Osama bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian–born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union, and supported the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Opposed to the United States' foreign policy in the Middle East, Bin Laden declared war on the U.S. in 1996 and advocated attacks targeting US assets in various cuntries, and supervised the execution of September 11 attacks inside the U.S. in 2001.
John Patrick O'Neill was an American counter-terrorism expert who worked as a special agent and eventually a special agent in charge in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1995, O'Neill began to intensely study the roots of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after he assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who was the leader of that plot.
The bin Laden family, also spelled bin Ladin, is a wealthy Hadhrami family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. It is the namesake and controlling shareholder of the Saudi Binladin Group, a multinational construction firm. Following the September 11 attacks, the family became the subject of media attention and scrutiny due to the activities of Osama bin Laden, the former head of al-Qaeda.
On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists took control of four commercial aircraft and used them as suicide weapons in a series of four coordinated acts of terrorism to strike the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and an additional target in Washington, D.C. Two aircraft hit the World Trade Center while the third hit the Pentagon. A fourth plane did not arrive at its target, but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after a passenger revolt. The intended target is believed to have been the United States Capitol. As a result, 2,977 victims were killed, making it the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil, exceeding Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, which killed 2,335 members of the United States Armed Forces and 68 civilians. The effort was carefully planned by al-Qaeda, which sent 19 terrorists to take over Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 aircraft, operated by American Airlines and United Airlines.
John Miller is an American journalist and police official. From 1983 to 1994, he was a local journalist in New York City, before serving as the NYPD's chief spokesman from 1994 to 1995.
Roy Gutman is an American journalist and author.
Claire Shipman is an American television journalist, formerly the senior national correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America. She is married to Jay Carney, President Barack Obama's former White House Press Secretary. She is also Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University. Shipman served as Chair of Columbia's Board of Trustees during the 2024 Pro-Palestine Protests, leading to the deployment of NYPD onto the campus during which over one hundreds students were arrested.
The FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives during the 1990s is a list, maintained for a fifth decade, of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sheila MacVicar is a Canadian television journalist most recently with Al Jazeera America as the host of Compass With Sheila MacVicar and a correspondent for America Tonight.
Brian Elliot Ross is an American investigative journalist who served as the Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News until 2018. He reported for ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline, Good Morning America, 20/20, and ABC News Radio. Ross joined ABC News in July 1994 and was fired in 2018. His investigative reports have often covered government corruption. From 1974 until 1994, Ross was a correspondent for NBC News.
Osama bin Laden, the founder and former leader of al-Qaeda, went into hiding following the start of the War in Afghanistan in order to avoid capture by the United States for his role in the September 11 attacks, and having been on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1999. After evading capture at the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, his whereabouts became unclear, and various rumours about his health, continued role in al-Qaeda, and location were circulated. Bin Laden also released several video and audio recordings during this time.
On May 2, 2011, the United States conducted Operation Neptune Spear, in which SEAL Team Six shot and killed Osama bin Laden at his "Waziristan Haveli" in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden, who founded al-Qaeda and masterminded the September 11 attacks, had been the subject of a United States military manhunt since the beginning of the War in Afghanistan, but escaped to Pakistan—allegedly with Pakistani support—during or after the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. The mission was part of an effort led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating the Special Mission Units involved in the raid. In addition to SEAL Team Six, participating units under JSOC included the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and the CIA's Special Activities Division, which recruits heavily from among former JSOC Special Mission Units.
Abdallah bin Osama bin Mohammed bin 'Awad bin Laden is the son of Osama bin Laden and Osama's first wife, a Syrian woman named Najwa. He is not to be confused with Osama bin Laden's half-brother Abdullah bin Laden or the elder Sheikh Abdullah bin Laden, who died in 2002 at age 75.
At around 9:30 pm on September 11, 2001, George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told President George W. Bush and U.S. senior officials that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center had determined that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation connected the hijackers to al-Qaeda, a militant Salafist Islamist multi-national organization. In a number of video, audio, interview and printed statements, senior members of al-Qaeda have also asserted responsibility for organizing the September 11 attacks.
Pakistan was alleged to have provided support for Osama bin Laden. These claims have been made both before and after Osama was found living in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and was killed by a team of United States Navy SEALs on 2 May 2011. The compound itself was located just half a mile from Pakistan's premier military training academy Kakul Military Academy (PMA) in Abbottabad. In the aftermath of bin Laden's death, American president Barack Obama asked Pakistan to investigate the network that sustained bin Laden. "We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan", Obama said in a 60 Minutes interview with CBS News. He also added that the United States was not sure "who or what that support network was." In addition to this, in an interview with Time magazine, CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that US-officials did not alert Pakistani counterparts to the raid because they feared the terrorist leader would be warned. However, the documents recovered from bin Laden's compound 'contained nothing to support the idea that bin Laden was protected or supported by the Pakistani officials'. Instead, the documents contained criticism of Pakistani military and future plans for attack against the Pakistani military installations.
The code name Geronimo controversy came about after media reports that the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden used the code name "Geronimo" to refer to either the overall operation, to fugitive bin Laden himself or to the act of killing or capturing bin Laden.
The FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives during the 2010s is a list, maintained for a seventh decade, of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. At any given time, the FBI is actively searching for 12,000 fugitives. During the 2010s, 29 new fugitives were added to the list. By the close of the decade a total of 523 fugitives had been listed on the Top Ten list, of whom 488 have been captured or located.
Eric Justin Toth, also known under the alias David Bussone, is an American former fugitive and sex offender convicted of possessing and producing child pornography. On April 10, 2012, Toth replaced Osama bin Laden on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list as the 495th fugitive to be placed on that list by the FBI. One alleged reason he was chosen for the list is that his distinctive appearance—he is tall and thin, with a mole under his left eye—would make it hard for him to hide if his case became well publicized. Toth was captured in Esteli, Nicaragua on April 10, 2013 and extradited on April 22, 2013, to the United States to face trial.
Len Tepper is an American investigative journalist previously serving as executive director, CBS News Investigations at CBS News.
James Gordon Meek is an American former ABC News senior producer and senior counter-terrorism advisor to the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. During his time as a journalist, Meek held prominent positions covering the justice system, military, and foreign intelligence desks.
