During Parrot’s shift from supplying falcons to protecting them, he began interacting with a smuggler nicknamed, T2. T2 ran a smuggling line from Iran to Turkmenistan. T2 doesn’t smuggle falcons, but he knew the routes and how the lines worked. According to Parrot, T2 encountered bin Laden when bin Laden was falconry hunting in the Baluchistan region, which connects the southern points of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This was around the time that the U.S. said bin Laden was living in a cave in Waziristan. So close, U.S. government.
T2 learned that each of bin Laden’s falcons were micro-chipped to transmit the falcon’s location should the very expensive falcon suddenly get greedy and, I don’t know, fly off and be free, bin Laden could locate and retrieve it. According to Parrot, the frequencies of the transmitters had a range of 10 miles in a mountainous area, 100 miles in line of sight. So Powell wrote a letter to then CIA chief under President Bush Part Deux, General Michael Hayden, which read, “We have information from a source that hunted with bin Laden in 2004. He spent time with him. bin Laden travels inside Iran with only four persons during the falconry hunting season. The source has learned the frequency channels on each of bin Laden’s falcons. bin Laden uses the same three frequencies while he’s hunting.” But the letter was never answered, nor was there any subsequent operation to investigate the area for radio transmissions during the falconry hunting season.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/feathered-cocaine_b_4392859