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Dr. Shakil Afridi: How a Valuable U.S. Intelligence Asset Became a Liability

Dr. Shakil Afridi: How a Valuable U.S. Intelligence Asset Became a Liability

Street scene in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. People in traditional clothes and cars share the main road (national road no. 35). Built-up hills in the background. Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad hills in May 2011.

EDITORIAL/COMMENTARY — The house had been watched for quite some time.  The home in Abbottabad was just about a mile from the Pakistani Military Academy and was significantly bigger than others in the area, surrounded by barbed wire fence and equipped with security gates. U.S. officials believed that the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden had taken up residence there, but they needed proof.  Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi could get it.

The intelligence collection operation would be challenging.  There was no internet or telephone service and residents of the house burned their trash rather than have it picked up like most of the other houses in the area.  DNA would be hard to retrieve.  But the CIA had an idea and soon the doctor from Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province began conducting a vaccination drive in the area, secretly collecting DNA samples in an effort to try and collect the proof that would eliminate any doubt about whether bin Laden was living there.

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