Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr, a 31-year veteran of the CIA and the author of Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, has some thoughts on our ability to answer this question a year ago.
This administration built on work painstakingly pursued for many years before Obama was elected—and without this work, Obama administration officials never would have been in a position to authorize the strike…that resulted in bin Laden’s overdue death.
Some of that work consisted of things President Obama considered more unsavory than assassination.
In 2004, an al-Qaeda terrorist was captured trying to communicate with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi…. That captured terrorist was taken to a secret CIA prison—or “black site….” After being subjected to some “enhanced interrogation techniques”—techniques authorized by officials at the most senior levels of the US government—the detainee became compliant. …he told us many things—including that bin Laden…depended solely on a single courier who went by “Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.”
Culminating, ultimately, in this:
…the CIA was able to discover the true name of the courier. Armed with that information, the agency worked relentlessly to locate that man. Finding him eventually led to tracking down and killing bin Laden.
In sum,
…the trail to bin Laden started in a CIA black site—all of which Obama ordered closed, forever, on the second full day of his administration—and stemmed from information obtained from hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation methods. Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009.
Because Obama Knows Better.
Others also have objected to Obama’s arrogance.