Analysis: After 10 Years, What Helped Give Bin Laden Away?

Since the late 1990s, when Western media first disclosed that Western intelligence agencies were listening in to bin Laden’s phone calls, the transnational network has used a variety of strategies to communicate securely including messengers.

But couriers, once they fall under suspicion, can be followed by traditional detective work, and the information gleaned can be combined with other information to create a powerful intelligence jigsaw that can pinpoint a target.

“I would be ironic if if al Qaeda’s communications security had given his position away,” said Richard Aldrich, a historian of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters signals intercept agency.

“If their counter surveillance had proved their weak point, that would amount to as a very good joke, in spying terms.”

Internet Haganah, a website that tracks Islamist militants online, speculated that bin Laden in effect was driven by his pursuers to adopt behavior out of the norm, thereby giving himself away.

PEOPLE “NOT TALKING” IS WEAKNESS

“I’d like to think that years of making it obvious that modern telecommunications were being intensively monitored encouraged the decision to not equip the compound with such (devices),” said the site, run by Aaron Weisburd.

The revelation bin Laden was living in style will also put Pakistani officials under pressure to explain how he could have been right under their noses. Residents in Abbottabad said a Pakistani military training academy was near the compound.

A U.S. official said Pakistani authorities were told the details of the raid after it had taken place.

U.S. officials have long said Pakistan does not do enough to combat al Qaeda and Taliban and some have accused Pakistan’s spies of maintaining ties with militants opposed to Pakistan’s historic foe India.

Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told Reuters: “Bin Laden’s residing in a mansion outside the cosmopolitan capital city of Islamabad, five miles down the road from the Pakistani military academy, looks poor indeed for Pakistani security.”

Graham Cundy, a former British army officer with extensive counter-terrorist experience in south Asia, said militants in the region tended to evade capture for a variety of reasons, but often lack of local intelligence was a critical failing.

Difficulties included the forbidding mountain terrain of the frontier region, the ability to rent property with no paper trail, the existence of a sympathetic community of militants, and crucially, gaps in the information from local sources.

“It’s easy for a fugitive to go undetected in these circumstances,” he said. “But the key thing is, people not talking.”