KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS REHABILITATED REPUTATION OF US GOVERNMENT, OFFICIALS.

WASHINGTON, DC -- The following information was released by the German Marshall Fund of the United States:

The dust has already started to settle after President Barack Obama's dramatic announcement on Sunday evening that U.S. special forces had killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a late-night raid on a compound outside Abbottabad.

The period since the formal announcement has produced a sizeable - if constantly revised and occasionally conflicting - body of detail about the operation to capture the world's most recognizable terrorist.

In the process, the reputations of several individuals and entities have been rehabilitated.

First of all, the CIA is back. An important feature of the process that culminated in bin Laden's whereabouts being identified was the centrality of human intelligence, or humint as it is known in intelligence parlance.

The key to bin Laden's invisibility was his avoidance of phones and the Internet for communication, and American intelligence officials understood that his courier network could be the only way to track him down.