Mike Baker on How the SEALs Identified Bin Laden: "Look For the Tallest Dude in the Room"

Who better to talk to today about Pakistan revealing the identity of the CIA chief in Islamabad than former CIA operative Mike Baker, who was booked on today’s program because Imus has the best producers in the world? (Or, the luckiest ones.)
 
Baker, who spent 14 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, was not surprised that Pakistan, obviously peeved that the U.S. killed Osama Bin Laden on their soil and without their knowledge, would leak the CIA chief’s name to local media. 
 
“We have had a dysfunctional relationship with the Pakistanis for years now,” Baker said, and noted the importance of bearing in mind, “They’ve got their national interests and we’ve got ours. It’s not often that they actually converge.”
 
He feels certain that at least some individuals within the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, were aware Bin Laden was in country, but that his presence was a closely-guarded secret that would never have been shared with the U.S.
 
“They have proven to be very capable when they want to be,” Baker said of the ISI. “They can manage to keep their yaps shut.”
 
Kind of like the U.S. did over the eight or so years that it took to get to Bin Laden. What began as a tip indicating the alias of Bin Laden’s most trusted courier in 2003 turned into an actual identity in 2007, followed by a general location in 2009, and then one particular house in Abbottabad in 2010. Imus wondered if rumors of a CIA safe house near the Bin Laden compound were true, but Baker, the consummate professional, would not comment directly, saying only that “one of the first things you would look to do is try to identify whether you’ve got a potential observational post in the area.”
 
Former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens told Imus last week that the SEAL team conducting the operation to get Bin Laden would have been 100 percent sure that he was in the house, but President Obama confessed recently that it was more like 45-55 percent.
 
“The truth is there in the middle,” Baker said, pointing out that “it was close enough to warrant the risk versus gain.”
 
As for how the SEALs would have identified Bin Laden once inside, Baker giggled and said, “Not to oversimplify it, but you look for the tallest dude in the room.” More seriously, he noted that the SEALs worked “nonstop” on how to quickly identify Bin Laden in chaotic, dark, hurried circumstances. “You’re trying to make decisions on a split-second basis,” he said. “But then again, that’s what SEAL teams do.”
 
Bin Laden’s death has raised some controversy over whether enhanced interrogation techniques (read: torture) are a valuable tool in catching high-value terrorist targets. “You look at this as a marathon,” Baker, a proponent of the methods, said. “I’d say the information we got from the detainees in that program probably got us the first few miles, and then it was the very long, painful, investigative and intelligence process over the next few years that got us to Abbottabad.”
 
Besides, as Imus pointed out, “At least it’s fun!”
 
But not as fun as poring through the hordes of information gleaned from last Sunday’s raid on Bin Laden’s compound. The SEAL team took phones, computers, hard drives, and paperwork that Bakes believes “could be significantly damaging, particularly in the short term, to leadership in Al-Qaeda.”
 
Here’s hoping.
 
-Julie Kanfer