The Hunt for bin Laden (7 page)

‘If You See It, Shoot It’

By the middle of February, President Obama determined that there was a sound intelligence basis for developing courses of action in case the hunch that the mysterious pacer was bin Laden proved correct.

In the ensuing months, Obama took charge of monitoring the operation at the White House, chairing five meetings of his National Security Council for updates, senior administration officials said. U.S. officials did not share any details about the operation in advance with any foreign governments, including Pakistan’s, whose leaders would be informed only afterward. A “very small number” of people within the U.S. government knew about it, a senior official said.

In one White House meeting, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Obama and other top national security officials that although those tracking the compound were seeing the pacer nearly every day, they could not conclude with certainty that it was bin Laden, officials said. Panetta noted that there was no signals intelligence — cell or sat-phone intercepts, sound recordings, video — available and contended that it was too risky to send in a human spy or move any closer with electronic devices.

Obama and his advisers debated the options, officials said. One option was to fire a missile from a Predator or Reaper aerial drone. It would be low-risk, but if the result was a direct hit, the pacer might be vaporized and officials would never be certain if they had killed bin Laden. If the drone attack missed, as had happened in some other attacks on high-value targets, bin Laden or whoever was living in the compound would flee and the United States would have to start the hunt from scratch.

Panetta designated Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, who had headed the Joint Special Operations Command for nearly three years, to devise a boots-on-the ground plan for the special forces that became known as “the McRaven Option.”

McRaven had increased the intensity of Special Operations raids, especially in Afghanistan. During his first two years as head of JSOC, the “jackpot rate” — strikes hitting their intended target — jumped from 35 percent to more than 80 percent.

His decision to assign the operation to the Navy SEALs, a Special Operations unit with extensive experience in raids on high-value targets, was critical. SEALs have a tradition of moving in and out fast, often killing everyone they encounter at a target site. Most members of the SEAL team in the bin Laden raid had been deployed to war zones a dozen or more times.

The “pattern of life” study of the compound had shown that about a dozen women and children periodically frequented it. Specific orders were issued to the SEALs not to shoot the women or children unless they were clearly threatening or had weapons. Bin Laden was to be captured, one official said, if he “conspicuously surrendered.”

The longer such raids take, the greater the risk to the SEALs. One senior official said the general philosophy of the SEALs is: “If you see it, shoot it. It is a house full of bad guys.”

Several assessments concluded that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance bin Laden was in the compound. Michael E. Leiter, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was much more conservative. During one White House meeting, he put the probability at about 40 percent.

When a participant suggested that was a low chance of success, Leiter said, “Yes, but what we’ve got is 38 percent better than we have ever had before.”

Obama himself put the odds of success at barely better-than-even.

He knew he had only circumstantial evidence, and he worried that the Navy SEALs would find only a “prince from Dubai” instead of the world’s most-wanted terrorist leader. He knew that f it turned out to be the former, the country — and his administration — would face serious consequences.

But ultimately, Obama would say after the raid: “I concluded it was worth it. We have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al-Qaeda, ever since 2001. And I said to myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly disabling al-Qaeda, then it was worth both the political risks as well as the risks to our men, after a pursuit that cost billions of dollars and stretched for nearly a decade.”

At 8:20 a.m. Friday, April 29, the president approved the raid.

That Sunday night (Monday in Pakistan), the president and his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room to watch the operation unfold on a soundless video feed. During the assault, one of the Black Hawk helicopters stalled, but the pilot was able to land safely. The hard landing disabled the helicopter, forcing the SEALs to abandon a plan to have one team rope down from a Black Hawk and come into the main building from the roof. Instead, both teams assaulted the compound from the ground.

Members of the assault team blew their way through some doors and walls to enter. They opened one door only to find a cement wall behind it.

As they entered, one of bin Laden’s couriers was the only enemy to open fire, officials said. The SEALs encountered no other armed opposition as they ascended to the top floor, where bin Laden was found in the doorway to his room. He turned back into the room before being shot twice — in the head and in the chest. U.S. commandos later found an AK-47 and a pistol in the room.

