Extensive surveillance of Osama bin Laden's hideout from a nearby CIA safe house in Abbottabad led to his killing in a Navy SEALs operation, US officials said, a revelation likely to further embarrass Pakistan's spy agency and strain ties.
The US officials, quoted by the Washington Post on Friday, said the safe house was the base for an intelligence-gathering operation that began after bin Laden's compound was discovered last August, and which was so exhaustive that the CIA asked Congress to reallocate tens of millions of dollars to fund it.
"The CIA's job was to find and fix," the Post quoted one US official as saying. "The intelligence work was as complete as it was going to be, and it was the military's turn to finish the target."
US officials told the New York Times that intelligence gathered from computer files and documents seized at his compound showed that bin Laden had for years directly orchestrated al Qaeda attacks from the Pakistani town.
The fact that bin Laden was found in a garrison town -- his compound was a stone's throw away from a major military academy -- has embarrassed Pakistan and the covert raid by US commandos that led to his killing has angered its military.
On Thursday, the Pakistan army threatened to halt counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States, if it conducted another, similar unilateral strike.
A major Islamist party in Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami, called for mass protests on Friday against what it called a violation of sovereignty by the US raid. It also urged the government to end support for US battles against militants.
A senior Pakistani security official also charged that US troops had killed the unarmed al Qaeda leader in "cold blood".
The criticism from Pakistan is likely to fray a relationship that Washington deems vital to defeating the al Qaeda movement that bin Laden led and winning its war in neighboring Afghanistan.
CIA SURVEILLANCE
The CIA had spent several months monitoring bin Laden's hideout, watching and photographing residents and visitors from a rented house nearby, according to US officials quoted in the New York Times and Washington Post.
Observing from behind mirrored glass, CIA officers used cameras with telephoto lenses and infrared imaging equipment to study the compound, and they used sensitive eavesdropping equipment to try to pick up voices from inside the house and to intercept cellphone calls, the New York Times said. A satellite used radar to search for possible escape tunnels.
The US administration has refused to be drawn on details on the raid, but, in a further sign of fractious relations between the allies, senior Pakistani security officials told Reuters that US accounts had been misleading.
In Washington, people familiar with the latest US government reporting on the raid told Reuters on Thursday that only one of four principal targets shot to death by US commandos was involved in any hostile fire.
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