Obama - Bin Laden statement
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Osama bin Laden found in Pakistan,
Obama to announce</font size></center>
McClatchy Newspapers
President Barack Obama will make a statement Sunday evening from the White House regarding al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, who's thought to have been in hiding in Pakistan for much of the past decade.
McClatchy Newspapers President ...113442/osama-bin-laden-found-in-pakistan.html
Osama bin Laden found in Pakistan,
Obama to announce</font size></center>
McClatchy Newspapers
President Barack Obama will make a statement Sunday evening from the White House regarding al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, who's thought to have been in hiding in Pakistan for much of the past decade.
McClatchy Newspapers President ...113442/osama-bin-laden-found-in-pakistan.html
President Obama: Osama bin Laden is dead
McClatchy Newspapers
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Osama bin Laden is dead, President Barack Obama said from the White House tonight.
CNN reported that Bin Laden was killed in a mansion outside Islamabad, Pakistan, along with members of his family, based on "actionable U.S. intelligence," probably with a missile fired from an aircraft or a pilotless drone.
Bin Laden unleashed the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil. On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized four U.S. jetliners and slammed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, killing a total of 2,972 people.
Fran Townsend, a former White House counter-terrorism adviser to President George W. Bush, told CNN that "it's an enormous moment for the country," also acknowledging that "it will be an enormous moment for this president."
"It's a tremendous achievement," she said, adding that it reflected a decade of work by the intelligence and counter-terrorism community.
Tourists outside the White House nearing midnight raised American flags and broke out in high-spirited singing of "The Star Spangled Banner."
Elsewhere in Washington, normal partisan barriers disappeared in the euphoria over bin Laden's reported death.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the only member of Congress to have served active duty in Afghanistan and Iraq as a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, said Vice President Joe Biden called him to deliver the news of Osama's death.
When he served in the Senate, Biden, a Delaware Democrat, and Graham, a South Carolina Republican, traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan together in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Congressional reaction was a combination of relief and joy — but also of concern that the war on terror is hardly over. The "sense of unity" Obama cited after Sept. 11, 2001, has generally prevailed in Congress on terrorism matters, and lawmakers said after the speech that spirit was likely to persist.
Congressional leaders were generally informed of bin Laden's death by Vice President Joe Biden; others got calls from top administration officials.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who Biden called before the address, called bin Laden's death "a long-awaited end to the work of the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks."
But, he added, "this war on terror continues, but we can be happy tonight that with the death of Osama bin Laden, the world is a better place."
"The man with the blood of more than 3,000 Americans on his hands, the man who forced us to begin to think the unthinkable — is now dead," added House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who was also briefed by Biden.
But remember, said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a Senate Intelligence Committee member, "While this does not mean the end of our fight against global terrorism, bin Laden's death is a major blow to al Qaida and the terrorist organizations that he financed."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/01/113442/osama-bin-laden-found-in-pakistan.html
Job well done
STATEMENT BY FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
nationaljournal:
Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.
Last edited:
Remarks by President Obama on Osama bin Laden
President Barack Obama announces the death of Osama bin Laden.
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
The White House
Tonight, President Obama addressed the Nation to announce that the United States
has killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaida.
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON OSAMA BIN LADEN
East Room
11:35 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: 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 Qaida, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of
thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst
attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our
national memory -- hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the
Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon;
the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic
citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.
And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world.
The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without
their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s
embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.
On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We
offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed
our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no
matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we
were, we were united as one American family.
We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who
committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks
were carried out by al Qaida -- an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which
had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents
in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to
protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.
Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military
and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that
effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland
defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had
given bin Laden and al Qaida safe haven and support. And around the globe,
we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaida
terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.
Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan
border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaida continued to operate from along
that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.
And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of
the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our
war against al Qaida, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt,
dismantle, and defeat his network.
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence
community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from
certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met
repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information
about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound
deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had
enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama
bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation
against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans
carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No
Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a
firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaida’s leader and symbol, and
has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies.
The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our
nation’s effort to defeat al Qaida.
Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al
Qaida will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will --
remain vigilant at home and abroad.
As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never
will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did
shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a
Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaida has
slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his
demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within
Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s
important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped
lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin
Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well, and ordered attacks against
the Pakistani people.
Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their
Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for
both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue
to join us in the fight against al Qaida and its affiliates.
The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and
started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of
service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts
weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a
family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member
who’s been gravely wounded.
So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never
lerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have
been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends
and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on
nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to
al Qaida’s terror: Justice has been done.
Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism
professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American
people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel
the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify
the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve
our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest
share of the burden since that September day.
Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have
never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do
whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.
And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11.
I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament
to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American
people.
The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once
again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is
the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people,
or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up
for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or
power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all.
Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of
America.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/02/113457/transcript-remarks-by-president.html
I am so very proud to know My president actually was the man to get this done. I like his serious nature when addressing us
I also think its funny people saying he was not living in a cave he was living in a mansion in LA, he turned out to be in a mansion in Pakistan like it was a cave
Arab Spring; Bin Laden's Fall
Osama a casualty of the Arab revolt
Did The Saudi's Give Him Up ???
Asia Times
By Spengler
May 2, 2011
More surprising than the death of Osama bin Laden on Monday was the fact that he lived unmolested in a mansion in Abbottabad, about 65 kilometers north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad. How many Pakistani officials and others must have known about this? "America can do whatever we set out mind to," President Barack Obama intoned in his May 1 announcement of Bin Laden's death at the hands during a strike by Pakistani and American special forces.
Not, apparently, without a little help from its friends, and remarkably belated help at that.
Normally I do not speculate on operational matters; to solicit information on secret matters even from very good sources is like telling Pinocchio, "Lie to me." Some considerations here are obvious, though, even without the usual disinformation. <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">It is hard to conclude otherwise that Bin Laden died this week because people who knew his whereabouts chose this particular moment to inform the US authorities. What has changed? The simple answer is: everything has changed. Instability in the Muslim world has reached a level that makes Bin Laden redundant. </span>
That makes American self-congratulation over the killing a bit unseemly. American special forces may have been the proximate cause of Bin Laden's violent death, but the efficient cause is a great strategic upheaval that America does not yet understand, and is not prepared to respond to.
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME03Df02.html
Osama a casualty of the Arab revolt
Did The Saudi's Give Him Up ???
Asia Times
By Spengler
May 2, 2011
More surprising than the death of Osama bin Laden on Monday was the fact that he lived unmolested in a mansion in Abbottabad, about 65 kilometers north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad. How many Pakistani officials and others must have known about this? "America can do whatever we set out mind to," President Barack Obama intoned in his May 1 announcement of Bin Laden's death at the hands during a strike by Pakistani and American special forces.
Not, apparently, without a little help from its friends, and remarkably belated help at that.
