Brooklyn Yard Sign Symbolizes Hunt for Bin Laden

On this day in 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a raid of his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The 9/11 Memorial Museum collection is home to several artifacts related to this event, including the artifact described below, which is currently on view in the special exhibition Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden.

Today at 2 p.m. EST, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum will host a conversation between Robert Cardillo, former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Cliff Chanin, Executive Vice President and Deputy Director for Museum Programs, about the nearly decade-long pursuit of bin Laden.

On May 1, 2011, news of the death of Osama bin Laden quickly made its way across the world. Hours after a special team of U.S. Navy SEALs located and eliminated bin Laden, President Barack Obama addressed the nation and people gathered to celebrate in Times Square.

A few miles away in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, artist Cheryl Stewart had a sign in her front yard that read, “Where is Osama bin Laden?” A tally on the sign counted the number of days the world’s most elusive terrorist remained free.

Stewart had witnessed the attack on the Twin Towers from the roof of her Brooklyn home. She remembered seeing the plume of black smoke rising above lower Manhattan and into Brooklyn. After the towers fell, she feared for the future of New York's invincible spirit and was worried the city lay vulnerable to further terrorist attacks.

Stewart put up the sign in 2003 as a form of silent protest. She was frustrated that efforts to locate and apprehend bin Laden faltered while the Iraq War raged on. She got the idea for the sign from tabloid coverage of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, which included a counter clock that had reached 444 days before those 52 U.S. citizens were finally released.

By the time bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, Stewart’s sign read: “9 years 232 days since 9-11-01.” Sometime after midnight on the night of bin Laden’s death, a passerby scrawled “dead” on a piece of torn yellow notebook paper and taped it to the sign, answering the years-long question about the terrorist’s whereabouts.

That month Stewart took down the sign and donated it to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It was the Museum’s first artifact symbolizing the historic milestone of bin Laden’s capture and death.

By 9/11 Memorial Staff