Zero Dark Thirty

***Zero Dark Thirty*** is a 2012 American political action-thriller film.

## Synopsis

A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.

## Plot

Maya is a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst, recruited "out of high school" around 1999, tasked with finding the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In 2003 she is stationed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. She and fellow officer Dan, attend the blacksite interrogations of Ammar, a detainee with suspected links to several of the 2001 hijackers in the September 11 attacks, who is subjected to approved torture interrogation techniques. Ammar provides unreliable information on a suspected attack in Saudi Arabia, but does reveal to Maya the previously unknown name of the personal courier for bin Laden, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Other detainee intelligence connects courier traffic by Abu Ahmed between Abu Faraj al-Libbi and bin Laden. In 2005, Faraj denies knowing about a courier named Abu Ahmed; she interprets this as an attempt by Faraj to conceal the importance of Abu Ahmed.

In 2009 during the Camp Chapman attack, Maya's fellow officer and friend Jessica is killed. On the same day a case manager that liked the Abu Ahmed lead, shares with her an interrogation with a Jordanian detainee claiming to have personally buried Abu Ahmed in 2001. Maya learns what the CIA was told five years earlier, that Morocco caught Ibrihim Sayeed traveling under the name of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Realizing her lead may be alive, Maya contacts Dan, now a senior officer at the CIA headquarters. She speculates that the CIA's photograph of "Abu Ahmed" is that of his brother, Habeeb, who was killed in Afghanistan. Maya says that their beards and native clothes make all of the brothers look alike. This would explain Ammar's account of Abu Ahmed's "death" in 2001.

Maya wants the telephone number of Ibrihim Sayeed's mother, and she gets it from a Kuwaiti prince for the price of a Lamborghini. CIA operatives use electronic methods to pinpoint a caller in a vehicle who persistently exhibits tradecraft behaviors that delay confirmation of his identity. The vehicle is physically tracked to a large urban compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, near the Pakistan Military Academy. Gunmen attack Maya while she is in her vehicle; the action indicates to the agency that her cover is blown, so she is recalled to Washington, D.C.

When the compound is put under surveillance, the habits and culture of the inhabitants are analyzed but no conclusive photographic identification of bin Laden is obtained. The President's National Security Advisor tasks the CIA with creating a plan to capture or kill bin Laden if he can be found. Two stealth helicopters from Area 51 are flown by the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment to enter Pakistan, insert members of DEVGRU and the CIA's SAD/SOG and raid the compound. Before briefing President Barack Obama, the CIA Director holds a meeting of his senior officers, who assess that bin Laden being there is a chance of 60–80%, rather than another high-value target. Maya, also in attendance, uses the "habits" intelligence to shore-up her conclusion to 100% that bin Laden is there.

The raid is approved and is executed on May 2, 2011. One of the helicopters crashes, the SEALs gain entry and kill a number of people within the compound—among them a man in the building who is believed to be bin Laden. At a U.S. base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Maya visually confirms the identity of the corpse. Maya is last seen boarding a military transport to return to the U.S. and sitting in its vast interior as its only passenger. The pilot asks her where she wants to go, but she does not reply.

As the plane's cargo-hold door closes, Maya begins to cry softly.