Gary Brooks Faulkner (born 1958) is an American former construction worker and landlord who was arrested in 2010 in Pakistan carrying a sword, pistol, night vision goggles, a map, and a Bible on his one-man hunt to capture Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of Al-Qaeda.
[5] According to his brother Scott, after the attacks "it became his passion, his mission, to track down Osama and kill him or bring him back alive".
[1] Faulkner said that he had the idea to hunt Osama in 2004, after reading an article about Bin Laden hiding in the mountains of Pakistan.
He traveled from San Diego hoping to cross the Pacific Ocean, but a hurricane blew his boat south to the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.
After dislocating his shoulder, he sold that boat and used the money to buy a plane ticket to Pakistan and arrived a week later.
He traveled from Islamabad to Lahore, and then to Sialkot where he stayed on a military base before being directed to a town in a northern tribal area of Gilgit.
[1] Faulkner's fourth, fifth, ninth, and tenth attempts to find Bin Laden revolved around searching the Chitral region.
On his first trip to the area, he claims to have come in contact with a senior Al-Qaeda official when he shared a car with a man who had an "unwelcoming" demeanor.
He described the people in the area as "running around with axes and all kinds of stuff, working on cutting down trees and making the new cave.
"[1] On his second trip, he said that he slept on a bed of pine needles in the mountains where he could watch the cave waiting to see if Bin Laden would show up.
The items he carried on the trip included a samurai sword, a gun, night vision goggles, a Bible, Smith & Wesson handcuffs, a copy of Andrew Wommack's A Better Way to Pray, and a Liberty Dollar.
[1] Faulkner was arrested by Pakistani authorities on June 13, 2010, in Bumburet Valley near the border with Afghanistan's Nuristan Province because he believed Bin Laden was in that part of the country.
Faulkner also told police that he intended to cross across the border into Afghanistan and to join the U.S. forces fighting the Taliban.
Scott told reporters upon his brother's arrest that Gary had intended to use the reward money for Bin Laden to help people in Central America.
The American embassy was not in contact with Faulkner but the State Department had been working to release him and asked his family to send $683 to pay for his changed airline ticket.
[10][1] On June 28, 2010, Faulkner appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman describing his plan to capture Bin Laden, his attempts, and his travels in Pakistan.
During the interview, he said he had no clue on how to avoid trouble after arriving in Pakistan, and that he knew nothing about the country or its inhabitants, being solely focused on Bin Laden.
[13] Nearly a year after Faulkner's arrest, Bin Laden was confirmed to be in Abbottabad, just two hours from Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, in a compound that was raided by SEAL Team Six resulting in his death on May 2, 2011.
[17] At the time of Faulkner's arrest, media reports alleged that Bin Laden also had the same condition,[4] but these were proven false.
[18] On September 1, 2011, Weld County authorities issued an affidavit for Faulkner for possessing a weapon as a previous offender.
Faulkner was awaiting trial for March 5, 2012, and was unable to post bond set at ten thousand dollars as he represented himself during the hearing.
[16] In 2011, a documentary film titled Binny Boy - One Man's Hunt for the World's Greatest Fugitive documents Faulkner's quest to capture Bin Laden was released.