Snowden files show Pentagon conducted DNA tests after bin-Laden's death

United States intelligence documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden now confirm that US authorities positively identified the body of Osama bin Laden with a DNA test shortly after his May 2011 execution.

According to the Washington Post, top-secret documents provided by the national security whistleblower revealed that a DNA sample was taken from bin Laden’s body around eight hours after he was killed inside his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound.

The sample, the Post reported, “provided a conclusive match” between the DNA taken from the corpse and other bin Laden intelligence.

When the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request after the May 2, 2011 killing, the Pentagon responded that it had no such testing documents in its possession. Post reporters Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman wrote Thursday that information about the test was included within the secretive “black budget” document leaked by Mr. Snowden and published in part by the paper this week.

The Post has published only a portion of a lengthy budget summary detailing the funds requested by the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and others for fiscal year 2013 through a budget that has never before been publically disclosed.

As RT reported on Thursday, the budget summary reveals that the CIA, NSA and other agencies requested $52.6 billion in federal funding that would have likely remained unreported had the document not been leaked.

Snowden, 30, quit his job with contractor Booz Allen Hamilton earlier this year and fled to Hong Kong, then Russia, after releasing a trove of top-secret files to journalists at the Post and the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

According to the Post’s latest reporting, intelligence documents supplied by Snowden provide a number of details about the Navy SEAL raid in 2011 that has largely been shrouded in secrecy since the moment President Barack Obama confirmed the killing of the former al-Qaeda leader more than two years ago.

Excerpts of the black budget, the Post reported, reveal that the CIA was able to pinpoint the geographic location of bin Laden’s Pakistani compound by tracking mobile phone calls linked to al-Qaeda operatives along with other intelligence gathered over the course of several months.

Whitlock and Gellman wrote that the National Reconnaissance Office performed over 387 “collects” of intelligence ahead of the raid which provided details “critical to prepare for the mission and contributed to the decision to approve execution.” Additionally, the US relied on an advanced stealth drone to collected private conversations from the sky as well as a fleet of satellites.

After bin Laden was assassinated, intelligence agencies also reportedly invested $2.5 million in emergency funds to do forensics on computer files collected from evidence removed from bin Laden’s compound. According to the Post, the US purchased 36 computer workstations to assess that intelligence.