Hunt for answers leaves some questions untouched

TV REVIEW

It was the story that came from nowhere last May, even though it had first made international headlines over a decade previously.
When news filtered through the news vine that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, everyone stopped for a moment in a, “What? Had

they still been chasing him?” moment.
The centre of the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden became public enemy number one overnight with pledge after pledge offered by US government officials at the time that he would be found and brought to justice.
Two invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq later, there was still no sign of the elusive Bin Laden. Then, just as he began to slip from public psyche, low and behold they go and find him, in Pakistan of all places, although I could have sworn everyone knew he was there since early 2002.
No matter, cause what made ITV1’s The Hunt for Bin Laden so good was not his capture but rather the behind the scenes efforts, or lack thereof, to find him.
Brook Lapping’s documentary (previous efforts include The Death of Yugoslavia and Putin, Russia and the West) offered an interesting reminder that Bin Laden was a priority long before 2001 and that the US had in fact been tracking him since the early ’90s.
I had almost forgotten that he was held responsible (although it was never proven) for the bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 and the deaths of 18 US troops in Somalia. There was a Bin Laden unit in place, a cross-organisation effort from the CIA and FBI, since 1996, yet somehow he still managed to remain undetected until 2011.
The documentary delved into the ineffective attempts to stop him, first under Clinton’s reign and then Bush. When Bin Laden orchestrated the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, claiming 258 lives, the response was an ineffective cruise missile strike.
When, in December 2001, just three months after 9/11, US troops had backed Bin Laden into the Tora Bora mountains on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, they left their quarry to be taken in by their Afghan allies and fewer than 100 special forces soldiers.
It questioned had more American troops been involved would Bin Laden’s reach have ended there and then? Instead he escaped into Pakistan and went on the run for another decade.
The defence – Donald Rumsfeld claimed no one told him more troops were needed.
Then president George W Bush boldly declared to journalists in 2002 that he didn’t “spend that much time on him,” when asked how the search was going. Langley (that’s CIA HQ to you and me) revealed, however, that he was very much on Bush’s mind and that the first question he asked them at every intelligence briefing was “where is he?”
Another counter-terrorism specialist noted an order from on high which read – “Find Bin Laden, kill him, cut off his head, bring it to me and I’ll put it on dry ice and take it to the President”. Strong words that would prove utterly hollow. 
The programme culminated in the commando operation in Pakistan last May that ended with Bin Laden’s death but most of that footage had been seen previously when released late last year. The main thing I wanted to hear was Pakistan’s explanation as to how he had remained in plain sight in their back garden for almost 10 years.
That story, however, remained untold.

One to watch: It is being billed as, yawn, ‘the new Lost’. I don’t see how every new show coming on stream these days can be the new Lost. There was only one and it wasn’t even that good after season two. But anyway, following hot on the heels of that other ‘new Lost’ programme Alcatraz (of which there is already rumblings of cancellation State-side) is Awake.
It stars Jason Isaacs, familiar to most as Lucius Malfoy on Harry Potter. This time though he’s ditched the wand and white tresses but keeps with the weird and outer-worldly theme. Isaacs plays Detective Michael Britten, whose family is in a car accident. Thereafter, Britten exists in two realities: one where his wife survived the crash and one where his son survived. Which reality is real, if any, or is it a Life on Mars scenario and he is in fact the one who is dead? The mind boggles.
I’m already nervous about this as there are hints coming from across the pond that it’s not likely to get past its first series and thus be consigned to the immensely long ‘what could have been’ line of ‘new Lost’ predecessors’ demise.  It premieres on Sky Atlantic on Friday at 10pm.