9781422277164

This peaceful shot of Abbottabad, Pakistan, belies the action that the city saw in 2010.

organization’s leaders. If al-Kuwaiti was visiting the house in Abbottabad, CIA agents surmised, someone important must be living there. Who could it be? It was hard for the CIA and its operatives to see inside the three-sto- ry white house—the largest in the neighborhood. The building sat on a very large, triangular plot ringed by a cinder-block wall that towered 18 feet (5.5 m) in some places. Intelligence officials used spies on the ground and satellites in space to get more information. Those living in the house seemed mysterious. They burned their garbage instead of having it picked up. No one ever visited and no one answered the door. The house had no phone line or Internet connection.

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