“He was retreating,” a move that was regarded as resistance, a U.S. official briefed on the operation said. “You don’t know why he’s retreating, what he’s doing when he goes back in there. Is he getting a weapon? Does he have a [suicide] vest?”

SEALs scooped up dozens of computer thumb drives and several hard drives that analysts rushed to examine for information about al-Qaeda, especially an address, location or cellphone number for Zawahiri.

The early analysis of the materials would show that bin Laden was preoccupied with attacking the United States over all other targets, a fixation that led to friction with followers. In handwritten journals and long-winded compositions saved on hard drives, officials said, bin Laden always seemed to be searching for a way to replicate the impact of al-Qaeda’s most devastating strike.

In the words of one official, he exhorted followers to explore ways to recruit non-Muslims “who are oppressed in the United States” — particularly African Americans and Latinos — and to assemble a plot in time for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even while sealed inside his cement compound, bin Laden functioned like a crime boss pulling strings from a prison cell, regularly sending messages to his most trusted lieutenants and strategic advice to far-flung franchises, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. Some followers pledged their fealty to him, but others chafed at his warnings to remain focused on U.S. targets instead of mounting less-risky operations in places such as Yemen, Somalia and Algeria.

When bin Laden’s corpse was laid out, one of the Navy SEALs was asked to stretch out next to it to compare heights. The SEAL was 6 feet tall. The body was several inches taller.

After the information was relayed to Obama, he turned to his advisers and said: “We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?”

Bin Laden’s body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson, where U.S. officials performed the rituals of Islamic burial, including wrapping it in a white shroud, before tipping it into the Arabian Sea. Officials said the decision was made to comply with the Islamic mandate to bury a body within 24 hours after death. A burial at sea also ensured that bin Laden would have no grave site for his followers to use as a shrine.

U.S. officials said DNA tests confirmed with 99.9 percent certainty that the body removed from the one-acre compound was indeed that of bin Laden.

Around the world, many leaders expressed a sober satisfaction with the raid. In addition to bin Laden, the firefight killed his son Khalid, a woman and two men who were harboring the 54-year-old Saudi national within the high walls of the compound. .

There were conflicting reports about whether bin Laden used one of his wives as a shield. While John Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, suggested at one point that he had, he later allowed that it was not clear “whether or not bin Laden or the son or whatever put her there or she put herself there.”

Press secretary Jay Carney later offered yet another version of that account, saying that bin Laden’s wife had “rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”

Carney and others defended the administration’s assertion that the team of 25 U.S. Navy SEALs and other operatives was prepared to take bin Laden alive. “He resisted the U.S. personnel,” Carney said. When pressed on how he did so without a weapon, Carney said that “resistance does not require a firearm.”

Panetta said that the rules of engagement would have required U.S. forces to take bin Laden into custody if he had “thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn’t appear to be representing any kind of threat.”

But, he said, “I don’t think he had a lot of time to say anything,” adding that when the lead Navy SEAL reached the third-floor unit where bin Laden was located, “there were some threatening moves that were made . . . and that’s the reason they fired.”

A U.S. official briefed on the raid said the first SEAL to confront bin Laden perceived a hostile intent. “He was not lying on the floor or trying to surrender,” the official said.

Bin Laden’s wife, who identified the al-Qaeda leader’s body after the raid, was treated for her injuries and placed in the custody of Pakistan’s intelligence service. A U.S. official said she told Pakistani authorities that bin Laden had lived in the complex, at least part of the time, since 2005, when it was built.

U.S. officials think that at least two of the women who lived in the compound were bin Laden’s wives and that he had fathered several of the children (he is believed to have fathered at least 11).

In 2006, bin Laden had sworn “not to die but a free man.” He once told a bodyguard to shoot him if he were about to be captured. But bin Laden died a prisoner in a jail of his own making, a man without a nation, living apart even from those who shared his belief that mass murder was the path to power.

In his final months, bin Laden could only watch as a wholly            opposite force channeled the frustrations and aspirations of the Muslims for whom he claimed to act — a peaceful exercise of people power on the streets of cities across Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and throughout the Middle East and North Africa, a stirring and decisive uprising by those who yearned for change yet turned their backs on the ways and means of Osama bin Laden.