As the first few books detailing the raid that killed Osama bin Laden roll out, an understated, often unseen element of The War on Terror is slowly emerging as one of the key elements to the successful mission: technology and social media. And while that sounds like boilerplate from so many explanations of the Patriot Act, "The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden" by Mark Bowden paints the U.S. government's relationship with technology and social media as integral in the capture of bin Laden.

We've already heard an ex-Navy SEAL team 6 member's account of the raid that killed bin Laden, in "No Easy Day," by Mark Owen, but Bowden goes deeper into the political fray than Owen can possibly muster. His account of the events behind the scenes both contradicts, and fleshes out some of Owen's story.

Bowden, also the author of "Black Hawk Down," says the Pentagon's decision to contract with numerous tech companies played an important role in bringing bin Laden to justice. Companies like, Palantir, a startup founded in 2004 that specializes in multi-platofrm data analysis, allowed the Pentagon to store and catalog every tiny bit of data it collected on the targets it was tracking.

According to Bowden, having that database at hand allowed the Pentagon to make tangible connections between countless data points, a process that would have taken years in the past.

"That had an extraordinary impact on the effectiveness of our special operations units and how they function," said Bowden.

To catch bin Laden, the Pentagon gradually pieced together information that led to his courier, nicknamed Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Once they figured out the courier's real name - Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed - they plugged his information into the database, and were flooded with connections.

"Once they had a real person," said Bowden, "they could go into the database, find his cell phone number, the cell phone tower that his calls bounce off of, locate the person of interest and start watching him."

Twitter also played a large role in the raid that killed bin Laden.

According to Bowden, on the night of the raid at the terrorist mastermind's Pakistan compound, a resident of Abbottabad, Sohaib Athar live-tweeted the raid, unaware of what he was witnessing.

"Seems something nasty happening in #Abbottabad, God save us," he tweeted.

Had the Pakistani military connected the local man's tweet to what was actually happening, there could have been a shooting war as the troops tried to cross the border back into Afghanistan, says Bowden.

"I think it did have the potential to jeopardize this mission," he admitted.

Twitter also dictated when the Obama administration decided to announce the news of bin Laden's death.

"There was some discussion given to waiting until the following morning to announce," says Bowden. "But it was clear that the information wouldn't hold and the reason it wouldn't hold was that the number of people who were aware of what had happened began to grow exponentially."

Which looks to have been the right call. Keith Urbahn, the former chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld was one of the first to break the news, tweeting, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."

Many see Bowden as one of the most respected writers covering the U.S. military and Special Forces today.  "There wasn't a meeting when someone didn't mention 'Black Hawk Down,'" a senior Obama administration official said in The New York Times, 5.2.2011.

"The Finish" is available now.