Osama bin Laden's Courier: The Man Who Led the U.S. to bin Laden

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, the big question is how did the U.S. catch him?

Without internet or phones, Osama's hideout was cut off from the outside world. Not even senior al Qaeda commanders knew his whereabouts. But he still needed a way to get his messages out, and for that he relied on a handful of trusted couriers. It was one courier in particular that proved the lynchpin in Sunday night's operation that killed the al Qaeda leader.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees told CIA interrogators about an especially important courier who went by the name Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti. A series of subsequent interrogations, including one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confirmed al-Kuwaiti's importance. In 2004, al Qaeda operative Hassan Ghul revealed that al Kuwaiti was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al Qaeda's operational commander after Mohammed's arrest. A year later, al-Libi himself was captured, and he protested so adamantly that he'd never heard of al-Kuwaiti that the CIA took it as further evidence that al-Kuwaiti was their man.

According to a 2008 Guantanamo prison document obtained by WikiLeaks, detainees gave interrogators a patchwork of information about the courier. He was a Kuwaiti-born man who helped al Qaeda members and their families find safe havens, sometimes travelled with bin Laden, and may have helped train Maad al Qathani, the alleged “20th hijacker.” Qathani told interrogators that al-Kuwaiti gave him computer training when he worked at al Qaeda's media house in Kandahar. The courier was then “a senior al Qaeda facilitator and subordinate.” The Guantanamo documents also say that Qathani told interrogators that al-Kuwaiti was seen accompanying bin Laden in Tora Bora just before the U.S. lost the al Qaeda leader's trail.