Braxton Taylor
On May 2, 2011, teams of U.S. Navy SEALs landed in and around a compound in Abbottabad, deep inside Pakistan. Their mission that morning was to capture or kill the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden. The mission was codenamed Operation Neptune Spear, the result of more than a decade of dedicated intelligence gathering. It would lead to his final demise, a burial at sea and the end of an era.
But the hunt for bin Laden began long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that made him the United States’ foremost enemy. The latest three-part installment of Netflix’s acclaimed and engaging documentary show “American Manhunt” follows the pursuit of bin Laden and the 9/11 conspirators, gathering together what might be the most comprehensive set of first-person interviews ever assembled to talk about al-Qaida. This includes the intelligence team that tracked bin Laden for decades and the FBI and CIA spymasters on the ground, all the way to the Navy SEAL who personally shot Bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden began his terror career as part of the mujahideen insurgency against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Before the Red army withdrew from the country, bin Laden had formed al-Qaida as a means to wage jihad in other parts of the world. Widely celebrated for defeating the USSR in the Arab world, he repeatedly butted heads with the ruling family in his home country of Saudi Arabia. It was after U.S. troops began deploying inside Saudi Arabia for the 1990-91 Gulf War that he broke with the kingdom and moved to Sudan. From there, he began his decades-long worldwide terror campaign.
In December 1992, al-Qaida militants bombed the Gold Mohur Hotel in Aden, Yemen. In 1993, the group killed six and injured more than a thousand after bombing the World Trade Center in New York City. While the organization funded militant and terrorist activity in North Africa and Afghanistan, bin Laden continued to personally criticize the ruling Saudi family, which forced the king to revoke his Saudi citizenship. In 1996, international pressure on Sudan forced him to flee to Afghanistan, and he declared war on the United States.
In 1998, terrorists linked to al-Qaida blew up the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The next year, bin Laden would appear on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for the first time. Then in 2000, al-Qaida suicide bombers exploded a small boat filled with C-4 explosives at the hull of the guided missile destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 and wounding 37 more. President Bill Cinton issued the CIA an order to either capture him alive and bring him back to the U.S. to stand trial for the embassy bombing or to outright kill him. Of course, none of that came to pass.
“American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden” chronicles the CIA analysts who tracked his movements and attacks. The team emphasizes its repeated warnings about al-Qaida’s determination to strike inside the United States. It also takes viewers inside the rooms where it happened as officials in the George W. Bush administration try to figure out the best way to respond to the attacks — and the room where Navy SEALs finally brought the world’s most wanted terrorist to justice.
The three-part documentary series “American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden” is streaming on Netflix now.
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