Operation Neptune Spear - The Hunt for Osama Bin Laden

In the early hours of the 2nd of May 2011, 25 US Navy SEALs and a military dog lift off from their air base in Jalalabad in Afghanistan in two previously unseen stealth versions of the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Once airborne, the two aircraft head east towards Pakistan. Although nominally an American ally, Pakistani leadership has no idea that the SEALs are about to launch a military operation on their soil. 7,000 mi away in the White House in Washington, D.C., US President Barack Obama and his cabinet are settling in to watch the unfolding mission. The president projects calm confidence to his advisers, but he's concealing his nervousness. If successful, this operation could be the United States' most important victory in the war on terror. The target is just one man. The SEALs en route for Pakistan are hoping to bring a 10-year manhunt to its conclusion. >> [music] [music] >> 9 months prior, in August of 2010, a man known under the alias of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti arrives at a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. He's unaware of the CIA operatives following him. Al-Kuwaiti has been named by a prisoner in the custody of the United States as one of the trusted couriers of the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the wanted man for the orchestration of the terror attacks of the 11th of September 2001. The founding of Al-Qaeda and bin Laden's rise to power can be traced back to the Persian Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm. On the 2nd of August 1990, on the orders of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. The tiny oil-rich emirate collapsed rapidly, sparking panic in the house of Saud and across the Gulf states. With a large, battle-hardened Iraqi army on its doorstep, King Fahd turned to the United States for help. On the 8th, the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division was airlifted in to Saudi Arabia. The leading elements of the 82nd were just the spearhead of a massive US-led multinational force that would grow rapidly over 6 months, totaling over 600,000 American service personnel and 400,000 from other nations, mainly in Saudi Arabia. This outraged Osama bin Laden. To invite so many so-called Crusaders into the holy land, the land of the great mosques of Mecca and Medina, was unacceptable. In an open letter to King Fahd several years later, bin Laden berated the Saudi monarch for violating the teachings of Islam for his supposed hostility towards Muslims by supporting various Arab powers in wars against insurgencies, for the government's economic policies, but most of all, for reducing the kingdom to an American protectorate governed by the American Constitution. In the letter, he quoted a verse of the Quran. Translations vary, but the effect is, "O believers, take neither Jews nor Christians as guardians. They are guardians of each other. Whoever does so will be counted as one of them. Osama bin Laden, born in 1957, was just one of over 50 children of Saudi construction magnate Mohammed bin Laden. Mohammed bin Laden was one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia. In a true rags-to-riches story, he left rural Yemen for Jeddah and worked his way to the top. By the '50s, he had close ties to the Saudi monarchy and his construction business profited massively as the monarchy allowed him to monopolize major construction contracts, which only grew in scale as Saudi Arabia's oil wealth climbed through the 1950s and '60s. Osama bin Laden's mother was Hamida al-Attas. She was just one of 20 wives Mohammed bin Laden would have children with and he divorced her soon after Osama's birth. A young Osama lived with his mother, only seeing his father on around five occasions. Nevertheless, he idolized his father, who he corresponded with occasionally. Growing up in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, he was a bright but shy student in school, mainly remembered by his classmates for the family name and his above-average height. When Mohammed bin Laden died in a plane crash in 1967, a distraught Osama found comfort in the verses of the Quran. In the weeks and months that followed, bin Laden claimed that at 13 years old, he memorized the entire holy book, over 6,300 verses in all. He grew increasingly pious, praying considerably more than the customary five times a day. His teenage friends even avoided swearing in his company. In the summer of 1971, bin Laden and several of his half-brothers were sent off to an English language school in Oxford. While his siblings indulged in the local tradition of drinking and the thriving rock and roll scene, Osama abstained. The Bin Ladens befriended two female students from Spain with whom they regularly went rowing. The Spanish students remembered Osama as quiet but particularly deep for his age. The brooding Bin Laden did not particularly enjoy his time in Britain. While he apparently enjoyed visiting Shakespeare's preserved home, he found the UK morally reprehensible. At the age of 17, his fundamentalism had only grown and he was seeking a wife. Returning to his mother in Latakia in Syria in the summer, a marriage between Osama and his cousin Najwa Ghanem was quickly arranged. She was the first of four eventual wives. Returning to Saudi Arabia, Osama assumed a greater role in his father's construction firm, like many of his half-brothers. Despite being in a managerial position, he enjoyed operating heavy machinery on building sites. And inspired by his father, he ate his meals with the workers and freely spoke to them. Despite inheriting a massive fortune from his father's estate, he lived frugally, believing this was the proper way for a follower of Muhammad to live. His homes often had few pieces of furniture and sometimes did not even have a fridge to store food. Islamic beliefs are corrupted by modernization, he