Ahead of 9/11 commemorations, National Security Agency reveals details of its role in hunt for Osama bin Laden

The National Security Agency is revealing aspects it never disclosed before about its role in helping the U.S. government track down Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda founder and terrorist who orchestrated numerous deadly strikes on U.S. and Western targets including, most notoriously, the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In a new podcast series called "No Such Podcast" that debuted this week, current and former senior NSA officials who were involved in the decade-long search for bin Laden after 9/11 describe how the highly secretive operation unfolded before culminating in the 2011 raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Bin Laden had fled.

"I remember late night meetings in the fall of 2001, we'd sit around a table and say, 'How do we find him?'" recounts Jon Darby, former NSA director of operations, according to a transcript of the first episode released by the agency.  "And one of the early theories was a courier, somebody that's going to be taking care of him. But that was 2001."