The tip, the raid, the reveal: The takedown of al-Baghdadi
:ASHI1 T21 The helicopters flew low and fast into the night, ferrying U.S. special forces to a compound where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hiding in Syria. Half a world away, resident Donald Trump watched the raid in real time via a video link as troops blasted into the hideout and sent the most-wanted militant running the last steps of his life.
The daring raid was the culmination of years of steady intelligence-gathering work and hours of hurry-up planning once :ashington got word that al-Baghdadi would be at a compound in northwestern Syria.
The night unfolded with methodical precision and unexpected turns. This reconstruction is based on the first-blush accounts of Trump and other administration officials eager to share the details of how the U.S. snared its top target, as well observations from startled villagers who had no idea al-Baghdadi was in their midst.
(vents developed quickly once the :hite House learned on Thursday there was a high probability” that al-Baghdadi would be at an Idlib province compound.
By Friday, Trump had military options on his desk.
By Saturday morning, the administration at last had actionable intelligence” it could exploit.
There was no hint of that interior drama as Trump headed to Camp David on Friday night to celebrate the th wedding anniversary of daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Then he was off to 9irginia on a brisk fall Saturday for a round at one of his golf courses.
He teed off with Major League Baseball Commissioner 5ob Manfred, in town for the :orld Series, and Sens. Lindsey raham and David erdue.
Trump got back to the :hite House at p.m. By 5 p.m., he was in a suit in the Situation 5oom in the basement of the :est :ing to monitor the raid. They named it after Kayla Mueller, an American humanitarian worker raped and murdered by al-Baghdadi.
The rest of :ashington had its focus on ame of the :orld Series about to get underway a few miles away at 1ationals ark.
Moments after the :hite House team had gathered, U.S. aircraft, mostly twin-rotor CH- helicopters, took off from Al-Asad air base in western Iraq.
:ithin hours, al-Baghdadi was dead.
The first inkling that something was afoot came when villagers saw helicopters swooping low on the hori on.
:e went out in the balcony to see and they started shooting, with automatic rifles. So we went inside and hid,” said an unidentified villager. 1ext came a large explosion Trump said soldiers blasted a hole in the side of a building because they feared the entrance might have been booby-trapped. Al-Baghdadi fled into a network of underground bunkers and tunnels that snaked through the compound.
The stout, bearded militant leader wore a suicide vest and dragged along three children as he fled from the American troops.
Trump said that as U.S. troops and their dogs closed in, the militant went whimpering and crying and screaming all the way” to his death.
He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down,” Trump said. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children.”
Al-Baghdadi’s body was mutilated in the blast, and the tunnel caved in on him. To get to his corpse, troops had to dig through debris.
There wasn’t much left,” Trump said, but there are still substantial pieces that they brought back.”
That’s when the military raid turned into a forensics operation and the special forces had come prepared.
They had brought along samples of al-Baghdadi’s D1A.
The soldiers who conducted the raid thought the man who fled looked like al-Baghdadi, but that wasn’t enough. 9arious accounts had heralded his death in the past, only for him to surface yet again.
This time there could be no doubt.
Lab technicians conducted an onsite D1A test to make sure and within 5 minutes of his death, positively identified the target.
It was him,” Trump said. Al-Baghdadi’s body wasn’t all they retrieved.
Trump said U.S. troops remained in the compound for about two hours after al-Baghdadi’s death and recovered highly sensitive material about the Islamic State group, including information about its future plans.
After the American troops retreated, U.S. fighter jets fired six rockets at the house, leveling it.
Trump hinted of the successful military operation late Saturday by tweeting obliquely that something very big has just happened ” :hite House spokesman Hogan idley announced the president would make a major statement” Sunday morning.
That sent reporters in :ashington and the Middle (ast scrambling, and news organi ations soon confirmed that U.S. forces believed they had killed America’s most-wanted man.
Two top Democrats House Speaker 1ancy elosi and 5ep. Adam Schiff, who heads the House intelligence committee complained they didn’t get a heads-up from Trump about the operation.
Trump didn’t trust them to keep it secret.
:ashington is a leaking machine,” Trump said. In this case, he said, there were no leaks, no nothing. The only people that knew were the few people that I dealt with.”