asserted. This is Joby Warrick, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of The Triple Agent. >> And by the time he was a young adult, he was looking to get involved in in something larger and he ends up becoming one of the leaders of the Mujahideen, which is this, you know, rebel movement, Islamic rebel movement fighting the the communist government of Afghanistan. >> He returned to Western Pakistan in 1992 to recruit the hundreds of remaining Arab jihadists he had led in Afghanistan. He arrived in Sudan and immediately set about creating the global Jihadist organization he had dreamed of. Here, he established training camps to expand his small number of fighters into a dedicated, capable Jihadist group, Al-Qaeda. As Al-Qaeda was in its infancy, Bin Laden published statements and speeches and grew his ideological standing while forging alliances with other insurgent groups across the Muslim world, from Algeria to Malaysia. >> And Al-Qaeda that came around in the late 1980s is really a way for like-minded people, people who believe that Islam was being repressed or or uh, you know, mistreated, abused by the Western world and this was a way for them to fight back and they created an organization that was essentially at war with the colonizing forces of the West. >> In 1992, during the US intervention in Somalia, terrorists affiliated with Bin Laden targeted hotels in Yemen housing American troops as they lay over waiting to deploy to Somalia. The bombs killed two civilians but no US troops. The US Department of Defense announced it would not use Yemen as a staging area. Though these attacks received relatively little attention, to Bin Laden's mind, he had already forced America out of one Arab country. The fledgling Al-Qaeda was tangentially involved in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu made famous by the book and film Black Hawk Down. The exact role in Al-Qaeda fighters in the Black Hawk Down battle is debated, but they at least provided some technical advice to General Aideed's forces. In a 1998 interview with ABC News' John Miller, Bin Laden and his fighters openly bragged about defeating America in Somalia and killing American soldiers, though this could have been bravado. While not an Al-Qaeda operation, Bin Laden had met at least one of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people in New York. His increasing blatant involvement in international terrorism did not go unnoticed. In 1994, the Saudi government stripped him of his citizenship and steadily began freezing his sizable bank accounts. As attacks continued throughout the '90s, the CIA began seriously investigating and monitoring Al-Qaeda. In 1996, the US and Saudi Arabia applied immense diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government to expel Bin Laden. With this, Bin Laden and his growing organization made their final move, Afghanistan. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, had agreed to grant them protection. The Taliban dominated most of the country and freely imposed their totalitarian fundamentalist rule throughout the region. By fear, stoked by regular executions of those deemed to have violated their idea of Islamic law. This was a style of governance that appealed to Bin Laden's religious worldview. He and his fighters were soon provided with a massive compound near the city of Jalalabad and some land in the Tora Bora mountain range. Bin Laden soon brought over his then three wives, including Najwa, and their children. With his elder sons, he hiked regularly around their Tora Bora mountain hideout, practicing escape routes. Bin Laden reminded his children that we never know when war will strike. We must know our way out of the mountains. In 1996, Osama bin Laden issued his first fatwa, the declaration of jihad against the Americans occupying the land of the two holiest sites. Though it drew little attention outside of Arab-speaking circles, it centered on US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. In February 1998, he escalated, publishing Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, which declared that killing Americans, both civilian and military, was an individual duty for Muslims. He cited US occupation of holy lands and alleged atrocities against Muslims to justify his call. >> They wanted to unite like-minded Muslims everywhere into a caliphate, and that's this sort of ancient theocratic system that existed back in in medieval times where all Muslims were basically under a single Islamic ruler. >> On the 7th of August, 1998, Al-Qaeda demonstrated its intent. Coordinated truck bombings destroyed the US embassies in Nairobi, in Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, killing 224 and wounding more than 4,500. The attacks shocked Washington. On the 20th of August, 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered 73 Tomahawk missiles fired at Al-Qaeda's Khost training camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden had planned to be there, but diverted to Kabul, escaping death. Instead of neutralizing him, the strikes elevated his global profile. Later that year, on the 20th of December, 1998, Clinton canceled a strike in Kandahar due to the risk of hundreds of civilian casualties. On the 24th of December, he directed the CIA to pursue Bin Laden's capture or death. Al-Qaeda pressed on. In January 2000, a cell in Yemen failed to strike USS The Sullivans. On the 12th of October, 2000, they succeeded against the USS Cole in Aden, killing 17 American sailors. Bin Laden reportedly fell to his knees in thanks upon hearing the news. The next operation had been germinating since 1996 when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed suggested hijacking US airliners and using the aircraft themselves [music] as weapons. Bin Laden approved and together they selected the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the US Capitol as targets. He personally