… tens of billions spent to capture himWASHINGTON (AP) – When one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world’s most wanted terrorist.That phone call, recounted yesterday by a U.S. official, ended years-long search for bin Laden’s personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led U.S. intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death.The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden’s vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaeda foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,Cheap China Jerseys, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden’s couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.It came at great cost, though. The successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound came nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attacks he engineered.Over those ten years, the U.S. spent tens of billions of dollars on intelligence operations and aiding the Pakistani military in the hunt for bin Laden.Nearly $5.3 billion in aid was funneled to Pakistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indirectly funding the rise of the TalibanThe US also gave some $5.4 billion in military aid to Pakistan from 2002 to 2008 to help that country’s military patrol the Afghan border where the Taliban and al Qaeda have been known to shelter.One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee,Wholesale Nike NFL Jerseys, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaeda’s operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.If they could find that courier, they’d find bin Laden.The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticised for their involvement in a programme that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier’s real name, which officials are not disclosing. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA’s sources didn’t know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. The courier was located somewhere away from bin Laden’s hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch him.In August 2010, the courier unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.Despite that uncertainty,Cheap Jerseys China, intelligence officials realised this could represent the best chance ever to get to bin Laden. They decided not to sha