Obama Honors CIA, Intelligence Community for Bin Laden Killing
President Barack Obama thanked the spies and analysts of the Central Intelligence Agency today for their persistence in helping U.S. forces track down Osama bin Laden and vowed to pursue every lead they develop from a trove of documents and computer files taken during the operation.
The intelligence operation that led to bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan will be studied for “generations to come,” the president said at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, outside Washington.
“As you go about your work with incredible diligence and dedication every single day, I hope all of you understand how important it is, how grateful I am and that you have the thanks of a grateful nation,” he said.
Obama told the CIA employees that their work didn’t end with the death of bin Laden. The intelligence material taken by the Navy SEALs when they left the terrorist leader’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan is “the largest trove” of information ever seized from a terrorist leader.
“Today, every terrorist in the al-Qaeda network should be watching their back,” Obama said. “We are going to pursue every lead.”
The CIA in August 2010 located the residence of a member of bin Laden’s inner circle, who served as one of his few trusted couriers. A month later, the agency showed Obama secret assessments that indicated bin Laden may be in the high-security compound, because the custom construction suggested someone of significance.
The detective work set in motion a series of clandestine actions that led to Obama’s April 29 authorization to conduct a raid. “We gave President Obama and his team accurate, relevant, timely intelligence,” CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a May 2 statement.
Panetta has already praised the agency’s counter-terrorism center and the Office of South Asia Analysis for their expertise, creativity and tradecraft in tracing bin Laden to a safe house in Pakistan, and for the SEAL strike team.
Panetta, 72, has been nominated as the next U.S. defense secretary.
To contact the reporter on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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