chose several hijackers and encouraged them to retain discretion even mentioning the White House or a nuclear plant as alternatives. Some Islamist allies warned him. At a 1999 conference, a Libyan cautioned that America would devastate the region if attacked again. Bin Laden dismissed the concern convinced Washington lacked the will to respond decisively. By August of 2001, Al-Qaeda shuttered its Afghan camps and dispersed its fighters preparing for the inevitable backlash. On the 11th of September 2001, 19 operatives hijacked four airliners. Two destroyed New York's Twin Towers, one struck the Pentagon, and another crashed in Pennsylvania after passenger resistance. Nearly 3,000 were killed cementing Al-Qaeda as the architect of the deadliest terrorist attack in modern history. Following the attacks, Bin Laden took refuge in Afghanistan but Mullah Omar's Taliban government refused to hand over Bin Laden to the United States. They were not at all prepared for the consequences of its actions. On the 7th of October 2001, under the cover of a hurricane of air strikes, operators from the CIA Special Activities Division and the US Army's Green Berets stealthily began infiltrating into Afghanistan. Over the following weeks, they befriended the Northern Alliance, a collection of tribal factions opposed to the Taliban. The Northern Alliance forces, stiffened by the American special operations units, and backed up by overwhelming, constant aerial firepower, rapidly swept south, defeating the Taliban in the field and seizing Kabul. By December, Al-Qaeda had been hounded into their last remaining sanctuary, Tora Bora. President Bush had proclaimed that he wanted bin Laden dead or alive. It was a warrant that 100 CIA, Delta Force, Green Beret, and British Special Boat Service operators were determined to serve. The special forces and CIA teams were easily able to monitor the unsecured radios that Al-Qaeda fighters used to coordinate their defense and clearly identified bin Laden's voice in conversation with his followers, confirming his presence in Tora Bora. The special forces and their Afghan allies pushed into the mountain range on the 3rd of December. Ahead of them, B-52s, B-1B Lancers, and dozens of other American strike aircraft rained bombs on Al-Qaeda positions. Over a couple of days, 700,000 lb of ordnance pulverized the mountain range, cratering the mountain sides, and reducing the valleys to a mix of sand and earth. To obliterate one particular cave network, a US Air Force Special Operations Hercules dropped the then largest bomb in the US arsenal, a 15,000 lb BLU-82 Daisy Cutter. This apocalyptic bombardment and the freezing sub-zero temperatures had taken their toll on the Al-Qaeda fighters. Despite their fanaticism, they were slowly losing the will to fight. Bin Laden told his followers, "I am sorry for getting you involved in this battle. If you can no longer resist, you may surrender with my blessing." Bin Laden even wrote his last will and testament in which he begged his own sons not to join Al-Qaeda. However, on the night of the 12th of December, the Sheikh's fortunes turned. It was the 27th day of Ramadan when the local Afghan forces and Al-Qaeda fighters brokered a temporary ceasefire that would last until the next day. The American special forces, who had not been consulted by their allies, were highly skeptical, but the Afghan commander had promised that Al-Qaeda was surrendering and that the 12-hour truce was necessary for Bin Laden's followers to come down from the mountain. 12 hours came and went without any sign of a general surrender. The commander of US special forces in Tora Bora, Major Thomas Greer, realized what had happened. A 2009 report to Congress suggested that Bin Laden and up to 800 Al-Qaeda fighters had slipped the trap and escaped through the mountains of the Hindu Kush. The head CIA officer in Tora Bora had pressed General Tommy Franks in Central Command to deploy 800 US Army Rangers to help prevent such an escape, but this was refused. General Mattis, commanding a Marine Corps task force in Kandahar, had also offered his force. Elements of the 10th Mountain Division, ideally suited to high altitude warfare, were nearby and ready, but were not deployed. General Franks feared upsetting their Afghan allies. Major Greer suggested that his small unit could climb with oxygen tanks over the Pakistani border and then back into Afghanistan to ambush Bin Laden's force from an unexpected direction, but this was rejected by CENTCOM. In desperation, he argued for the use of air-dropped mines to slow down the fleeing terrorists, but planners on Franks' staff found reasons to decline this option as well. By January of 2002, the Bush administration had to admit defeat. Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda's reclusive leader and mastermind of the September 11th attacks, had slipped their grasp with barely a trace. This is Adam M. McMahon, associate professor of political science at Rider University and author of Obama: Operation Neptune Spear and the Spectre of Failure. >> I'm eager to the point where intelligence agencies were doing things like analyzing the videos of bin Laden speaking. You know, these were years old, and they would listen for the bird calls in the background of the video, and they would bring this the intelligence agencies brought in ornithologists to listen to the bird calls to try and geo-locate where bin Laden was filming. So, that's how desperate they were. >> That is, until 2004, when an Al-Qaeda prisoner named Hassan Ghul revealed a key piece of information while detained at a CIA black site. Ghul told interrogators that bin Laden relied upon a trusted courier with the pseudonym of al-Kuwaiti, who also had close connections with the rest of Al-Qaeda's leadership. Interrogators had received similar information over the previous 2 years about an Al-Qaeda courier with the same surname, but these could not be