George quotes from Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

George

I want to make something absolutely clear. If you thought there was some secret cell somewhere working al-Qaeda, I want you to know that you are wrong! This is it. There's no working group coming to the rescue. There's nobody else hidden away on some other floor. This is just us. And we are FAILING. We're spending billions of dollars. People are dying. We're still no closer to defeating our enemy. They attacked us on land in '98, by sea in 2000, and from the air in 2001. They murdered three thousand of our citizens in cold blood, they've slaughtered our forward deployed. And what the **** have we done about it? What have we done? We have twenty leadership names and we've only eliminated four of them. I want targets! Do your **** jobs! Bring me people to kill!

They're gonna ask: "If bin Laden is at the end of this rainbow, is the Pak military with him?

Maya

The question isn't "Are the Paks protecting bin Laden?" The question is "Would he allow himself to be protected by the Paks?" I mean, why would he trust them? He tried to kill Musharaf. [CIA Director and his Deputies walk in]

Go ahead.

If you take a right out of Islamabad and drive about forty-five minutes north, you'll find yourself here, in Abbottabad. A middle class community, some ex-military, not particularly interesting to us. Except we did find this compound, which is unique. We got a sixteen foot wall around the entire perimeter, the windows are blacked out. It's a fortress.

Can't you put a camera somewhere, in the trees, to get a look into the main house?

George

It will probably be discovered.

We have to get a look into the house. Alright, what's this? This cluster of buildings down here?

George

The PMA — the Pakistan Military Academy. It's their West Point.

And how close is that to the house?

George

About a mile.

Maya

4,221 feet. It's close to eight-tenths of a mile.

Who are you?

Maya

I'm the mother****er who found this place, sir.

Really. [pause] I want to know more about who's inside this house by the end of the week. [CIA Director and his Deputies leave, leaving only Maya and Steve in the room]

"Mother****er?" Good.

I actually tried to kill this program a couple of times. They've gone through an initial round of testing, and they have excellent radar defeat - we just haven't tested them with people in them yet. You'll notice these stealth panels, similar to what we use on the B2. The rotors have been muffled with decibel killers. It's slower than a Black Hawk and lacks the offense. But it can hide.

Excuse me. Can I ask a question? What do we need this for in Libya? Gaddafi's anti-air is virtually non-existent.

George

Gentlemen, can I have your attention? My name is George, I run the Af-Pak division at CTC, and I'm primary on this for the Agency. This is a title fifty operation. Some of us have worked together before. This is a good one. Maya, do you want to brief them?

Maya

There are two narratives about the location of Osama bin Laden. The one that you're most familiar with is that UBL is hiding in a cave in the Tribal Areas, that he's surrounded by a large contingent of loyal fighters. But that narrative is pre-9/11 understanding of UBL. The second narrative is that he's living in a city. Living in a city with multiple points of egress and entry, and with access to communications so that he can keep in touch with the organization. You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave. We have located an individual we believed, based on detainee reporting, is bin Laden's courier. He's living in a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. And we assess that one of the other occupants of the house is UBL.

Excuse me. You got an intel source on the ground?

Maya

No.

No? Okay, so how do you know it's bin Laden? Cause the truth is, we've been on this op before, it was '07, and it wasn't bin Laden, and we lost a couple of guys.

Maya

Totally understand, Bin Laden uses a courier to interact with the outside world. By locating the courier, we've located bin Laden.

That's really the intel? That's it?

Maya

Quite frankly, I didn't even want to use you guys, with your dip and your velcro and all your gear bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb. But people didn't believe in this lead enough to drop a bomb, so they're using you guys as canaries, on the theory that if bin Laden isn't there, you can sneak away and no one will be the wiser. But bin Laden is there, and you're going to kill him for me.

I'm about to go look the President in the eye, and what I'd like to know, no **** bullshit, is where everyone stands on this thing. Now, very simply, is he there, or is he not **** there?

We all come at this through the filter of our own past experiences. I remember "Iraq WMD" very clearly, I fronted that, and I can tell you the case for that was much stronger than this case.

A ****in' yes or a no.

We don't deal in certainty, we deal in probability. I'd say there's a sixty percent probability he's there.

I concur. Sixty percent.

George

I'm at eighty percent. Their OPSEC is what convinces me.

You guys ever agree on anything?

Dan

Well, I agree with sixty, we're basing this mostly on detainee reporting and I spent a bunch of time in those rooms. Who knows? I'd say it's a soft sixty, sir. I'm virtually certain there's some high value target there, I'm just not sure it's bin Laden.

This is a cluster-****, isn't it?

I'd like to know what Maya thinks...

We're all incorporating her assessment into ours...

Maya

A hundred percent he's there. Okay, fine, ninety-five percent because I know how certainty freaks you guys out, but it's a hundred.