Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN National
Security Analyst, is the author of " Manhunt: The
Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, From 9/11 to
Abbottabad
," from which this article is adapted.
(CNN) -- We climbed the stairs to the third floor,
where Osama bin Laden died early in the morning
of May 2, 2011. I stepped into the bedroom where
he was killed and looked up at the ceiling, where
you could still see the patterns of blood that had
spurted from bin Laden's head when the bullet
fired by a U.S. Navy SEAL tore through the
terrorist leader's face.
The height of the room was low for someone as
tall as bin Laden, who was 6 foot 4.
Outside the bedroom was a small terrace
surrounded by a high wall. Overlooking the
enclosed terrace were large and now broken plate
glass windows that would have provided a lot of
light for bin Laden during the day. In the bedroom in which al-Qaeda's leader finally
was killed, I had expected a frisson of something;
perhaps a sensation like exploring Hitler's bunker
complex beneath the streets of Berlin at the end
of World War II.
Instead, I felt only a mild curiosity. On a shelf in
bin Laden's bedroom was a box of Just For Men
hair dye; in the final years of his life bin Laden
dyed his hair and beard jet black to maintain a
youthful appearance. I also noticed some
medicines like ampicillin, ibuprofen, Nestle energy
glucose strips, Amplicox (a penicillin) and Spasler
P syrup, which has an antispasmodic effect on
the muscles of the gastrointestinal and urogenital
tracts.
I examined bin Laden's tiny bathroom, about the
size of a closet, and noticed that he used a toilet
that was really only a hole in the floor over which
he had to squat to do his business. It's not the
image that one usually associates with the
world's most wanted man. Next door to the bedroom, which he shared with
his much younger Yemeni wife, was bin Laden's
study. Crude bookshelves lined the walls and
another large window overlooked the enclosed
terrace. It was here that bin Laden composed
often mammoth memos to his key lieutenants as
he sought to maintain some measure of control
over his organization, which was now under
intense assault by the United States and its allies.
Some of these memos are being released on
Thursday by West Point.
* * *
In February I secured permission to enter Osama
bin Laden's compound in the northern Pakistani
city of Abbottabad, where he was killed and
where he had lived for the last half-decade of his
life; the first, and only, journalist to do so.
I was escorted by officers of Pakistan's military
intelligence agency, ISI, past checkpoints manned
by armed soldiers who were there to dissuade the
merely curious from approaching the compound.
Arriving at the front gate of the bin Laden
residence, we were joined by a Pakistani Army
captain wearing a sidearm. He would be our
escort. I had been instructed "no photographs."
Clearly, this rule would be enforced were it to
become necessary.
We entered through the main metal gate of the
compound, which opened onto an internal narrow
street with high walls on both sides. We then
turned right into a small field, around a third of an
acre in size, where the residents of the compound
grew crops. This field was enclosed by the
compound's walls on three sides, and on one of
the sides there was a small storage shack for the
harvested crops.
I could see burn marks on one of the outer walls
of the compound where the tail rotor of a
helicopter had clipped the wall and broken off. It
was the stealth Black Hawk helicopter that had
developed mechanical problems during the U.S.
Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden. There were
also burn marks in the field where the downed
chopper was subsequently blown up by the SEALs
as the raid was ending.
On the other side of the compound were concrete
feeding pens where the residents kept cows.
Beyond that was a large garden where they grew
vegetables such as cucumbers. In the vegetable
garden there was a small "hujra" structure that
functioned as a sitting room and that was littered
with cardboard boxes for computer equipment.
The bin Ladens also kept honeybees and rabbits.
On the ground there were scattered cartons of
Quaker Oats and large empty cans of Sasso olive
oil.
On one side of the compound was a self-
contained, walled-off annex area. This is where
bin Laden's trusted courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti,
lived with his wife and four children. In this annex
area was a simple garage where bin Laden's
courier parked his white jeep and red van.
Inside the courier's one-story house, all the
rooms were small and simple. They consisted of a
washroom with a shower, a kitchen, a bedroom
and a storage room. Children's toys were
scattered around the floors of this building and
children's bikes were parked in the storage area.
There were medicine bottles and cough syrup on
shelves in the bathroom and a calendar in the
kitchen that marked Ramadan eating and prayer
times. On the night of the raid, Pakistani officials found
the courier's body lying just outside his bedroom
and behind a locked grey door with windows that
had been shot out. The courier was killed with
two bullets to the chin and his wife, Mariam, was
shot and wounded.
The Pakistani intelligence official guiding me
through the compound said there were no AK-47
bullets found at the scene and he therefore
surmised that the courier had been taken by
surprise and was shot before he could reach for
his AK-47, which was recovered leaning against
the wall of the Kuwaitis' bedroom.
Leaving this annex area we passed through a
metal door in an internal compound wall and
came into a pleasant lawn area, in the middle of
which was a small structure that was used by the
residents as a sun room. Next to this was a
water tank and a bread oven. Dominating the
lawn was the three-story house in which bin
Laden lived with his three wives and a dozen of
his children and grandchildren.
We entered the front door of the house. On the
right was a study and on the left a bedroom. On
the door of this room I saw graffiti, which turned
out to be verses of the Quran.
It was in this room where, after the raid,
Pakistani officials found the courier's brother and
his wife, both shot dead. Officials also found
about a dozen children with their hands tied
together in this ground floor bedroom.
Deeper into the house was a kitchen and two
sizable storage rooms. At the back end of the
ground floor was a room where the bin Laden
family would watch the sole TV in the compound.
In this room was a gas heater that had an
improvised exhaust system attached to it made
from bits of sheet metal hammered together.
At the back of the house was the stairwell.
Blocking the way up the stairs was a massive
yellow iron metal door that sealed off access to
the upper two floors of the house. This gate had
large blast marks on it where the SEALs forced
their way through as they closed in on bin Laden.
Halfway between the ground floor and the second
floor, Pakistani officials found the body of Khalid
bin Laden, bin Laden's 23-year-old son, who was
shot and killed by the SEALs on the staircase.
The SEALs shot to kill or wound most of the
adults they encountered in the compound, killing
four men, one woman and wounding two other
women. Of the 11 adults on the compound (which
included three of bin Laden's adult children:
Khalid, 23, Mariam, 20, and Summiya,18) they
shot seven of them. They did not shoot at bin
Laden's two older wives.
On the second floor of the compound were rooms
for the older wives and for his various children
and grandchildren. Their beds were made from
plywood boards hammered together. As on the
previous floor, there was an improvised system of
metal pipes to remove the exhaust from a gas
heater. In the kitchen of each wife's area there
was a similar improvised exhaust system made
from sheet metal to expel kitchen smells. The
overall effect of all this was of a long-term but
makeshift camping site and the overwhelming
impression I had was one of squalor.
Medicines for indigestion and other ailments
littered the floor and there was a large amount of
broken glass everywhere, testament to the
intensity of the SEAL assault on the compound.
This second floor had a terrace from which there
was a lovely view of snow-capped mountains.
From this terrace one could look down to an area
where a guard dog was once tied and there was a
coop for chickens. In the area where the chickens
were kept I noticed several computer keyboards
strewn about, presumably left there as the SEALs
hurriedly carted off much of bin Laden's computer
equipment.
The image we have of bin Laden in his final years
in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying
beard watching old footage of himself; just
another suburban dad flipping though the
channels with his remote. And in the end, bin
Laden died in a squalid suburban compound
surrounded by his wives and children and far from
the front lines of his holy war.

source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/03/opinion/bergen-bin-laden-lair/index.html?iid=article_sidebar