Normally I do not speculate on operational matters; to solicit information on secret matters even from very good sources is like telling Pinocchio, "Lie to me." Some considerations here are obvious, though, even without the usual disinformation. <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">It is hard to conclude otherwise that Bin Laden died this week because people who knew his whereabouts chose this particular moment to inform the US authorities. What has changed? The simple answer is: everything has changed. Instability in the Muslim world has reached a level that makes Bin Laden redundant. </span>
The overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and the near-overthrow of Yemini President Ali Abdullah Saleh, along with the eruption of instability across the whole of the Arab world, changed al-Qaeda's position. From Riyadh's vantage point, Bin Laden was a loose cannon and an annoyance, but no threat to the strategic position of Saudi Arabia.
The royal family preferred to allow some of its more radically-inclined members to provide support to Bin Laden on a covert basis in return for al-Qaeda's de facto agreement to leave the Arabian Peninsula in peace. As a WikiLeaks cable revealed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a secret December 2009 memo, "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Toiba] and other terrorist groups."
With the destabilization of Yemen, that sort of modus vivendi became obsolete. As the terse diplomatic announcements of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' April 6 conversation with King Abdullah made clear, the Saudis were deeply concerned about the destabilization of Yemen by al-Qaeda along with Iran.
In the slow-burning civil war in Yemen - a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran - al-Qaeda acted as an Iranian ally. This was an annoyance to the Saudis as long as the Saudi-allied regime remained intact. The near collapse of Saleh's regime, though, threatens to give Iran an additional foothold on the Saudi border.
Although Bin Laden himself is Sunni, al-Qaeda's closest state relationship almost certainly is with Iran. Among the would-be bombers arrested in Germany last week were Iranian nationals, apparently collaborating in an al-Qaeda operation. That is not new. America's bipartisan 9/11 Commission concluded that Iran had opened its border to al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan no later than 2000.
In short, while al-Qaeda had drawn funding from both Saudi and Iranian sources, in present circumstances its activity tended to serve Iranian rather than Saudi interests. Support for terrorism, moreover, is a two-way street: precisely because Saudi Arabia was "a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda", Saudi intelligence knows something about the recipients of their money.
The Saudis, moreover, have an interest in cleaning up the terrorist associations of the Pakistani military. As the Saudi cold war with Iran grows increasingly hot, Riyadh may look towards Islamabad for military support. Asia Times Online has reported that the Bahrain National Guard already is recruiting Pakistani mercenaries. (See Pakistan ready for Middle East role, April 2.)
And there is speculation that Saudi Arabia in a pinch might ask for Pakistani troops, and also that Riyadh might source nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan to counter Iran's nuclear program. Where else might the Saudis go for support in a war with Iran? The Saudis cannot trust the United States. King Abdullah reportedly was enraged that Obama pulled the rug out from under Mubarak, a longstanding American ally. And they cannot trust the Turks, who have become the region's spoiler.
Pakistan's military capacity and urgent need for money make it the Sunni power most amenable to Saudi interests. That is one more reason to clear the deck of unreliable elements like Bin Laden.
Ironically, Bin Laden appears to be a casualty in the great Arab breakdown of 2011. We can only guess as to the details of his demise, and may never know the entire truth. But it is a fair conclusion that he was crushed between the tectonic plates now shifting in the Muslim world.
The royal family preferred to allow some of its more radically-inclined members to provide support to Bin Laden on a covert basis in return for al-Qaeda's de facto agreement to leave the Arabian Peninsula in peace. As a WikiLeaks cable revealed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a secret December 2009 memo, "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Toiba] and other terrorist groups."
With the destabilization of Yemen, that sort of modus vivendi became obsolete. As the terse diplomatic announcements of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' April 6 conversation with King Abdullah made clear, the Saudis were deeply concerned about the destabilization of Yemen by al-Qaeda along with Iran.
In the slow-burning civil war in Yemen - a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran - al-Qaeda acted as an Iranian ally. This was an annoyance to the Saudis as long as the Saudi-allied regime remained intact. The near collapse of Saleh's regime, though, threatens to give Iran an additional foothold on the Saudi border.
Although Bin Laden himself is Sunni, al-Qaeda's closest state relationship almost certainly is with Iran. Among the would-be bombers arrested in Germany last week were Iranian nationals, apparently collaborating in an al-Qaeda operation. That is not new. America's bipartisan 9/11 Commission concluded that Iran had opened its border to al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan no later than 2000.
In short, while al-Qaeda had drawn funding from both Saudi and Iranian sources, in present circumstances its activity tended to serve Iranian rather than Saudi interests. Support for terrorism, moreover, is a two-way street: precisely because Saudi Arabia was "a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda", Saudi intelligence knows something about the recipients of their money.
The Saudis, moreover, have an interest in cleaning up the terrorist associations of the Pakistani military. As the Saudi cold war with Iran grows increasingly hot, Riyadh may look towards Islamabad for military support. Asia Times Online has reported that the Bahrain National Guard already is recruiting Pakistani mercenaries. (See Pakistan ready for Middle East role, April 2.)
And there is speculation that Saudi Arabia in a pinch might ask for Pakistani troops, and also that Riyadh might source nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan to counter Iran's nuclear program. Where else might the Saudis go for support in a war with Iran? The Saudis cannot trust the United States. King Abdullah reportedly was enraged that Obama pulled the rug out from under Mubarak, a longstanding American ally. And they cannot trust the Turks, who have become the region's spoiler.
Pakistan's military capacity and urgent need for money make it the Sunni power most amenable to Saudi interests. That is one more reason to clear the deck of unreliable elements like Bin Laden.
Ironically, Bin Laden appears to be a casualty in the great Arab breakdown of 2011. We can only guess as to the details of his demise, and may never know the entire truth. But it is a fair conclusion that he was crushed between the tectonic plates now shifting in the Muslim world.
That makes American self-congratulation over the killing a bit unseemly. American special forces may have been the proximate cause of Bin Laden's violent death, but the efficient cause is a great strategic upheaval that America does not yet understand, and is not prepared to respond to.
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME03Df02.html
[FLASH]http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=928319059001&playerID=847218437001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAvPkseQk~,nmZoLqNmmHF760Zi7BJA76MkAISK4vzR&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true[/FLASH]
Obama on bin Laden: The full "60 Minutes" interview
By:
Overtime Staff
Category:
Overtime Original
On Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - three days after he announced that American troops had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan - President Barack Obama talked with "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Below is a transcript of that interview. The video of this interview is also available on this Web site.
STEVE KROFT: Mr. President, was this the most satisfying week of your Presidency?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, it was certainly one of the most satisfying weeks not only for my Presidency, but I think for the United States since I've been President. Obviously bin Laden had been not only a symbol of terrorism, but a mass murderer who's had eluded justice for so long, and so many families who have been affected I think had given up hope.
And for us to be able to definitively say, "We got the man who caused thousands of deaths here in the United States and who had been the rallying point for a violent extremist jihad around the world" was something that I think all of us were profoundly grateful to be a part of.
