Killing Osama Bin Laden - How the US Government Managed to Take Down the Terrorist Behind 9/11 #875708

The Man in the Shadows

On a cool spring night in May 2011, two Black Hawk helicopters took off from a base in eastern Afghanistan and vanished into the darkness. 

On the plane were 23 members of SEAL Team Six, sent to carry out a mission so classified, so politically fraught, that it was known until then, in real time, only by a few people on Earth. 

They were heading to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan—a quiet military town with leafy streets—and high-walled houses. And inside one of those houses, intelligence indicated, was the most wanted man in the world: Osama bin Laden.

This moment didn’t come suddenly. It was the product of ten years of intelligence gathering, missteps, silent breakthroughs, and an evolving war on terror that stretched across continents.