The Bin Laden family saga—as reconstructed through accounts of his wives, children, and the compound where he was killed in Abbottabad—offered a portrait of a wanted man living a more domestic and settled life than the image of a global fugitive in perpetual flight suggested, raising enduring questions about what Pakistani authorities knew and when.

The compound in Abbottabad, where bin Laden spent at least five years, was not a spartan hideout. It was a three-story structure with high walls, situated in a relatively affluent neighborhood near Pakistan's premier military academy. Bin Laden lived there with multiple wives and a collection of children, apparently following a routine of sorts—writing, reading, occasionally walking in the compound's garden, and largely avoiding the digital communications that might have revealed his location to signals intelligence.

One of his wives, Amal al-Sadah, described domestic arrangements that spanned multiple residences over the years following the September 11 attacks—at least five locations across Pakistan, a country whose security services denied any knowledge of where the world's most wanted terrorist was hiding.

The gap between what ISI knew and what it was prepared to acknowledge has never been definitively established. American officials spoke publicly of bin Laden's presence in Pakistan without suggesting that Pakistani authorities had provided assistance; privately, the picture was considerably murkier.

The killing on May 2, 2011, left the question of Pakistani complicity or negligence permanently unresolved. Investigations by Pakistani authorities into the security breach—how bin Laden had lived undiscovered for years—produced inconclusive findings that satisfied no one and embarrassed everyone.