confirmed. However, Ghul is the first detainee to connect this mysterious figure with bin Laden personally and also states that al-Kuwaiti had not been seen for some time. CIA leadership believes this must mean he is traveling with bin Laden and his inner circle, making this courier the key to finding where the leader of Al-Qaeda is hiding. Armed with this knowledge, the CIA, {quote} {unquote}, interviews the alleged operations chief of Al-Qaeda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2003, Mohammed had been captured by a joint CIA Pakistani intelligence operation in Pakistan before being shepherded to various black sites around the Middle East. The CIA uses what the agency refers to as enhanced interrogation techniques and Muhammad finally cracks after being water-boarded 183 times. He acknowledges the existence of a courier named al-Kuwaiti but denies he is active in al-Qaeda. The trail goes cold again as the US intelligence community becomes distracted with the new war in Iraq. On the 2nd of May, 2005, two men riding a motorbike are leaving a house on the outskirts of the town of Mardan in Pakistan. Before they can reach the main road, they are ambushed by plainclothes Pakistani intelligence operatives. Some of them are wearing burkas. The men on the motorbike open fire with concealed weapons and a brief firefight breaks out. One of the men unsuccessfully attempts to destroy a small notebook but both are quickly overpowered by the operatives and placed under arrest. The man is identified as Abu Faraj al-Libi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's successor as operations chief of al-Qaeda. He has been captured in a joint US Pakistan mission. The CIA had identified al-Libi through cell phone calls and tracked his location before Pakistani agents made the physical arrest. Like Muhammad, al-Libi is interrogated on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his mysterious courier al-Kuwaiti. Al-Libi gives a similar answer to his predecessor and denies personally knowing the courier. Now, with a viable lead, US intelligence services begin scouring the Middle East looking for the elusive al-Kuwaiti. >> And the piece of information that's really important is it's learned that he drives a Suzuki SUV and it has a spare tire cover on the back and there's a a rhino on the spare tire cover. So, that's how the CIA figures out where he is and can start tracking him. >> After two more years of searching, US operatives are able to listen in on a wiretapped call between an Al-Qaeda agent and al-Kuwaiti. The CIA traces al-Kuwaiti's location to an unexpected place, the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. This comes as a surprise to many in the intelligence community who have assumed that Bin Laden has been hiding in the hard-to-reach tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Abbottabad is a quiet city of around 200,000 people and is best known for being the home of the Pakistani Military Academy. Given its reputation as a regional center for education and tourism, Abbottabad is one of the last places you would expect to find the most wanted man in the world. The CIA zero in on the city and intensify their surveillance activities to find exactly where Bin Laden might be hiding. By September of 2009, they have identified one distinct location which stands out from the rest of Abbottabad. Less than a mile to the southwest of the Pakistani Military Academy is a large three-story compound surrounded by walls 12 to 18 ft tall topped with barbed wire. The 38,500 sq footage of the compound makes it much larger than nearby houses and no internet or phone wires are observed running into the main building. The CIA concludes that this unique structure has been custom-built to hide someone of great significance, someone like Usama bin Laden. On the 10th of September, 2010, a day before the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, CIA Director Leon Panetta briefs US President Barack Obama. "Mr. President, it's very preliminary, but we think we have a potential lead on Bin Laden, the best one by far since Tora Bora. Over a number of months, the US intelligence community attempts to identify the occupants of the compound. The main three-story house has clearly been designed with security and privacy in mind. The third-floor balcony is surrounded by a 7-ft high privacy wall to hide the identity of those within. And the house is festooned with CCTV cameras. The occupants burn their refuse on site. Such is the difficulty to survey the compound, the CIA even attempts to get operatives inside under the guise of a fake polio vaccination program. A Pakistani doctor named Shakil Afridi is recruited to send nurses door to door offering vaccinations for polio and hepatitis B. However, this ruse is later criticized for decreasing the effectiveness of Pakistan's overall fight against polio as many of its citizens believe the vaccine is a Western plot to mass sterilize the population. Intelligence reports that the compound has been built to conceal a VIP of some kind. Constructed in 2005, the structure was allegedly used as a safe house for Pakistani intelligence services before a new occupant moved into the house in January of 2006. From that point forward, the reclusive owners only occasionally leave the compound to shop at a convenience store less than a minute's walk away. Two men claiming to be brothers sometimes frequent the store with small children for whom they buy sweets. Rabbits, approximately 100 chickens, and a cow are kept on the compound grounds, and a small garden is well tended behind the three-story house. CIA intelligence experts have been listening in on cell phone calls and believe with a degree of certainty that the extended family of Al-Kuwaiti is living inside the compound. However, there is one mystery yet to solve. Aside from the al-Qaeda family, satellite imagery has detected a further unknown man taking regular walks