >> by the time we got on the scene, it was an ugly scene. the conventional unit that was there landed the helicopter right in the courtyard and evaced as many of the wounded as possible. he said jen didn't make it. our logistics chief that we had worked with to close the base on a daily basis didn't make it. and some of her case officers never made it even back to the -- you know, they died on the scene.

>> when you do this, do this and do this, eventually, you lose one. and we lost really good people. >> when i heard that jennifer was in post, i was shocked that she was taken out by bin laden. that just seemed so sur real that that would happen to her. after she spent so many years trying to prevent another tragedy by him. he, in effect, had anything to do with her death is incredibly concerning.

>> there is some criticism in the agency. frankly, i understand that. but you don't get it without coast. an agency that's not willing to take the risks that were evident at coast in which, unfortunately, ended tragically. that agency that's not willing to do that is not willing to do that trail. in fact, in fact, some of the human beings who built the trail were actually killed. this kind of team america in the hunt for bin laden and the fight against al-qaida, and there is powerful connective tissue between if two events.

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listen, your story line, it makes for incredible tv drama. thing is, your drug use is too adult for the kids, so i'm going to have to block you. oh, man. yeah. [inhales] well, have a good one. you're a nice lady.

the hunt for the courier to

the hunt for the courier to bin laden makes complete sense to me. it was based on all of these years of experience working with a very tight-knit group of people who really cared about this and supported each other. we invented the technique that works. and it's the technique that got bin laden in the end. >> i got a call from another -- a former colleague. and he said turn on the news. you know, i was at home, turn on the news, the president is going to make an announcement. and i had a feeling, but it's been a good day at the office. >> good evening. >> and then, finally, it's him. they got him. they got him, finally.

that was really something. i'm not sure america has made the effort that it needs to to understand what it is we just went through. the really key part is not how to do these operations. the thing to understand is why are the people that we are fighting doing what they're doing? why is the enemy the enemy. if you don't understand why they're doing it, it's very difficult to stop.

we don't speak the language enough. we don't understand the culture enough. we haven't taken the time to not be blind, deaf and dumb in areas of the world that matter to us. >> it's a nice chapter to close. the chapter is closed, but it's not over. sadly enough, i think we're going to be in this situation again. >> bin laden achieves spreading

his ideology. how do you kill an ideology? killing one person doesn't end that. >> i don't like it. i don't want it to continue. i hope it stops. i hope you don't live in a world where you deal with an adversary who loses respect for the sanctity of human life. this is a human being who has a family of assault. when you confront that, what are you going to do? there are still soft kal debates you can have. but at the end of the day, are you going to move or not? yes or no? go or no go. that's it.

welcome to a special edition of "gps: beyond the man hunt, how to stop terror." >> the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden. >> it was just two years ago that navy seals in pakistan spoke the words geronimo ekia. that meant osama bin laden was finally dead. today, the fight continues. as we saw in boston. but stepping back from the moment's crisis, we also need to ask larger questions about the