Osama bin Laden. The headline news was the obvious: US raid kills Osama bin Laden. But the real prize obtained by the special forces that assaulted the compound in Abbottabad might not have been the Al Qaeda leader, but the information they scooped up during the 40 minutes they were on the ground.
Before the Navy SEALs airlifted out of the compound, they were "feeding this data to the targeteers," says a former CIA covert operative, who was at agency headquarters during the raid. He notes that "the phones [grabbed during the raid] can be dumped in seconds and uploaded in real time to headquarters."
According to the initial reports regarding the intelligence gathered in the raid, Bin Laden was more engaged in the leadership of Al Qaeda than many experts had assumed. Rather than being isolated in a cave, he was in this suburban compound exercising command functions for the terrorist network. Which suggests that specific information about Al Qaeda and its personnel and operations flowed through this facility. This intelligence—once translated, decoded (if any of it was coded), and analyzed—should provide US military and intelligence commands valuable information for attacking other parts of Al Qaeda. As the former CIA officer says:
There are many in the Al Qaeda leadership that have to assume their location, phones, and plans are exposed and are weighing whether they stay still, or run. If they move they risk instant detection, if they stay put, they will sweat that we are watching and waiting. The true impact of this raid on the Al Qaeda system is incredibly disruptive and destructive. We gathered up the command structures intel system and communications plans. That exposes everyone. I suspect we will capture or kill a lot of people over the next two weeks.
He points to news reports of a drone strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on Friday that killed at least eight suspected militants.
See more at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/05/real-prize-osama-bin-laden-raid
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