The Compound That Gave Pakistan No Excuse: A Mile From the Military Academy

The most damning fact about bin Laden's hideout was its address.

The compound in Abbottabad stood roughly a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy — the country's equivalent of Britain's Sandhurst, an institution its army chief visits for graduation parades. Bin Laden wasn't hiding in a cave in Waziristan. He was living in a suburb known for retired military officers, inside a military cantonment, within earshot of the institution that trains Pakistan's army leadership.

The house itself told its own story. Built about a decade earlier by a man locals described as a Pashtun from Waziristan — the area was nicknamed "Waziristan Mansion" — it was a fortress pretending to be a residence: roughly 3,000 square yards, walls twelve to fourteen feet high topped with barbed wire, two security gates, no telephone line and no internet connection running in, and residents who burned their trash instead of putting it out.

The night of the raid, helicopters woke the neighborhood around 11:30 p.m. An IT consultant in Abbottabad, unknowingly, tweeted that a helicopter was hovering overhead — becoming the world's first live-tweeter of the operation. One of the American helicopters clipped a wall and had to be destroyed on the ground; the rest got in and out in about forty minutes.

Pakistani troops arrived after it was over and sealed the area. The official distance from the military academy would be debated — locals said a few hundred meters, the military said four kilometers — but the uncomfortable question survived every version: in a cantonment town, in a fortress, for years — who could possibly not have known?