NY Times Tells Spy-Thrilling Story of CIA Role in Bin Laden Death

The New York Times has a great story this morning detailing more of the work of our CIA neighbors in the death of Osama Bin Laden Sunday.

The story details a major break the Agency got last July then spins a spy-thrilling tale of how small clues were painstakingly pieced together. The story also details how,

"On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, the officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation.

"Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program," the story said.

"The raid was the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, including the interrogation of C.I.A. detainees in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where sometimes what was not said was as useful as what was. Intelligence agencies eavesdropped on telephone calls and e-mails of the courier’s Arab family in a Persian Gulf state and pored over satellite images of the compound in Abbottabad to determine a “pattern of life” that might decide whether the operation would be worth the risk," the story says.

It's a lengthy story that you won't stop reading until the end. The story includes details of how decisions were made for an helicopter assault by Navy Seals and how the Seals carried the operation.