Written by: Sauharda Bajracharya - 26010, Grade VIII
Posted on: 30 September, 2021
The year was 2005, a factory manager in Guangdong, China was walking to a warehouse where a meeting was set to take place. There were men waiting for him there, he didn’t know much about those men but he knew they were important people. Not asking anything he showed them what they wanted, a toy. Those men were pleased with the toy, but for further operation they needed approval from Langley, Virginia. Those men were from the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA in short. This operation, if successful, could save the greatest conflict in modern times. But, who were they targeting? Well, this happened in 2005 but what led to it happened 4 years earlier.
New York, September 11th, 2001 two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. This was done by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda against the United States. The leader of all of this was Osama Bin Laden, who was on the FBI’s wanted list for the bombings of the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The US had invaded Afghanistan in hope of finding Bin Laden but he and the other members of Al-Qaeda ran to Pakistan. After four years of conflict, in 2005 the CIA started gifting out pens, notebooks, toys, etc to kids there. After wars and conflicts, the CIA had to come up with a different idea and so, they took a different step which was unimaginable by the people. They took help from Donald Levine. He was the former business executive at Hasbro who is known for creations such as power rangers, Mr Potato head, Monopoly, Transformers, My little pony and more. They wanted to make a very special tos for this mission, but for this mission they had to go to Guangdong, China. Levine had done business in that region for over 60 years and it was done. The CIA were pleased with the product, the product or the toy was a 12 inch toy of Osama Bin Laden. But it wasn’t an ordinary toy, as I told you earlier, the CIA gifted children pens, notebooks, toys and more. And this Bin Laden toy was also slipped in there. There was a mass production of this toy and it would be given to children on a nationwide scale. This toy was a special toy and was made of heat sensitive material. After the children played with the toy for a long time, the face would melt off and would show a demon face after. This was so that, the children and their parents would get scared and think Bin Laden as a monster. But, when the face would melt off and turn into a demon face, the children would find it super cool. And, the operation was shut down. It was a failed operation and after that, the factory in Guangdong actually produced a few hundred more such toys as part of a mistake. And this was even shipped to Pakistani city Karachi. But, officially there are only 3 of these toys in existence. 2 were found in Doland Levine’s house after his death and the last one is in the possessions of the CIA.
After hundreds of drones, spies, radio controls and tracking devices finally on May 2nd, 2011, Bin Laden was spotted in Abbottabad in Pakistan. A 40 minute raid with 70 commando was led and Bin Laden was finally found and was killed. The man who killed Bin Laden was Senior Chief Officer, Robert O’Neill. He had been involved in more than 400 missions in his lifetime. He had been involved in saving Captain Phillips from pirates and rescuing Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell.
