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New York exhibition details 10-year hunt for Bin Laden
NEW YORK, Nov 14, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – With a model of the Pakistani villa
where he lived and a video of Barack Obama explaining his hesitancy about
approving the raid, a new exhibition details the operation that killed 9/11
mastermind Osama bin Laden.
“Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden”, which opens Friday at the September 11,
2001 attacks museum in New York, plots the ten-year search for the brains
behind the single deadliest attack ever on the United States.
“It’s like being in the front row of history,” Alice Greenwald, president
and chief executive of 9/11 Memorial Museum, told AFP.
“We get an insider’s view into … how the raid was actually conducted from
the people that were there,” she added.
The US intelligence services-led manhunt culminated overnight on May 1 and
2, 2011 with operation Geronimo, the commando raid that left Bin Laden, the
orchestrator of the atrocity that killed almost 3,000 people and destroyed
the Twin Towers, dead.
The exhibition, which will run until May 2021, contains no shattering
revelations, such as possible collaboration between American and Pakistani
spies.
But using around 60 objects, including some seized in the villa, and dozens
of photos and videos, visitors can see the work of the intelligence services
as they try to find the Al-Qaeda leader.
The timeline includes bin Laden’s departure without a trace from the Tora
Bora mountains in Afghanistan in late 2001 and the key identification of his
messenger Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti and his jeep in Peshawar in 2010.
Al-Kuwaiti would lead US agents to the quiet garrison city of Abbottabad,
50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital Islamabad and the villa
where a mysterious figure would take a few steps inside the compound every
day, like a prisoner.
The Americans nicknamed him “Pacer” before becoming convinced over time
that he was the man they had been looking for — bin Laden.
The exhibition focuses on the “human” story of the operation through
multiple interviews: from senior officials who validated the assault to Navy
Seal commandos who invaded the villa.
Anonymous agents explain how they understood that to find bin Laden they
had to follow people who were likely to help him.
“The gravity of that decision-making and the burden of that decision-making
really comes across in this exhibition,” said Greenwald.
“I think it is a reminder of how decisions that are so momentous actually
get made,” she added, referring to dilemmas about whether to attack the
residence when it puts lives at risk.
– ‘Awe-inspiring’ –
After 9/11, rivalries between the various branches of the US intelligence
services were blamed for not sharing information that might have thwarted the
attacks.
The exhibition celebrates their renewed unity, tenacity and courage.
It displays a cap worn by an agent who suffered head injuries when a bomb
triggered by a double agent exploded at a meeting that they hoped would lead
to new information about bin Laden.
Clifford Chanin, deputy director for programs at the museum, said the
exhibition is the result of over three years of discussions with government
agencies, during which he wondered “how much of the story would they let us
tell because it’s a classified mission.”
“We don’t know what we weren’t able to get because we don’t know what it
is. (But) in terms of the artifacts loaned to us and the access we got to
people for interviews, we got much further into this story than anybody,” he
said.
The death of bin Laden, announced by Obama just before midnight eastern US
time on May 1, 2011, was celebrated across the United States and particularly
in New York, where there were spontaneous rallies in Times Square and at the
World Trade Center site.
For many Americans the exhibition is a moment to savor that night again.
“It’s awe-inspiring to me to see the amount of work and effort, commitment
done on behalf of our loved ones, by the military and intelligence division,”
said Patricia Reilly whose sister died on the 101st floor of one of the
towers.
“It just brings back that feeling of gratefulness that I felt on the day
that the president announced that they had killed bin Laden. We had waited so
long for justice,” she added.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 0803 hrs