War on terror

The Former Head of the CIA on Managing the Hunt for Bin Laden

May 2 marks the fifth anniversary of the operation that killed the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. His death was the culmination of a global manhunt that lasted more than a decade and assumed extreme urgency after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The Bin Laden operation was a seminal moment in the campaign to decimate Al Qaeda’s leadership. Three prior CIA directors, and countless senior officials, operations officers, analysts, technical experts, and support teams carried out this campaign, developing important pieces of intelligence along the way. But when we arrived at Langley in early 2009, there were no solid leads on Bin Laden’s whereabouts. The trail had gone cold.

The hunt for Bin Laden from 2009–2010 yielded many lessons about managing a large, complex organization that is focused on varied missions under intense pressure. These management lessons, we believe, are relevant far beyond Langley.