In the end, the messages were Bin Laden's undoing

by Laura Mansfield

Since the early days after 2001, Al Qaeda leadership has been playing a game of cat and mouse with American forces. Each time a video or audio message was released, analysts examined every frame in the footage carefully, and analyzed the background, the sounds, the foliage, and anything else that might provide a clue as to the location of Bin Laden and his leadership core.

Every time news broke about some piece of information gleaned from the messages - for example, the type of plant, or the call of a specific bird heard in the background - Al Qaeda responded in the next video by eliminating these tidbits of information.

For example, in the now-famous 2003-video, Bin Laden and Zawahiri were shown walking through the mountains of Afghanistan.

As the hunt for Bin Laden intensified, Bin Laden's videos became less and less frequent. When Bin Laden did release a message, in most cases it was a still image from an older video, with the audio played in the background.

He went "dark" for long periods of times, in some cases years, leading to intense debates as to whether he was even alive.

Each time, he eventually emerged from his silence with an audio tape, or even a video tape. The 2004 US President elections was one occasion when Bin Laden opted to show his face on video. He did not appear in another video until September 2007, when he showed up with the infamous "dyed beard". That was the last time anyone has seen Bin Laden's face in a video.

Audio messages were released, but even those became few and far between - but regardless, the messages continued. In order to remain in control of his followers, Bin Laden had to speak from time to time, just to prove that he was still alive.

Over the years, Bin Laden's death has been reported many times. In fact, two years ago, in April 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari suggested that Bin Laden might be dead, claiming his intelligence officials "could find no trace" of Bin Laden. (In April 2009, Osama Bin Laden was almost certainly hiding in the compound in Abbottabad, where he died yesterday - less than a kilometer from PMA, the elite Pakistani Military Academy. It's difficult to imagine that the ISI wasn't curious about the newcomers who set up residence in an expensive, limited access mansion, but I digress - that's another topic for another article.)

Open source media is reporting that the trail for Bin Laden heated up around eight months ago, when a trusted Al Qaeda courier was tracked to the compound where Bin Laden was eventually found.

When you overlay this timeline with the message release timeline, it become apparent that the early October 2010 duo of messages from Bin Laden calling the world to task about their response to the floods in Pakistan were the terror leader's undoing.

Nine months ago, there was massive flooding in Abbottabad, as can be seen in these YouTube videos: www.youtube.com/watch?v=doUXWLV7HG8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBNf98WRDg

Bin Laden must have been impacted by the flooding, and was inspired to release those two messages. The audios were likely taped in the Abbottabad compound in August , sent out by courier to the video makers who merged the audio with video, moved probably by a different courier to the video distribution team, and then released to the world on October 1 and 2, 2010. Historically, there has been a lag of three to five weeks from an event referenced in a Bin Laden message and the actual release of the message.

It appears from what has been released in the media that the courier who ferried this audio back for production and then distribution was the one who was tracked to the compound.

Bin Laden's message on January 21, 2011 "Message to the People of France" may have been the nail in the coffin, as the courier was tracked.

The destinations of the courier on these two occasions, and the routes the courier took have not been released.

It is unlikely that the message which left Bin Laden's compound via this courier was in final video form. The message was most likely an audio recording, probably stored in digital format on a USB drive or some other electronic media. The audio would have been taken to some location where it was transformed into an "official As Sahab" video. The video would have then been distributed via the established distribution network, or in the case of the first video of the two, directly to Al Jazeera.

If this is the case, then there may be an explanation for the paucity of As Sahab releases since the fall. Did the courier lead directly to the As Sahab video makers, and were they neutralized?

Regardless, it appears that Bin Laden's fears that his messages would someday be his undoing were founded.

His ultimate need to communicate with his followers in order to maintain any sense of legitimacy trumped the OPSEC needs, and he continued to release messages at unpredictable intervals.

But instead of being exposed by some sound or plant in the messages, he was exposed by the human element. Someone, most likely a detained Al Qaeda operative, outted the courier, thus setting up the chain of events that led to the terror leader's demise on May 1.

One big question remains: is there already another video in the pipeline, one whose courier ultimately provided the final lead? Is a new and final message from Bin Laden imminent in the coming weeks?