By Fred Burton Since May 2, when U.S. special operations forces crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border and killed Osama bin Laden , international media have covered the raid from virtually every angle. The United States and Pakistan have also squared off over the U.S. violation of Pakistan's sovereign territory and Pakistan's possible complicity in hiding the al Qaeda leader . All this surface-level discussion, however, largely ignores almost 10 years of intelligence development in the hunt for bin Laden. While the cross-border nighttime raid deep into Pakistan was a daring and daunting operation, the work to find the target — one person out of 180 million in a country full of insurgent groups and a population hostile to American activities on its soil — was a far greater challenge.