KROFT: Was the decision to launch this attack the most difficult decision that you've made as Commander-In-Chief?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Certainly one. You know, every time I send young men and women into a war theatre, that's a tough decision. And, you know, whenever you go to Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] or Bethesda [Naval Hospital] and you see the price that our young people pay to keep this country safe, that's a tough decision. Whenever you write a letter to a family who's lost a loved one. It's sobering.
This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence that we had was not absolutely conclusive. This was circumstantial evidence that he was gonna be there. Obviously it entailed enormous risk to the guys that I sent in there. But ultimately I had so much confidence in the capacity of our guys to carry out the mission that I felt that the risks were outweighed by the potential benefit of us finally getting our man.
KROFT: When the CIA first brought this information to you . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
KROFT: What was your reaction? Was there a sense of excitement? Did this look promising from the very beginning?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It did look promising from the beginning. Keep in mind that obviously when I was still campaigning for President, I had said that if I ever get a shot at bin Laden we're gonna take it. And that was subject to some criticism at the time, because I had said if it's in Pakistan and, you know, we don't have the ability to capture 'em in any other way, then we're gonna go ahead and take the shot. So I felt very strongly that there was a strategic imperative for us to go after him.
Shortly after I got into office, I brought [CIA director] Leon Panetta privately into the Oval Office and I said to him, "We need to redouble our efforts in hunting bin Laden down. And I want us to start putting more resources, more focus, and more urgency into that mission."
Leon took that to the CIA. They had been working steadily on this since 2001, obviously. And there were a range of threads that were out there that hadn't quite been pulled all together. They did an incredible job during the course of a year and a half to pull on a number of these threads until we were able to identify a courier who was known to be a bin Laden associate, to be able to track them to this compound.
So by the time they came to me they had worked up an image of the compound, where it was and the factors that led them to conclude that this was the best evidence that we had regarding bin Laden's whereabouts since Tora Bora.
But we didn't have a photograph of bin Laden in that building. There was no direct evidence of his presence. And so the CIA continued to build the case meticulously over the course of several months. What I told them when they first came to me with this evidence was: "Even as you guys are building a stronger intelligence case, let's also start building an action plan to figure out if in fact we make a decision that this is him or we've got a good chance that we've got him, how are we gonna deal with him? How can we get at that?"
And so at that point you probably had unprecedented cooperation between the CIA and our military in starting to shape an action plan that ultimately resulted in success this week.
KROFT: When was that when you set that plan in motion?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, they first came to me in August of last year with evidence of the compound. And they said that they had more work to do on it, but at that point they had enough that they felt that it was appropriate for us to start doing some planning. And so from that point on we started looking at the time what our options might be.
The vigorous planning did not begin until early this year. And obviously over the last two months it's been very intensive in which not only did an action plan get developed, but our guys actually started practicing being able to execute.
KROFT: How actively were you involved in that process?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: About as active as any project that I've been involved with since I've been President.
Obviously we have extraordinary guys. Our Special Forces are the best of the best. And so I was not involved in designing the initial plan. But each iteration of that plan they'd bring back to me. Make a full presentation. We would ask questions.
We had multiple meetings in the Situation Room in which we would map out -- and we would actually have a model of the compound and discuss how this operation might proceed, and what various options there were because there was more than one way in which we might go about this.
And in some ways sending in choppers and actually puttin' our guys on the ground entailed some greater risks than some other options. I thought it was important, though, for us to be able to say that we'd definitely got the guy. We thought that it was important for us to be able to exploit potential information that was on the ground in the compound if it did turn out to be him.
We thought that it was important for us not only to protect the lives of our guys, but also to try to minimize collateral damage in the region because this was in a residential neighborhood. I mean one of the ironies of this is, you know, I think the image that bin Laden had tried to promote was that he was an ascetic, living in a cave. This guy was living in a million dollar compound in a residential neighborhood.
KROFT: Were you surprised when they came to you with this compound right in the middle of sort of the military center of Pakistan?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think that there had been discussions that this guy might be hiding in plain sight. And we knew that some al Qaeda operatives, high level targets basically, just blended into the crowd like this.
I think we where surprised when we learned that this compound had been there for five or six years, and that it was in an area in which you would think that potentially he would attract some attention. So yes, the answer is that we were surprised that he could maintain a compound like that for that long without there being a tip off.
KROFT: Do you believe it was built for him?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are still investigating that, but what is clear is that the elements of the compound were structured so that nobody could see in. There were no sight lines that would enable somebody walking by or somebody in an adjoining building to see him. So it was clearly designed to make sure that bin Laden was protected from public view.
KROFT: Do you have any idea how long he was there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We know he was there at least five years.
KROFT: Five years?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
KROFT: Did he move out of that compound?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That we don't know yet. But we know that for five to six years this compound was there, and our belief is that he was there during that time.
KROFT: What was the most difficult part? I mean you had to decide. This was your decision -- whether to proceed or not and how to proceed. What was the most difficult part of that decision?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The most difficult part is always the fact that you're sending guys into harm's way. And there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I mean there're a lot of moving parts here. So my biggest concern was, if I'm sending those guys in and Murphy's Law applies and somethin' happens, can we still get our guys out? So that's point number one.
Point number two, these guys are goin' in in, you know, the darkest of night. And they don't know what they're gonna find there. They don't know if the building is rigged. They don't know if, you know, there are explosives that are triggered by a particular door opening. So huge risks that these guys are taking.
And so my number one concern was: if I send them in, can I get them out? And a lot of the discussion we had during the course of planning was how do we make sure there's backup? How do we make sure that there's redundancy built into the plan so that we have the best chance of getting our guys out? That's point number one.
Point number two was: as outstanding a job as our intelligence teams did -- and I cannot praise them enough they did an extraordinary job with just the slenderest of bits of information to piece this all together -- at the end of the day, this was still a 55/45 situation. I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been significant consequences.
Obviously, we're going into the sovereign territory of another country and landing helicopters and conducting a military operation. And so if it turns out that it's a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who's in this compound, and, you know, we've spent Special Forces in -- we've got problems. So there were risks involved geopolitically in making the decision.
But my number one concern was: can our guys get in and get out safely. The fact that our Special Forces have become so good -- these guys perform at levels that 20, 30 years ago would not have happened -- I think finally gave me the confidence to say, "Let's go ahead." I think that the American people have some sense of how good these guys are, but until you actually see 'em and meet them, it's hard to describe how courageous, how tough, how skilled, how precise they are. And it was because of their skills that I ended up having confidence to make the decision.
KROFT: I mean it's been reported that there was some resistance from advisors and planners who disagreed with the commando raid approach. Was it difficult for you to overcome that? And what level of confidence did you have?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know one of the things that we've done here is to build a team that is collegial and where everybody speaks their mind. And there's not a lot of snipin' or back-biting after the fact. And what I've tried to do is make sure that every time I sit down in the situation room, every one of my advisors around there knows I expect them to give me their best assessments.