around the compound. Calculating the length of his shadows, the man is around 6 ft 4, which is approximately the right height to be bin Laden. However, no intelligence agency is ever able to photograph the man. US intelligence leaders also debate why bin Laden would hide in a place like Abbottabad. Their initial fear is that the Pakistani military or intelligence services are protecting the leader of al-Qaeda by moving him to Abbottabad, but officials find no conclusive evidence to support this theory. Instead, they surmise that bin Laden abandoned his previous base in the tribal regions due to the mounting drone campaign carried out by the US military. One senior CIA official later explains that bin Laden had previously acted more conspicuously. You've got to give him credit for his tradecraft. Before, he had bodyguards, multiple SUVs, and things like that. He abandoned all of that. The evidence and conflicting confidence levels of each agency involved in the investigation are presented to President Barack Obama, who assesses the probability of the man being bin Laden to be 50/50. In 2008, then Senator Obama had campaigned by arguing for a renewed focus on eliminating bin Laden. In May of 2009, roughly 4 months after assuming the presidency, Obama calls his advisers into the Oval Office and issues a presidential decree to expedite the search for al-Qaeda's leader. He tells his assembled staff, "I want to make the hunt for bin Laden a top priority." >> So, Obama made a campaign promise that he would capture or apprehend bin Laden. He did so many times, including during the October 2008 presidential debate with Republican nominee John McCain. And when Bin Laden was the lead for Bin Laden was found in the spring of 2011, Obama was acutely aware that it could jeopardize his re-election chances. >> American military advisers inform Obama that he has two realistic options. An airstrike to demolish the compound or a special operations mission to eliminate Bin Laden. More imaginative proposals, at least for the time, such as using specially equipped drones to kill Bin Laden are dismissed because they could potentially alert the occupants beforehand and the technology has not been proven. An airstrike is immediately ruled out for risk of collateral damage in the surrounding houses and to the 25 women and children inside the compound. Instead, further planning is carried out for a Navy SEAL team air insertion to storm the compound on foot on the new moon on the 1st or 2nd of May 2011. Command of the mission falls to Vice Admiral William McRaven, head of the Joint Special Operations Command. A former Navy SEAL, McRaven is an expert on special operations having studied a century of commando operations. CIA Director Panetta concludes McRaven is the man for the task having far more skill and experience than anyone in his own agency. Another key decision awaits, whether to inform the Pakistani government of Bin Laden's alleged location and conduct a joint US Pakistani mission to eliminate him. Ultimately, President Obama decides against telling the Pakistanis for fear they could not keep such a secret. If there are any Al-Qaeda sympathizers in Pakistan's government, then the mission's cover would be blown. Yet, the dangerous dilemma for the president is that the special operations team will be violating Pakistani airspace without consent to assault a compound on which information is extremely scarce. The SEALs will be put in harm's way, and the Pakistani response if the raid is detected is unknown. The president tells McRaven to equip his team to fight their way out against Pakistani resistance if need be. >> It could have led to nuclear war. Both Pakistan and India they don't have the best of relations and they are both nuclear powers. Uh this raid which violated Pakistan's sovereignty, the US operated in another country's airspace without permission. It could have resulted in nuclear war. >> Two three-dimensional replicas of the compound are constructed in Fort Bragg in North Carolina and in Nevada where the SEAL team conducts dress rehearsals of the mission. After a month of preparations, Admiral McRaven informs the president that his team is ready. The SEALs are deployed to Jalalabad in Afghanistan on the 27th of April to await final approval on the mission. Two days later on the 29th of April, President Obama meets with select members of his administration to make a final decision. He canvases the room and asks each member to state their position. CIA Director Panetta, Assistant to the President of Homeland Security John Brennan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in favor of launching the mission. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates come out against the raid. Biden is skeptical that Bin Laden is actually in the compound and urges the president to wait until his identity is confirmed without a doubt. Secretary Gates is worried about a repeat of Operation Eagle Claw, the failed 1980 mission to rescue American hostages held in Iran. Both men are concerned that another calamity on that scale would adversely impact the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. After listening quietly and intently, Obama thanks the group for their candor before announcing his decision. "It's a go. We're going to do the raid. Prepare the directives." To preserve the appearance of normality, the annual White House Correspondents Dinner goes ahead as usual the evening before the raid is due to take place. The president remains cool, reacting with a broad smile to a comedian speaker's joke on the whereabouts of bin Laden. "If only they knew," he thinks. Obama even tells his speechwriter to strike out a different joke referring to bin Laden, later writing, "I could tell he didn't see my edit as an improvement, but he didn't argue the point." The president is determined to maintain absolute secrecy over tonight's mission. At 11:00 p.m. local time, the SEAL