WASHINGTON — A decade after Osama bin Laden became the epitome of evil for many Americans in masterminding the 9/11 attacks, President Obama announced that the al-Qaeda leader had been killed in a targeted U.S. assault and the United States had the body.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden shown in an undated file photo.
AFP, AFP/Getty Images
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden shown in an undated file photo.
The president's extraordinary late-night appearance in the East Room doesn't end the global war on terror that has redefined travel and other aspects of American life since the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, but it provides an emotional important sense of closure for many.
"Justice has been done," Obama said just before midnight.
"It means a lot," says Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11. "The man … plotted to kill my mom." Lemack, who was sobbing at the news, said she was contacted by the White House about half an hour before Obama spoke and told to watch. No one told her the subject.
She was with her father and sister, celebrating her sister's birthday.
"I just want to make sure we focus on the people he murdered," she said. "I don't want this day to be about him."
In Philadelphia, where the Phillies were playing the New York Mets, the ballpark crowd broke into loud chants, "USA! USA!" Another crowd gathered outside the White House and sang the national anthem.
Many had come to doubt that bin Laden would ever be captured or killed. In a CNN poll last September, two-thirds of those surveyed said it was unlikely he would ever been found.
Obama's announcement came eight years to the day after President George W. Bush appeared on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln before a banner that declared, "Mission Accomplished."
The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, launched in 2001 in response to 9/11, has become the longest war in American history.
Although Osama was no longer believed to be in day-to-day control of al-Qaeda operations, he remained an iconic figure both to those who followed him and those who hated him.
"Does bin Laden's death matter?" former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley posted on Twitter. "There are franchises around the world, but he was a major unifying force. The movement now lacks a center."
The killing of bin Laden in a firefight in Pakistan could have political ramifications in the United States as well. Obama said he had made bin Laden's capture or death the top priority of the U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda. President George W. Bush said he wanted to catch Osama "dead or alive" but left office with that goal unfulfilled.
Obama said he hoped the United States could recapture the sense of unity and purpose that followed the devastating attacks that left nearly 3,000 dead.
A Saudi child of privilegeOsama bin Laden was a Saudi child of privilege who grew alienated by the materialistic Western culture he saw engulfing his traditional world ? but not before he had absorbed enough of that culture to become a cunning adversary.
Trained in business and civil engineering, he launched his career by building infrastructure and creating jobs in the hardscrabble countries of Afghanistan and the Sudan. That was before he decided to devote his creative energy and entrepreneurial skill to destroying the "infidels."
Until his death, bin Laden was the linchpin of a multinational operation that has demonstrated the kind of adaptability and outside-the-box thinking any CEO would envy. He called his organization al-Qaeda, Arabic for "The Base." Its chief asset: an unknown number of highly trained terrorists willing to die for their cause. Its chief export: fear.
Law enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts who have studied al-Qaeda say the slender, 6-foot-6-inch bin Laden was less a warlord than a clever businessman with an unconventional style.
In the heady days when his organization terrorized the world, bin Laden's boardrooms were caves; during the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2001 and for months afterwards, he was believed to have slept in a different one almost every night. But his nomadic lifestyle didn't stop him from using his business savvy and entrepreneurial know-how to build a multinational operation that once traded in everything from diamonds to sheepdogs. Among al-Qaeda's ventures, expert say, are a bakery, a furniture company and a produce supplier called Blessed Fruits.
Bin Laden evolved into a middle-aged religious zealot who preached his own peculiar brand of ethnic cleansing. He wanted to uproot foreigners from countries that he believed should be inhabited exclusively by Muslims. He spent much of the past decade attempting to rally orthodox Muslims across the globe to save their cultural and political patrimony from the encroachments of the West.
"God says, 'You should pick up arms and kill those who are infidels,'" a voice attributed to bin Laden said in one of a series of tapes released over the years. "We want to be liberated from the slavery of America. We have to fight this war."
For all his fanaticism, bin Laden was a "very practical man," says Rohan Gunaratna, a scholar at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who spent years in south Asia studying terrorist organizations. Bin Laden did not hesitate to borrow some of the conveniences of the West's corporate culture in order to undermine it. Among the pieces of evidence prosecutors at the embassy bombing trial introduced: records of calls made from an al-Qaeda satellite phone.
Like many successful corporate chieftains, bin Laden took a keen interest in marketing and self-promotion. He granted an interview to CNN (after the producer and correspondent were blindfolded and carted to a hut about 6,000 feet up in the Afghanistan mountains) and starred in an al-Qaeda recruiting film. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he had reappeared from time to time in videotapes and audiotapes aired by the Middle Eastern cable network Al-Jazeera.
Bin Laden also went out of his way to advertise his murderous intentions. At one time, he established a "media information office" in London, which has since been closed. Bin Laden relied on the office to publicize his 1998 declaration of jihad, or holy war, against the United States. During his interview with ABC, he did not deny attempting to procure chemical and nuclear weapons for his campaign.
"To seek to possess the weapons that could counter those of the infidels is a religious duty," bin Laden said. "If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then this is an obligation I carried out, and I thank God for enabling us to do that."
A Saudi upbringingHe was born March 10, 1957, one of the 54 children of Mohammed bin Awdah bin Laden, an Arabic Horatio Alger who migrated from southern Yemen to Saudi Arabia sometime during the late 1930s or 1940s in search of opportunity.