And so the fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information.
But as I said, you know, there were sufficient risks involved where it wasn't as if any of the folks who were voicing doubts were voicing somethin' that I wasn't already runnin' through in my own head. You know, we understood that there were some significant risks involved in this.
KROFT: How much did some of the past failures, like the Iran hostage rescue attempt, how did that weigh on you? I mean . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I thought about that.
KROFT: . . . was that a factor?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I mean you think about Black Hawk Down. You think about what happened with the Iranian rescue. And it, you know, I am very sympathetic to the situation for other Presidents where you make a decision, you're making your best call, your best shot, and something goes wrong -- because these are tough, complicated operations. And yeah, absolutely. The day before I was thinkin' about this quite a bit.
KROFT: It sounds like you made a decision that you could accept failure. You didn't want failure but after looking at . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah
KROFT: . . . the 55/45 thing that you mentioned, you must have at some point concluded that the advantages outweighed the risks . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I concluded that it was worth it. And the reason that I concluded it was worth it was that we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al Qaeda. Ever since 2001. And even before with the embassy bombing in Kenya.
And so part of what was in my mind was all those young men that I visited who are still fighting in Afghanistan. And the families of victims of terrorism that I talk to. 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.
KROFT: How much of it was gut instinct? Did you have personal feelings about whether . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, the thing
KROFT: . . . he was there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The thing about gut instinct is if it works, then you think, "Boy, I had good instincts." If it doesn't, then you're gonna be running back in your mind all the things that told you maybe you shouldn't have done it. Obviously I had enough of an instinct that we could be right, but it was worth doing.
KROFT: After you made the decision to go ahead, you had like this incredible weekend where you were you surveyed the tornado damage in Alabama.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
KROFT: You took your family to the shuttle launch and met with people down there. With Gabby . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: With Gabby . . . .
KROFT: . . . Giffords.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Giffords, yeah.
KROFT: You attended the White House Association dinner. There was a commencement address. And this was all going on, I mean you knew what was gonna happen.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah. Yeah. The decision was made. I made the decision Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning, and then we flew off to look at the tornado damage. To go to Cape Canaveral, to make a speech, a commencement speech. And then we had the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night. So this was in the back of my mind all weekend.
KROFT: Just the back?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Middle, front.
KROFT: Was it hard keeping your focus?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes. Yeah.
KROFT: Did you have to suppress the urge to tell someone? Did you wanna tell somebody? Did you wanna tell Michelle? Did you tell Michelle?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know one of the great successes of this operation was that we were able to keep this thing secret. And it's a testimony to how seriously everybody took this operation and the understanding that any leak could end up not only compromising the mission, but killing some of the guys that we were sending in there.
And so very few people in the White House knew. The vast majority of my most senior aides did not know that we were doing this. And you know, there were times where you wanted to go around and talk this through with some more folks. And that just wasn't an option.
And during the course of the weekend, you know, there was no doubt that this was weighin' on me. But, you know, something I said during the campaign that I've learned over and over again in this job is the Presidency requires you to do more than one thing at a time. And it is important for you to be able to focus on somethin' that matters deeply to you, but still be able to do the things on a daily basis that are makin' a difference in people's lives.
KROFT: I want to go to the Situation Room. What was the mood?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Tense.
KROFT: People talking?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah, but doing a lot of listening as well, 'cause we were able to monitor the situation in real time. Getting reports back from Bill McRaven, the head of our special forces operations, as well as Leon Panetta. And you know, there were big chunks of time in which all we were doin' was just waiting. And it was the longest 40 minutes of my life with the possible exception of when Sasha got meningitis when she was three months old, and I was waiting for the doctor to tell me that she was all right. It was a very tense situation.
KROFT: Were you nervous?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes.
KROFT: What could you see?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: As I said, we were monitoring the situation. And we knew as events unfolded what was happening in and around the compound, but we could not get information clearly about what was happening inside the compound.
KROFT: Right. And that went on for a long time? Could you hear gunfire?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We had a sense of when gunfire and explosions took place.
KROFT: Flashes?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah. And we also knew when one of the helicopters went down in a way that wasn't according to plan. And, as you might imagine that made us more tense.
KROFT: So it got off to a bad start?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it did not go exactly according to planned, but this is exactly where all the work that had been done anticipating what might go wrong made a huge difference.
KROFT: There was a backup plan?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There was a backup plan.
KROFT: You had to blow up some walls?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We had to blow up some walls.
KROFT: When was the first indication you got that you had found the right place? That bin Laden was in there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There was a point before folks had left, before we had gotten everybody back on the helicopter and were flying back to base, where they said Geronimo has been killed. And Geronimo was the code name for bin Laden. And now obviously at that point these guys were operating in the dark with all kinds of stuff going on so everybody was cautious. But at that point cautiously optimistic.
KROFT: What was your reaction when you heard those words?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I was relieved and I wanted to make sure those guys got over the Pakistan border and landed safely. And I think deeply proud and deeply satisfied of my team.
KROFT: When did you start to feel comfortable that bin Laden had been killed?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: When they landed we had very strong confirmation at that point that it was him. Photographs had been taken. Facial analysis indicated that in fact it was him. We hadn't yet done DNA testing, but at that point we were 95 percent sure.
KROFT: Did you see the pictures?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes.
KROFT: What was your reaction when you saw them?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was him.
KROFT: Why haven't you released them?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, we discussed this internally. Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. We've done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool.
You know, that's not who we are. You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk. And I've discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree.
KROFT: There are people in Pakistan, for example, who say, "Look, this is all a lie. This is another American trick. Osama's not dead."
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, the truth is that - and we're monitoring worldwide reaction -- there's no doubt that bin Laden is dead. Certainly there's no doubt among al Qaeda members that he is dead. And so we don't think that a photograph in and of itself is gonna make any difference. There are gonna be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walkin' on this earth again.
KROFT: Was it your decision to bury him at sea?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was a joint decision. We thought it was important to think through ahead of time how we would dispose of the body if he were killed in the compound. And I think that what we tried to do was, consulting with experts in Islamic law and ritual, to find something that was appropriate that was respectful of the body.
Frankly we took more care on this than, obviously, bin Laden took when he killed 3,000 people. He didn't have much regard for how they were treated and desecrated. But that, again, is somethin' that makes us different. And I think we handled it appropriately.
KROFT: When the mission was over . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Uh-huh.
KROFT: . . . and you walked out of the situation room . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
KROFT: . . . what did you do? What was the first thing you did?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah, I think I walked up with my team, and I just said, "We got him." And I expressed my profound gratitude and pride to the team that had worked on this.
I mean keep in mind this is something, first of all, that that wasn't just our doing. Obviously since 2001, countless folks in our intelligence community and our military had worked on this issue. President Bush had obviously devoted a lot of resources to this, and so there was a cumulative effort and a testament to the capacity of the United States of America to follow through. And to do what we said we're gonna do. Even across administrations, across party lines and the skill with which our intelligence and military folks operated in this was indescribable.