team lifts from Jalalabad en route to Abbottabad. They have been flown to the target by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, better known as the Night Stalkers. Meanwhile, at 2:00 p.m. Washington time, President Obama and his National Security Team sit in the Situation Room at the White House waiting for the helicopters to arrive. The Black Hawks have been specially modified for stealth, making them more difficult to detect on radar. Another three larger Chinook helicopters carrying 25 operators, mini guns, and 50-caliber machine guns are on standby to bring in more troops if required. Further special forces are also available to provide backup if the Pakistani military reacts to the incursion with force. The entire force numbers 79 commandos and a Belgian Shepherd military dog named Cairo. Cairo's job is to track anyone who tries to escape from the compound, locate hidden rooms inside the main building, and to alert the SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces. for Phoenix security to go. The flight to Abbottabad takes around 100 minutes and the Black Hawks cross the Pakistani border at 12:30 a.m. With only 10 minutes to the target, the operators make final preparations and conduct last-minute checks before steeling themselves for the task ahead. President Obama settles into his seat in the White House's situation room along with key members of his administration. CIA Director Leon Panetta is on a live video call from agency headquarters in Langley and relaying information from Admiral McRaven who is monitoring the mission from Jalalabad. The raid is intended to take less than 30 minutes from start to finish, but it already feels like an eternity to those in the White House. President Obama had planned to follow the mission indirectly to avoid the impression that he was micromanaging, but ultimately cannot bring himself to sit idly by. He gets up and walks to a small conference room across the hall where Brigadier General Brad Webb is watching a drone feed of the two Black Hawks approaching the compound. Soon, the entire situation room squeezes into the cramped conference room to watch the mission unfold live. The helicopters arrive at their destination at 12:40 a.m. local time and begin hovering above the compound when disaster strikes. The assembled audience in the small White House conference room watch in horror as after to hover near the wall of the compound, one of the two Black Hawks begins to rapidly lose altitude. >> I would not want to know what the blood pressure is at the president when that incident occurred because that's exactly what happened during Operation Eagle Claw when Carter was president and that's what doomed the mission is the helicopters crashing and service members dying. >> The Black Hawk crashes due to a phenomenon called vortex ring state. This occurs because the helicopter is a heavier stealth modified version flying in high temperatures, and its downwash is trapped by the compound's high walls, which then reflects the air back up and disrupts the airflow to the rotors, causing a loss of lift. Obama later recalls how Admiral McRaven reacted. "It'll be fine," he says, as though remarking on a car bumping into a shopping trolley outside the supermarket. "The pilot is the best we have, and he'll bring it down safely." The tail severs off as the Black Hawk crashes into the ground and comes to a rest near the wall. McRaven calmly reassures the room. "As you can see, we have a helicopter down in the courtyard. My men are prepared for this contingency and will deal with it." The backup plan in case of any problems on insertion is for the second helicopter to drop its team outside the wall instead of onto the roof of the house. The SEAL team in the crashed helicopter are all fine and disembark to continue the mission. One of the reserve Chinook helicopters is ordered to move up near Abbottabad in preparation for the later extraction. The incident has only caused a momentary delay and the mission proceeds. The mission code word for securing Osama bin Laden is Geronimo. While the men aboard the crashed helicopter forge ahead with the mission, the second helicopter lands just outside the compound and the men sprint out on foot rather than fast-roping down from a hover according to the original plan. The second team initially prepares to enter the massive compound through a metal gate only to be confronted with a brick wall behind it. A SEAL from team one finds another entrance and lets team two in. CIA operatives have cut the power to the entire neighborhood, and the SEALs use their night vision optics to move around the compound, using explosives to breach locked doors and gates. A short distance away, Abbottabad resident Sohaib Athar sends out a tweet. "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1:00 a.m. is a rare event. He is unknowingly live-tweeting the operation to the whole world as other local residents watch the unfolding events from their rooftops. The SEALs break into the main courtyard and prepare to move on to the main building. Abrar al-Kuwaiti emerges from the guest house and fires an inaccurate burst of gunfire towards nearby SEALs with an AK-47. He is swiftly neutralized with two shots to the head while one SEAL is slightly wounded by bullet fragments. The operators move swiftly and precisely through the building room by room and floor by floor. The compound is modestly furnished with cheap foam mattresses, no air conditioning, and old standard definition televisions. One room contains a whiteboard with markers and Arabic textbooks scattered around. It's a classroom used to teach the eight children who live inside the compound. The SEALs continue their methodical approach through the massive complex. They find that many of the bedrooms have attached kitchens or bathrooms and clearing each room is a nerve-racking task. An occupant with a gun could be waiting around any corner. Al-Kuwaiti's