CIA Officials Locate Osama bin Laden's Compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan

The National Security Agency reportedly tracked phone calls between the courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's relatives in the Persian Gulf to all numbers in Pakistan.

And NSA surveillance eventually tracked Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's location in Pakistan via one such phone call, the AP writes. Last August, they tracked al-Kuwaiti as he drove from Peshawar to the Abbottabad compound--and as analysts inventoried the facility's striking security features they became convinced that it housed a high-level al Qaeda figure.

American intelligence officials said Sunday night that they finally learned the courier’s real name four years ago, but that it took another two years for them to learn the general region where he operated.

Still, it was not until August that they tracked him to the compound in Abbottabad, a medium-sized city about an hour’s drive north of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

In August 2010, "we found their home in Abbottabad," not in a cave, not right along the Afghanistan border, but in an affluent suburb less than 40 miles from the capital.