So it was a moment of great pride for me to see our capacity as a nation to execute something this difficult this well. And obviously, it also made me think about those families that I had met previously who had been so profoundly burdened by the fact that he was still runnin' around out there.
You know, I got a letter the day after, an e-mail from a young person who had spoken to her dad when she was four years old before the towers collapsed, he was he was in the building. And she described what it had been like for the last ten years growing up, always having that image of her father's -- the sound of her father's voice, and thinking that she'd never see him again, and watching her mother weep on the phone. And that's what I thought about.
KROFT: When you announced that bin Laden had been killed last Sunday, you said "Our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden in the compound where he was hiding." Can you be more specific on that, and how much help did Pakistan actually provide in getting rid of bin Laden.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, I've gotta be careful about sources and methods and how we operate and how we pieced together this intelligence, because we're gonna still be goin' after terrorists in the future.
What I can say is that Pakistan, since 9/11, has been a strong counterterrorism partner with us. There have been times where we've had disagreements. There have been times where we wanted to push harder, and for various concerns, they might have hesitated. And those differences are real. And they'll continue.
But the fact of the matter is, is that we've been able to kill more terrorists on Pakistani soil than just about any place else. We could not have done that without Pakistani cooperation. And I think that this will be an important moment in which Pakistan and the United States gets together and says, "All right, we've gotten bin Laden, but we've got more work to do. And are there ways for us to work more effectively together than we have in the past?"
And that's gonna be important for our national security. It doesn't mean that there aren't gonna be times where we're gonna be frustrated with Pakistanis. And frankly, there are gonna be times where they're frustrated with us. You know, they've got not only individual terrorists there, but there's also a climate inside of Pakistan that sometimes is deeply anti-American. And it makes it more difficult for us to be able to operate there effectively.
But I do think that it's important for the American people to understand that we've got a stake in continuing cooperation from Pakistan on these issues.
KROFT: You didn't tell anybody in the Pakistani government or the military.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No.
KROFT: Or their intelligence community?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No.
KROFT: Because you didn't trust?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: As I said, I didn't tell most people here in the White House. I didn't tell my own family. It was that important for us to maintain operational security.
KROFT: But you were carrying out this operation in Pakistan.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
KROFT: You didn't trust 'em?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: If I'm not revealing to some of my closest aides what we're doin', then I sure as heck am not gonna be revealing it to folks who I don't know.
KROFT: Right. Now the location of this house, the location of the compound just raises all sorts of questions.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Uh-huh.
KROFT: Do you believe people in the Pakistani government, Pakistani intelligence agencies knew that bin Laden was living there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate.
And we've already communicated to them, and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these are questions that we're not gonna be able to answer three or four days after the event. It's gonna take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.
And I just want the American people to think about this. These guys, our guys, go in in the dead of night, it's pitch black, they're takin' out walls, false doors, gettin' shot at, they killed bin Laden, and they had the presence of mind to still gather up a whole bunch of bin Laden's material which will be a treasure trove of information that could serve us very well in the weeks and months to come. It's just an indication of the extraordinary work that they did.
KROFT: Do you have any sense of what they found there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are now obviously putting everything we've got into analyzing and evaluatin' all that information. But we anticipate that it can give us leads to other terrorists that we've been lookin' for for a long time, other high value targets. But also can give us a better sense of existing plots that might have been there how they operated and their methods of communicating.
All of this should help us continue to push harder and harder. And one of the things that I said when I came into office was we had to remember what our primary focus was. Who carried out September 11th and how do we make sure that we are laser-focused on getting them.
We have done a great job even before we got bin Laden in degrading their capacity. And we now have the opportunity, we're not done yet, but we've got the opportunity, I think, to really finally defeat at least Al Qaeda in that border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That doesn't mean that we will defeat terrorism. It doesn't mean that Al Qaeda hasn't metastasized to other parts of the world where we've gotta, you know, address operatives there. But it does mean we've got a chance to, I think, really deliver a fatal blow to this organization, if we follow through aggressively in the months to come.
KROFT: Is this the first time that you've ever ordered someone killed?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, keep in mind that, you know, every time I make a decision about launching a missile, every time I make a decision about sending troops into battle, you know, I understand that this will result in people being killed. And that is a sobering fact. But it is one that comes with the job.
KROFT: This was one man. This is somebody who's cast a shadow in this place, in the White House for almost a decade.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn't lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.
A riveting 30 minutes with President Barack Obama as he describes the weekend that made history
By:
Overtime Staff
Category:
Overtime Original
On Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - three days after he announced that American troops had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan - President Barack Obama talked with "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Below is a transcript of that interview. The video of this interview is also available on this Web site.
STEVE KROFT: Mr. President, was this the most satisfying week of your Presidency?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, it was certainly one of the most satisfying weeks not only for my Presidency, but I think for the United States since I've been President. Obviously bin Laden had been not only a symbol of terrorism, but a mass murderer who's had eluded justice for so long, and so many families who have been affected I think had given up hope.
And for us to be able to definitively say, "We got the man who caused thousands of deaths here in the United States and who had been the rallying point for a violent extremist jihad around the world" was something that I think all of us were profoundly grateful to be a part of.
KROFT: Was the decision to launch this attack the most difficult decision that you've made as Commander-In-Chief?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Certainly one. You know, every time I send young men and women into a war theatre, that's a tough decision. And, you know, whenever you go to Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] or Bethesda [Naval Hospital] and you see the price that our young people pay to keep this country safe, that's a tough decision. Whenever you write a letter to a family who's lost a loved one. It's sobering.
This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence that we had was not absolutely conclusive. This was circumstantial evidence that he was gonna be there. Obviously it entailed enormous risk to the guys that I sent in there. But ultimately I had so much confidence in the capacity of our guys to carry out the mission that I felt that the risks were outweighed by the potential benefit of us finally getting our man.
KROFT: When the CIA first brought this information to you . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
KROFT: What was your reaction? Was there a sense of excitement? Did this look promising from the very beginning?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It did look promising from the beginning. Keep in mind that obviously when I was still campaigning for President, I had said that if I ever get a shot at bin Laden we're gonna take it. And that was subject to some criticism at the time, because I had said if it's in Pakistan and, you know, we don't have the ability to capture 'em in any other way, then we're gonna go ahead and take the shot. So I felt very strongly that there was a strategic imperative for us to go after him.
Shortly after I got into office, I brought [CIA director] Leon Panetta privately into the Oval Office and I said to him, "We need to redouble our efforts in hunting bin Laden down. And I want us to start putting more resources, more focus, and more urgency into that mission."
Leon took that to the CIA. They had been working steadily on this since 2001, obviously. And there were a range of threads that were out there that hadn't quite been pulled all together. They did an incredible job during the course of a year and a half to pull on a number of these threads until we were able to identify a courier who was known to be a bin Laden associate, to be able to track them to this compound.
