What Was Obscured in Obama's Situation Room?

One image is circulating the world: From inside the U.S. president’s situation room, where the attack against bin Laden was being followed. But what was lying there on the table?

On May 1 the U.S.’ top leadership was following the operation against Osama bin Laden in the White House’s situation room as if hypnotized. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose hand is visible, has two photographs in front of her.

The last minutes before access.

Pete Souza, Obama’s official photographer, took photographs of the scene and put the picture on the Internet image hosting website Flickr. This is part of the president’s candid openness. The caption tells the reader that “a classified document seen in this photograph” has been “obscured.” It refers to the upper, ocher-colored photo. Below it, a second, unedited picture is visible.

If only people could learn how to keep secrets. If the image is greatly enlarged and rotated clockwise, Osama bin Laden’s compound — or more precisely its northwestern section, the wall around the refuse dump — can be seen in the second picture. A gate and poplar can be seen on the wall; the resolution is outstanding. The arms of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency — the operating authority of U.S. spy satellites — is emblazoned on the top left corner of the photograph. The wall and the trees appear in a light that seems strangely unaltered, with a strong white contrast, which is characteristic of so-called SAR images — radar shots with a Synthetic Aperture Radar.

In fact, for clear snapshots with a hyper frequency wave from space, a radar camera needs to have a kilometer-wide aperture. But if a smaller camera can securely focus on the object to be photographed during the flyover, an aperture of such a size can be synthetically created, hence the description. It is possible to photograph through clouds and at night with SAR. However, producing radar images with only a few centimeters resolution is top secret technology. The United States has spent billions of dollars on satellites that can do it and the result lies here in front of Hillary Clinton on the table.

Bin Laden’s death renders the world speechless.

Insufficiently pixelated photos are decipherable if you reduce the size of them so much that formations become at least roughly recognizable again, as was the case with the ocher-colored photograph. If the image is greatly shrunk and placed next to the satellite image of bin Laden’s place of death, it shows that the secret photo is highly likely to be a daytime shot of the compound. The southern office wing and the living quarters are both clearly visible. The photograph was taken at a north-northwestern angle. If it was a satellite photo, we now know that the resolution of optical cameras used by U.S. intelligence services is quite impressive.