Snowden Leaks: Satellites, Drones, Cell Phone Tracking Used In Osama Bin Laden Raid
8/30/2013 6:13:16 AM
Buried in the latest revelations from Edward Snowden come new details on how the intelligence community carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The latest documents, published Thursday in the Washington Post, reveal classified details of how the intelligence community, with over 100,000 employees, spends its budget. Since 2007, the government has released the total amount allotted to the government’s 16 spy agencies each year in the aggregate, but until now there were no public details on how that money was spent. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013 provides key insights into how the intelligence community has changed and expanded since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
This budget blueprint, which represents the requests made to the intelligence communities in Congress in February 2012 but does include any changes that Congress may have subsequently made, include among its notable revelations details of how the government used everything from mobile phone tracking to drones to prepare for and carry out the bin Laden raid in Abbottabat, Pakistan in the spring of 2011.
In the lead-up to the raid, cell phone tracking by the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic spying arm, became on important piece of evidence leading to bin Laden’s whereabouts. The NSA was able to track calls from al Qaeda operatives by identifying calling patterns. The Central Intelligence Agency was then able to hone in on the location of one of those phones, which led to the Abbottabad compound.
The latest documents, published Thursday in the Washington Post, reveal classified details of how the intelligence community, with over 100,000 employees, spends its budget. Since 2007, the government has released the total amount allotted to the government’s 16 spy agencies each year in the aggregate, but until now there were no public details on how that money was spent. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013 provides key insights into how the intelligence community has changed and expanded since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
This budget blueprint, which represents the requests made to the intelligence communities in Congress in February 2012 but does include any changes that Congress may have subsequently made, include among its notable revelations details of how the government used everything from mobile phone tracking to drones to prepare for and carry out the bin Laden raid in Abbottabat, Pakistan in the spring of 2011.
In the lead-up to the raid, cell phone tracking by the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic spying arm, became on important piece of evidence leading to bin Laden’s whereabouts. The NSA was able to track calls from al Qaeda operatives by identifying calling patterns. The Central Intelligence Agency was then able to hone in on the location of one of those phones, which led to the Abbottabad compound.