So by the time they came to me they had worked up an image of the compound, where it was and the factors that led them to conclude that this was the best evidence that we had regarding bin Laden's whereabouts since Tora Bora.
But we didn't have a photograph of bin Laden in that building. There was no direct evidence of his presence. And so the CIA continued to build the case meticulously over the course of several months. What I told them when they first came to me with this evidence was: "Even as you guys are building a stronger intelligence case, let's also start building an action plan to figure out if in fact we make a decision that this is him or we've got a good chance that we've got him, how are we gonna deal with him? How can we get at that?"
And so at that point you probably had unprecedented cooperation between the CIA and our military in starting to shape an action plan that ultimately resulted in success this week.
KROFT: When was that when you set that plan in motion?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, they first came to me in August of last year with evidence of the compound. And they said that they had more work to do on it, but at that point they had enough that they felt that it was appropriate for us to start doing some planning. And so from that point on we started looking at the time what our options might be.
The vigorous planning did not begin until early this year. And obviously over the last two months it's been very intensive in which not only did an action plan get developed, but our guys actually started practicing being able to execute.
KROFT: How actively were you involved in that process?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: About as active as any project that I've been involved with since I've been President.
Obviously we have extraordinary guys. Our Special Forces are the best of the best. And so I was not involved in designing the initial plan. But each iteration of that plan they'd bring back to me. Make a full presentation. We would ask questions.
We had multiple meetings in the Situation Room in which we would map out -- and we would actually have a model of the compound and discuss how this operation might proceed, and what various options there were because there was more than one way in which we might go about this.
And in some ways sending in choppers and actually puttin' our guys on the ground entailed some greater risks than some other options. I thought it was important, though, for us to be able to say that we'd definitely got the guy. We thought that it was important for us to be able to exploit potential information that was on the ground in the compound if it did turn out to be him.
We thought that it was important for us not only to protect the lives of our guys, but also to try to minimize collateral damage in the region because this was in a residential neighborhood. I mean one of the ironies of this is, you know, I think the image that bin Laden had tried to promote was that he was an ascetic, living in a cave. This guy was living in a million dollar compound in a residential neighborhood.
KROFT: Were you surprised when they came to you with this compound right in the middle of sort of the military center of Pakistan?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think that there had been discussions that this guy might be hiding in plain sight. And we knew that some al Qaeda operatives, high level targets basically, just blended into the crowd like this.
I think we where surprised when we learned that this compound had been there for five or six years, and that it was in an area in which you would think that potentially he would attract some attention. So yes, the answer is that we were surprised that he could maintain a compound like that for that long without there being a tip off.
KROFT: Do you believe it was built for him?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are still investigating that, but what is clear is that the elements of the compound were structured so that nobody could see in. There were no sight lines that would enable somebody walking by or somebody in an adjoining building to see him. So it was clearly designed to make sure that bin Laden was protected from public view.
KROFT: Do you have any idea how long he was there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We know he was there at least five years.
KROFT: Five years?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
KROFT: Did he move out of that compound?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That we don't know yet. But we know that for five to six years this compound was there, and our belief is that he was there during that time.
KROFT: What was the most difficult part? I mean you had to decide. This was your decision -- whether to proceed or not and how to proceed. What was the most difficult part of that decision?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The most difficult part is always the fact that you're sending guys into harm's way. And there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I mean there're a lot of moving parts here. So my biggest concern was, if I'm sending those guys in and Murphy's Law applies and somethin' happens, can we still get our guys out? So that's point number one.
Point number two, these guys are goin' in in, you know, the darkest of night. And they don't know what they're gonna find there. They don't know if the building is rigged. They don't know if, you know, there are explosives that are triggered by a particular door opening. So huge risks that these guys are taking.
And so my number one concern was: if I send them in, can I get them out? And a lot of the discussion we had during the course of planning was how do we make sure there's backup? How do we make sure that there's redundancy built into the plan so that we have the best chance of getting our guys out? That's point number one.
Point number two was: as outstanding a job as our intelligence teams did -- and I cannot praise them enough they did an extraordinary job with just the slenderest of bits of information to piece this all together -- at the end of the day, this was still a 55/45 situation. I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been significant consequences.
Obviously, we're going into the sovereign territory of another country and landing helicopters and conducting a military operation. And so if it turns out that it's a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who's in this compound, and, you know, we've spent Special Forces in -- we've got problems. So there were risks involved geopolitically in making the decision.
But my number one concern was: can our guys get in and get out safely. The fact that our Special Forces have become so good -- these guys perform at levels that 20, 30 years ago would not have happened -- I think finally gave me the confidence to say, "Let's go ahead." I think that the American people have some sense of how good these guys are, but until you actually see 'em and meet them, it's hard to describe how courageous, how tough, how skilled, how precise they are. And it was because of their skills that I ended up having confidence to make the decision.
KROFT: I mean it's been reported that there was some resistance from advisors and planners who disagreed with the commando raid approach. Was it difficult for you to overcome that? And what level of confidence did you have?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know one of the things that we've done here is to build a team that is collegial and where everybody speaks their mind. And there's not a lot of snipin' or back-biting after the fact. And what I've tried to do is make sure that every time I sit down in the situation room, every one of my advisors around there knows I expect them to give me their best assessments.
And so the fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information.
But as I said, you know, there were sufficient risks involved where it wasn't as if any of the folks who were voicing doubts were voicing somethin' that I wasn't already runnin' through in my own head. You know, we understood that there were some significant risks involved in this.
KROFT: How much did some of the past failures, like the Iran hostage rescue attempt, how did that weigh on you? I mean . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I thought about that.
KROFT: . . . was that a factor?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I mean you think about Black Hawk Down. You think about what happened with the Iranian rescue. And it, you know, I am very sympathetic to the situation for other Presidents where you make a decision, you're making your best call, your best shot, and something goes wrong -- because these are tough, complicated operations. And yeah, absolutely. The day before I was thinkin' about this quite a bit.
KROFT: It sounds like you made a decision that you could accept failure. You didn't want failure but after looking at . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah
KROFT: . . . the 55/45 thing that you mentioned, you must have at some point concluded that the advantages outweighed the risks . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I concluded that it was worth it. And the reason that I concluded it was worth it was that we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al Qaeda. Ever since 2001. And even before with the embassy bombing in Kenya.
And so part of what was in my mind was all those young men that I visited who are still fighting in Afghanistan. And the families of victims of terrorism that I talk to. 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.
KROFT: How much of it was gut instinct? Did you have personal feelings about whether . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, the thing
KROFT: . . . he was there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The thing about gut instinct is if it works, then you think, "Boy, I had good instincts." If it doesn't, then you're gonna be running back in your mind all the things that told you maybe you shouldn't have done it. Obviously I had enough of an instinct that we could be right, but it was worth doing.