A poor, illiterate porter when he arrived in the Saudi kingdom, the elder bin Laden was, by the 1960s, the master builder of a nation suddenly flush with oil profits, with a construction firm valued at $5 billion. Thanks to the royal family's patronage, he won the prestigious and lucrative contracts to rebuild the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
In keeping with Islamic custom, the elder bin Laden had multiple wives. One of his sons, Yeslam bin Laden, puts the number at more than 20. Osama was bin Laden's only child by a Syrian woman whom he married while on a project in Jerusalem. While many of his half-siblings reveled in the Western lifestyle to which their wealth gave them access, Osama, who grew up in a separate household, seemed unusually pious and censorious of those who did not share his strict religious views.
Yeslam bin Laden described his younger half-brother to Newsweek magazine as "more religious" and with "a different mentality than the rest of the family." Yeslam's now-estranged Swiss-born wife, Carmen, told ABC News that she was warned to don her veil whenever Osama visited. Though she encountered Osama a number of times, she said, he never spoke to her.
Osama was a pre-teen when his father was killed in a plane crash in 1968. His share of the inheritance has been estimated at $250 million to $300 million. Yeslam bin Laden says the Saudi king appointed a committee to help his oldest brothers, then in their 20s, run the bin Laden construction business and treated the younger ones like members of the family.
There are conflicting accounts about whether bin Laden multiplied his inheritance or lost most of it. Most experts agree it doesn't matter, because bin Laden and his operatives lived frugally, and al-Qaeda's most important resources are fanatical, not financial. "There is no amount of money in the world that could make 19 people commit suicide for you," says Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism analyst whose book, Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden, was rushed into print after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Repelled by Western cultureBin Laden attended university in Jeddah, a cosmopolitan Saudi port city on the Red Sea. But like many young Arabs, he was repelled by, rather than attracted to, the westernized culture to which his affluence gave him access. He came under the influence of Abdullah Azzam a Palestinian Jordanian who is regarded as the father of the terrorist group Hamas. Azzam subscribed to the theory of jihad, or holy war, against infidels.
Bin Laden graduated in 1981 with a degree in public administration.
Bin Laden got his chance to participate in one when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Peshawar, Pakistan. At the time, bin Laden and the United States were allies. While the young Saudi worked to recruit and nurture the band of Islamic fighters that eventually drove the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, the CIA was slipping them Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons.
That U.S. aid to the mujahedin helped lay the groundwork for bin Laden's organization. By bringing together zealots from a host of Islamic nations, the Afghan war provided "the ultimate extremist networking opportunity," Paul Pillar, a CIA official who once served as deputy chief of the agency's counterterrorism center, wrote of bin Laden in his book, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy.
It proved a perfect setting for bin Laden to exercise his organizational skills. Less a warrior than a general contractor, he brought his family's money, employees and expertise to the cause. Using heavy equipment provided by his family's construction business, he helped build roads and other infrastructure.
It was during the conflict with the Soviets that bin Laden met Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who would become the No. 2 leader of al Qaeda.
After the Afghans and their allies forced the Red Army out in 1989, bin Laden returned to his family business in Saudi Arabia. But he had a falling-out with the royal family over its decision to billet American troops during the Persian Gulf war. Bin Laden saw the continued presence of U.S. troops there as a defilement of the land that is home to Medina and Mecca, two of Islam's holiest cities.
"If liberating my land is called terrorism, this is a great honor for me," he told Robert Fisk, a reporter for the British newspaper The Independent. In the same interview, bin Laden bragged about the mujahedin's victory over the Soviets and said: "Now, we ask God to use us one more time to do the same to America, to make it a shadow of itself."
By the early 1990s, bin Laden was falling out of favor in Saudi Arabia. In 1991, he left for the Sudan where, like his father before him, he used his contracting skills to win favor with government leaders. Bin Laden took with him a number of his mujahedin followers and set them up in various businesses. It was the beginning of what would become a worldwide conglomerate.
The Saudi government revoked bin Laden's citizenship in 1994 because of his statements against the royal family. But there is considerable suspicion that he continued to have rich and powerful supporters in Saudi Arabia. Longtime Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal "always had great affection for bin Laden," according to Gunaratna. Faisal was replaced as head of security 10 days before the 2001 attacks; the Saudi royal family gave no explanation for the change.
In 1996, under pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he returned to Afghanistan. There, he helped bankroll the ruling Taliban and enjoyed their protection. He formed a group of militant organizations called the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. It included included al-Qaeda and groups from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The group issued an edict, known as a fatwa: "To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible."
His followers complied. The State Department suspects his involvement in the following attacks:
•1993: World Trade Center, New York City; 6 killed; U.S. soldiers in Somalia, 18 killed;
•1996: U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 19 killed;
•1998: U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, more than 200 killed;
•2000: USS Cole in Yemen, 17 sailors killed
•Sept. 11, 2001: 3,000 killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
In 1998, several of his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were hit by Cruise missiles in a U.S. reprisal for the embassy bombings. It provided bin Laden with an unwitting publicity boost; his ability to elude the American attack made him, in the words of one former U.S. official, "the patron saint of the worldwide 'get the West' movement."
Three years later, bin Laden also survived the U.S. assault on his hideout in the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan.
Experts don't doubt that bin Laden's organization has the wherewithal to outlast its founder. "There is no one else who could quite fill his shoes," Pillar wrote. "But his removal would not demolish his own organization."
Contributing: Mimi Hall, Tom Vanden Brook
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