brother, along with his wife, are encountered and shot dead on the first floor. Osama bin Laden's son, 23-year-old Khalid, is spotted on the second floor staircase and is killed as he tries to escape. The team encounters multiple women and children and move them into a room on the first floor for containment. There, the non-combatants are restrained with plastic handcuffs and zip ties while a SEAL interrogates them. At 1:00 a.m., three SEALs begin climbing the stairs to the third floor of the house where the last man in the compound is located peering at the approaching operators. What happens next will be the source of enduring controversy. According to his account, upon seeing the three approaching operators moving up the stairs, the tall man runs into a bedroom. The lead SEAL fires at the man, but misses him. The three men then storm onto the third floor. O'Neill pushes past the lead and enters the bedroom where the tall man shoves a woman towards him. O'Neill fires three shots from his Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifle, two to the man's head and one to his body as his lifeless corpse slumps to the ground in a pool of blood. The other team member who witnessed the shooting, Matt Bissonnette, has insisted that it was the yet unidentified lead SEAL who actually killed Bin Laden. He agrees with O'Neill that the lead SEAL fired a shot from the staircase, but in Bissonnette's account, Bin Laden is hit in the head. It is this shot that mortally wounds the Al-Qaeda leader. The lead then pushed two of Bin Laden's wives away from the bedroom before Bissonnette and O'Neill storm in to find Bin Laden laying wounded on the ground. Both men then fire several shots into Bin Laden. According to an investigation by journalist Peter Bergen, most of the SEALs who were present support Bissonnette's recollection of the shooting. A deathly silence now hovers over the compound as the SEALs move in for a closer look at the body. A Makarov pistol and an AKS-74U assault rifle lay nearby. A single voice is heard over the radio. For God and country, Geronimo. Enemy killed in action. Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the deadly and horrifying terror attacks 10 years earlier, has been brought to justice. One of Bin Laden's wives is shown the body and confirms that it is her husband. 18 minutes after the first SEALs landed, the team prepares to leave. Cairo, the military dog and his handlers are busy keeping the curious locals away. The The rapidly collect any intelligence that they can find in the compound. CDs, hard drives, and papers. Curiously, his hard drive is later found to contain several Hollywood kids movies, including Antz, Chicken Little, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Of the 28 people in the compound, five have been killed. Osama bin Laden, his son Khalid, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and al-Kuwaiti's brother, along with his wife. The SEALs bind the 23 remaining survivors and leave them in the house, where they will be later taken into custody by the Pakistani military. The reserve Chinook arrives minutes later, and the body bag of bin Laden is placed on board. Explosive charges are set on the crashed Black Hawk to attempt to destroy the sensitive avionics on board. The pilots smash the instrument panels, radios, and other classified equipment to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. The practice missions had been carried out with fences instead of the thick concrete walls of bin Laden's compound, leading the planners to miscalculate the change in airflow at such a low altitude, which would cause the crash. The downed Black Hawk is destroyed by emplaced explosives as the SEALs make their return trip. The two helicopters finally lift off and hurry westwards towards the Afghan border. All of the SEALs and air crew, and Cairo the dog, make it back. By the time the Pakistan Air Force react and scramble two F-16s, the helicopters are over the Afghan border to safety. The team lands back at Jalalabad, [music] where the rigorous process of confirming bin Laden's death begins. Admiral McRaven is still on a direct line to the White House and tells President Obama that the body is definitely bin Laden. Pictures of bin Laden's face are transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, where they are run through sophisticated facial recognition technology. While this is happening, McRaven asks a 6'2" member of the SEAL team to lie down next to the corpse to compare his height against Bin Laden's. Upon hearing this, President Obama quips, "Seriously, Bill, you just blew up a $65 million helicopter, and you don't have enough money to buy a tape measure." The facial recognition results come back within minutes, indicating a 90 to 95% match. The task now is to handle the delicate aftermath of the operation. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, speaks to his counterpart in Pakistan, General Kayani, and breaks the news. General Kayani asked that the United States immediately inform the world of the operation to allow the Pakistani government to better manage the fallout. President Obama makes a series of phone calls, first to former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to inform them of Bin Laden's death. Next to British Prime Minister David Cameron, before placing a call to Pakistani President Zardari. Zardari congratulates the United States, telling Obama, "Whatever the fallout, it's very good news." Within hours, the news has leaked, and crowds are gathering outside the White House and elsewhere to celebrate. At 11:35 p.m., President Obama addresses the nation and the world. Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who was responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. He ends his speech by declaring, "To those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror, justice has been done." The decision is made to bury Osama bin Laden at sea the following day, as no country will accept his remains. This is done with the blessing of the government of Saudi Arabia, >> [music] >> Bin Laden's birthplace. The United States is also wary of burying the Al-Qaeda leader in a place that would become a pilgrimage for extremists. His body is flown from Jalalabad to the aircraft [music] carrier USS Carl Vinson on a V-22 Osprey escorted by two F/A-18 fighters. There, Bin Laden's body is cleaned and wrapped in a white sheet before being placed into a weighted body bag. Commencing at 10:10 a.m. local time, a US Navy officer reads Muslim religious rites, which are translated by a native Arabic speaker. At 11:00 a.m., the body is placed onto a white table, and the table is tipped over the side of the ship. However, the weighted body takes the table with it, and both plunge into the waters of the North Arabian Sea. Bin Laden's body sinks, while the white table bobs on the surface of the water, acting as a ghostly headstone. In 2017, the CIA will release approximately 470,000 files and a copy of Bin Laden's diary, which were seized during the raid. Described by a Pentagon official as the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever, the information collected by the SEALs was instrumental in eliminating several more Al-Qaeda leaders. The combing of the data also reveals that the US drone striking program has significantly crippled Al-Qaeda's ability to operate, even in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The successful raid to kill Osama Bin Laden is a defining moment for the United States in the 21st century. President Obama's once-sagging popularity briefly soars, and his decision-making is widely praised across the political spectrum. The raid's success proves critical to his successful 2012 re-election campaign. Obama's decision to launch the strike within Pakistan leads to discussion over the legality and ethics of the strike, which is still being debated to this day. >> It's worth thinking about, you know, when the president has the ability, the power of life and death. Do we want to give that power to certain people? >> The Abbottabad raid lands like a political earthquake in Pakistan. In the immediate aftermath, it brings deep humiliation for the country's military and intelligence services. The revelation that Osama bin Laden lived for years just a short walk from Pakistan's premier military academy sparks accusations of either staggering incompetence or outright complicity. Washington did not warn Islamabad in advance fearing leaks, and the violation of Pakistani airspace by American commandos is denounced as a breach of sovereignty. US-Pakistan relations plunge to a new low. Aid packages are suspended, senior generals come under intense criticism, and anti-American sentiment surges in the streets. Domestically, the reaction is conflicted. Some Pakistanis feel embarrassment and anger at their government's failure to detect or stop the raid. Others are outraged at the United States seeing the operation as an arrogant intrusion that underscores Pakistan's weakness. Small pockets of sympathy for bin Laden exist, but most ordinary citizens focus on the international fallout. In the longer term, the raid hardens distrust between Washington and Islamabad complicating cooperation on counterterrorism. Across the wider Muslim world, the killing of bin Laden is received with ambivalence. Relief among governments that oppose al-Qaeda, but unease among populations who view the US operation as unilateral and heavy-handed. The death of bin Laden is a critical blow for al-Qaeda, which had already been staggering under the pressure of the American drone campaign. Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, becomes the new leader of the militant organization and vows revenge against the United States. However, Al-Qaeda has been greatly weakened by years of conflict against the US and its allies. Without bin Laden's leadership, the organization becomes more decentralized and less effective at carrying out attacks. The Syrian Civil War briefly leads to a resurgence of Al-Qaeda within war-torn Syria, but this movement quickly splinters into several factions with competing ideologies. One of these is the Al-Nusra Front, which acts as the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, but it is quickly overshadowed by the growing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Ayman al-Zawahiri rejects a merger between the two organizations, and the Al-Nusra Front loses much of its membership. Al-Qaeda distances itself from the Islamic State as its influence and capability wanes. On the 31st of July, 2022, al-Zawahiri is assassinated in his safe house in Kabul, in Afghanistan, by a US drone. >> And you see a generation [music] that I kind of a rising generation of of young extremist, young militants, who are more drawn to the image of of ISIS, of of Zarqawi, the ISIS founder, or or Baghdadi, the ISIS leader. And he makes bin Laden look kind of old and quaint. >> After the raid, the Abbottabad compound instantly becomes a symbol of both shame and intrigue. Crowds gather to glimpse the site, and journalists descend on the city. Pakistani authorities quickly seal it off, worried it could become a shrine for extremists. [music] In February 2012, the government orders the structure demolished, reducing the high-walled house to rubble. Today, the site is an empty lot, overgrown with weeds and scattered debris. No memorial or marker indicates what once stood there. It remains a vacant, unremarkable patch of ground in a quiet neighborhood of Abbottabad. As of 2024, there are plans to build an amusement park on the former location. Thanks again to Joby Warrick, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of The Triple Agent, and to Adam M. McMahon, associate professor of political science at Rider University and author of Obama, Operation Neptune Spear, and The Spectre of Failure.