KROFT: After you made the decision to go ahead, you had like this incredible weekend where you were you surveyed the tornado damage in Alabama.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
KROFT: You took your family to the shuttle launch and met with people down there. With Gabby . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: With Gabby . . . .
KROFT: . . . Giffords.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Giffords, yeah.
KROFT: You attended the White House Association dinner. There was a commencement address. And this was all going on, I mean you knew what was gonna happen.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah. Yeah. The decision was made. I made the decision Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning, and then we flew off to look at the tornado damage. To go to Cape Canaveral, to make a speech, a commencement speech. And then we had the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night. So this was in the back of my mind all weekend.
KROFT: Just the back?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Middle, front.
KROFT: Was it hard keeping your focus?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes. Yeah.
KROFT: Did you have to suppress the urge to tell someone? Did you wanna tell somebody? Did you wanna tell Michelle? Did you tell Michelle?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know one of the great successes of this operation was that we were able to keep this thing secret. And it's a testimony to how seriously everybody took this operation and the understanding that any leak could end up not only compromising the mission, but killing some of the guys that we were sending in there.
And so very few people in the White House knew. The vast majority of my most senior aides did not know that we were doing this. And you know, there were times where you wanted to go around and talk this through with some more folks. And that just wasn't an option.
And during the course of the weekend, you know, there was no doubt that this was weighin' on me. But, you know, something I said during the campaign that I've learned over and over again in this job is the Presidency requires you to do more than one thing at a time. And it is important for you to be able to focus on somethin' that matters deeply to you, but still be able to do the things on a daily basis that are makin' a difference in people's lives.
KROFT: I want to go to the Situation Room. What was the mood?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Tense.
KROFT: People talking?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah, but doing a lot of listening as well, 'cause we were able to monitor the situation in real time. Getting reports back from Bill McRaven, the head of our special forces operations, as well as Leon Panetta. And you know, there were big chunks of time in which all we were doin' was just waiting. And it was the longest 40 minutes of my life with the possible exception of when Sasha got meningitis when she was three months old, and I was waiting for the doctor to tell me that she was all right. It was a very tense situation.
KROFT: Were you nervous?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes.
KROFT: What could you see?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: As I said, we were monitoring the situation. And we knew as events unfolded what was happening in and around the compound, but we could not get information clearly about what was happening inside the compound.
KROFT: Right. And that went on for a long time? Could you hear gunfire?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We had a sense of when gunfire and explosions took place.
KROFT: Flashes?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah. And we also knew when one of the helicopters went down in a way that wasn't according to plan. And, as you might imagine that made us more tense.
KROFT: So it got off to a bad start?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it did not go exactly according to planned, but this is exactly where all the work that had been done anticipating what might go wrong made a huge difference.
KROFT: There was a backup plan?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There was a backup plan.
KROFT: You had to blow up some walls?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We had to blow up some walls.
KROFT: When was the first indication you got that you had found the right place? That bin Laden was in there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There was a point before folks had left, before we had gotten everybody back on the helicopter and were flying back to base, where they said Geronimo has been killed. And Geronimo was the code name for bin Laden. And now obviously at that point these guys were operating in the dark with all kinds of stuff going on so everybody was cautious. But at that point cautiously optimistic.
KROFT: What was your reaction when you heard those words?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I was relieved and I wanted to make sure those guys got over the Pakistan border and landed safely. And I think deeply proud and deeply satisfied of my team.
KROFT: When did you start to feel comfortable that bin Laden had been killed?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: When they landed we had very strong confirmation at that point that it was him. Photographs had been taken. Facial analysis indicated that in fact it was him. We hadn't yet done DNA testing, but at that point we were 95 percent sure.
KROFT: Did you see the pictures?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes.
KROFT: What was your reaction when you saw them?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was him.
KROFT: Why haven't you released them?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, we discussed this internally. Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. We've done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool.
You know, that's not who we are. You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk. And I've discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree.
KROFT: There are people in Pakistan, for example, who say, "Look, this is all a lie. This is another American trick. Osama's not dead."
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, the truth is that - and we're monitoring worldwide reaction -- there's no doubt that bin Laden is dead. Certainly there's no doubt among al Qaeda members that he is dead. And so we don't think that a photograph in and of itself is gonna make any difference. There are gonna be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walkin' on this earth again.
KROFT: Was it your decision to bury him at sea?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was a joint decision. We thought it was important to think through ahead of time how we would dispose of the body if he were killed in the compound. And I think that what we tried to do was, consulting with experts in Islamic law and ritual, to find something that was appropriate that was respectful of the body.
Frankly we took more care on this than, obviously, bin Laden took when he killed 3,000 people. He didn't have much regard for how they were treated and desecrated. But that, again, is somethin' that makes us different. And I think we handled it appropriately.
KROFT: When the mission was over . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Uh-huh.
KROFT: . . . and you walked out of the situation room . . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
KROFT: . . . what did you do? What was the first thing you did?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah, I think I walked up with my team, and I just said, "We got him." And I expressed my profound gratitude and pride to the team that had worked on this.
I mean keep in mind this is something, first of all, that that wasn't just our doing. Obviously since 2001, countless folks in our intelligence community and our military had worked on this issue. President Bush had obviously devoted a lot of resources to this, and so there was a cumulative effort and a testament to the capacity of the United States of America to follow through. And to do what we said we're gonna do. Even across administrations, across party lines and the skill with which our intelligence and military folks operated in this was indescribable.
So it was a moment of great pride for me to see our capacity as a nation to execute something this difficult this well. And obviously, it also made me think about those families that I had met previously who had been so profoundly burdened by the fact that he was still runnin' around out there.
You know, I got a letter the day after, an e-mail from a young person who had spoken to her dad when she was four years old before the towers collapsed, he was he was in the building. And she described what it had been like for the last ten years growing up, always having that image of her father's -- the sound of her father's voice, and thinking that she'd never see him again, and watching her mother weep on the phone. And that's what I thought about.
KROFT: When you announced that bin Laden had been killed last Sunday, you said "Our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden in the compound where he was hiding." Can you be more specific on that, and how much help did Pakistan actually provide in getting rid of bin Laden.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, I've gotta be careful about sources and methods and how we operate and how we pieced together this intelligence, because we're gonna still be goin' after terrorists in the future.
What I can say is that Pakistan, since 9/11, has been a strong counterterrorism partner with us. There have been times where we've had disagreements. There have been times where we wanted to push harder, and for various concerns, they might have hesitated. And those differences are real. And they'll continue.
But the fact of the matter is, is that we've been able to kill more terrorists on Pakistani soil than just about any place else. We could not have done that without Pakistani cooperation. And I think that this will be an important moment in which Pakistan and the United States gets together and says, "All right, we've gotten bin Laden, but we've got more work to do. And are there ways for us to work more effectively together than we have in the past?"
And that's gonna be important for our national security. It doesn't mean that there aren't gonna be times where we're gonna be frustrated with Pakistanis. And frankly, there are gonna be times where they're frustrated with us. You know, they've got not only individual terrorists there, but there's also a climate inside of Pakistan that sometimes is deeply anti-American. And it makes it more difficult for us to be able to operate there effectively.
