A Kabul Safe House – How CIA Identified, Killed Al Qaeda Chief Zawahiri

A senior administration official told reporters how the CIA identified and killed Al Qaeda chief Zawahiri at a Kabul safe house on July 30.

The biggest blow to the terrorist organization since the assassination of its founder Osama bin Laden in 2011 occurred over the weekend when Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in an US strike in Afghanistan.

A senior administration official told reporters that Zawahiri had been hiding for years and that the operation to find and kill him was the result of "careful patient and persistent" work by the counter-terrorism and intelligence community.

Zawahiri had been thought to be in the tribal region of Pakistan or within Afghanistan prior to the US disclosure.

The officer, who spoke on the record under the condition of anonymity, gave the following information about the operation:

 For several years, the US government had been aware of a network that it assessed supported Zawahiri, and over the past year, follow...

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