But I do think that it's important for the American people to understand that we've got a stake in continuing cooperation from Pakistan on these issues.
KROFT: You didn't tell anybody in the Pakistani government or the military.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No.
KROFT: Or their intelligence community?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No.
KROFT: Because you didn't trust?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: As I said, I didn't tell most people here in the White House. I didn't tell my own family. It was that important for us to maintain operational security.
KROFT: But you were carrying out this operation in Pakistan.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah.
KROFT: You didn't trust 'em?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: If I'm not revealing to some of my closest aides what we're doin', then I sure as heck am not gonna be revealing it to folks who I don't know.
KROFT: Right. Now the location of this house, the location of the compound just raises all sorts of questions.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Uh-huh.
KROFT: Do you believe people in the Pakistani government, Pakistani intelligence agencies knew that bin Laden was living there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate.
And we've already communicated to them, and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these are questions that we're not gonna be able to answer three or four days after the event. It's gonna take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.
And I just want the American people to think about this. These guys, our guys, go in in the dead of night, it's pitch black, they're takin' out walls, false doors, gettin' shot at, they killed bin Laden, and they had the presence of mind to still gather up a whole bunch of bin Laden's material which will be a treasure trove of information that could serve us very well in the weeks and months to come. It's just an indication of the extraordinary work that they did.
KROFT: Do you have any sense of what they found there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are now obviously putting everything we've got into analyzing and evaluatin' all that information. But we anticipate that it can give us leads to other terrorists that we've been lookin' for for a long time, other high value targets. But also can give us a better sense of existing plots that might have been there how they operated and their methods of communicating.
All of this should help us continue to push harder and harder. And one of the things that I said when I came into office was we had to remember what our primary focus was. Who carried out September 11th and how do we make sure that we are laser-focused on getting them.
We have done a great job even before we got bin Laden in degrading their capacity. And we now have the opportunity, we're not done yet, but we've got the opportunity, I think, to really finally defeat at least Al Qaeda in that border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That doesn't mean that we will defeat terrorism. It doesn't mean that Al Qaeda hasn't metastasized to other parts of the world where we've gotta, you know, address operatives there. But it does mean we've got a chance to, I think, really deliver a fatal blow to this organization, if we follow through aggressively in the months to come.
KROFT: Is this the first time that you've ever ordered someone killed?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, keep in mind that, you know, every time I make a decision about launching a missile, every time I make a decision about sending troops into battle, you know, I understand that this will result in people being killed. And that is a sobering fact. But it is one that comes with the job.
KROFT: This was one man. This is somebody who's cast a shadow in this place, in the White House for almost a decade.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn't lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.
Re: Obama on bin Laden: The full "60 Minutes" interview
Re: Obama on bin Laden: The full "60 Minutes" interview
Hell no
Hell no
Re: Obama on bin Laden: The full "60 Minutes" interview
Hell no
Hell no
Biden: I advised Obama against launching mission to kill Osama Bin Laden Read more:
Biden: I advised Obama against launching mission to kill Osama Bin Laden
Vice President Biden admitted this weekend that he advised President Obama against launching the mission that nailed 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden last year.
Biden recalled the deliberations over whether to carry out the raid during a House Democratic retreat in Maryland on Friday, according to CNN.
Describing a meeting of the President's national security team on April 28, 2011, Biden said, "It got to me and [the President] said 'Joe, what do you think?'"
"I said...'Mr. President, my suggestion is, don't go. We have to do two more things to see if he's there,'" Biden said.
Biden said that every other adviser in the room refused to give a straight answer except then-CIA director Leon Panetta.
"Leon said go," Biden remembered.
The veep said Obama heard everyone out and then left the meeting, saying he would make the decision.
Obama gave the green light on the raid - known as Operation Neptune Spear - as he was boarding a helicopter at the White House the next morning.
He turned to (national security adviser) Tom Donilon and said 'Go,'" Biden recalled.
White House press secretary Jay Carney told Politico on Monday, "the broader point that I think the President has made is that this was not a sure thing."
"In the end, as with a lot of decisions, your advisers come together and have compelling arguments on either side and you have to make the call."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...ama-bin-laden-article-1.1014147#ixzz1l3EWAJ00
Biden: I advised Obama against launching mission to kill Osama Bin Laden
Vice President Biden admitted this weekend that he advised President Obama against launching the mission that nailed 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden last year.
Biden recalled the deliberations over whether to carry out the raid during a House Democratic retreat in Maryland on Friday, according to CNN.
Describing a meeting of the President's national security team on April 28, 2011, Biden said, "It got to me and [the President] said 'Joe, what do you think?'"
"I said...'Mr. President, my suggestion is, don't go. We have to do two more things to see if he's there,'" Biden said.
Biden said that every other adviser in the room refused to give a straight answer except then-CIA director Leon Panetta.
"Leon said go," Biden remembered.
The veep said Obama heard everyone out and then left the meeting, saying he would make the decision.
Obama gave the green light on the raid - known as Operation Neptune Spear - as he was boarding a helicopter at the White House the next morning.
He turned to (national security adviser) Tom Donilon and said 'Go,'" Biden recalled.
White House press secretary Jay Carney told Politico on Monday, "the broader point that I think the President has made is that this was not a sure thing."
"In the end, as with a lot of decisions, your advisers come together and have compelling arguments on either side and you have to make the call."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...ama-bin-laden-article-1.1014147#ixzz1l3EWAJ00
Re: Biden: I advised Obama against launching mission to kill Osama Bin Laden Read m
New Details Emerge About
Bin Laden's Last Days
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New Details Emerge About
Bin Laden's Last Days
<param name="FlashVars" value="launch=46690999&width=420&height=245" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed name="msnbc8bb859" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640" width="420" height="245" FlashVars="launch=46690999&width=420&height=245" allowscriptaccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 420px;">Visit msnbc.com for <a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com">breaking news</a>, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;">world news</a>, and <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;">news about the economy</a></p>
Re: Biden: I advised Obama against launching mission to kill Osama Bin Laden Read m
West Point putting Osama bin Laden raid document
trove online today, in English and Arabic
The world will soon be able to read the last words of Osama bin Laden
as he struggled to command the attention of his far-flung terror network.
A selection of documents seized in last year’s raid on bin Laden’s house in
Pakistan will be posted online Thursday by the Army’s Combating Terrorism
Center at the U.S. Military Academy.
West Point putting Osama bin Laden raid document
trove online today, in English and Arabic
The world will soon be able to read the last words of Osama bin Laden
as he struggled to command the attention of his far-flung terror network.
A selection of documents seized in last year’s raid on bin Laden’s house in
Pakistan will be posted online Thursday by the Army’s Combating Terrorism
Center at the U.S. Military Academy.
The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed
http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313
http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313
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