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Last Sunday, as the final preparations
for the raid were under way.
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President Obama continued
with his charade of business as usual.
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Most people in the White House,
including some of his closest aides
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had no idea what was about to happen.
To break the tension
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and clear his head
he played some golf in the morning.
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Waiting for the sun to go down
in Pakistan,
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then he returned to the White House
for the most critical,
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forty minutes of his presidency.
In mid afternoon he gathered
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the architects of the mission
in a windowless room,
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in the White House basement
to watch it all unfold.
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- The story will continue in a moment.
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- I want to go to the situation room.
- Yep.
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- What was the mood?
- Tense.
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- People talking?
- Yeah but doing a lot of listening as well
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cause we were able to monitor
the situation in real time
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getting reports back for Bill McRaven.
The head of our special forces operations
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as well as Leon Panetta.
There were big chunks of time
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in which all we were doing
was just waiting,
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and it was the longest forty minutes
of my life with the possible exception
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of when Sasha got meningitis
when she was three months old,
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and I was waiting for the doctor
to tell me she was all right.
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It was a very tense situation.
- Were you nervous?
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- Yes.
- What could you see?
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- We were monitoring the situation,
and we knew as events unfolded
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what was happening in,
in and around the compound
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we could not get information
clearly about what was happening
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inside the compound.
- Right, and that went on
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for a long time?
Could you hear gun fire?
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- We had a sense of when gun fire
and explosions took place.
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- Flashes?
- Yeah and we also knew
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when one of the helicopters went down
in a way that wasn't according to plan,
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and as you might imagine
that made us more tense.
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- So it got off to a bad start?
- Well it did not go exactly
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according to plan,
but this is exactly where all the work
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that had been done anticipating what
might go wrong made a huge difference.
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- There was a back up plan?
- There was a back up plan.
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- You had to blow up some walls?
- We had to blow up some walls.
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- Where was the first indication
that you had found the right place
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that Bin Laden was in there?
- There was a point before folks had left,
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before we had gotten everybody
back on the helicopter
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and were flying back to base
where they said,
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"Geronimo is, has been killed."
and Geronimo was the code name
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for Bin Laden
and now obviously at that point
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there guys were operating in the dark
with all kinds of stuff going on.
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So everybody was cautious,
but at that point, cautiously optimistic.
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- What was your reaction when
you heard those words?
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- I was relieved,
and I wanted to make sure
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those guys got over the Pakistan border,
and landed safely,
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and I think deeply proud
and deeply satisfied of my team.
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- When did you start to feel comfortable
that Bin Laden had been killed?
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- When they landed we had very strong
confirmation at that point
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that it was him.
Photographs had been taken.
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Facial analysis indicated that in fact
it was him.
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We hadn't yet done DNA testing,
but at that point we were 95 percent sure.
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- Did you see the pictures?
- Yes.
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- What was your reaction when you saw them?
- It was him.
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- Why haven't you released them?
- You know we discussed this internally.
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Keep in mind that we are
absolutely certain this was him.
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We've done DNA sampling
and testing,
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and so there is no doubt that we killed
Osama bin Laden.
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It is important for us to make sure
that very graphic photos
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of somebody who was shot in the head
are not floating around
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as an incitement to additional violence,
as a propaganda tool.
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You know that's not who we are.
We don't trot out this stuff as trophies.
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The fact of the matter is this
was somebody who was deserving
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of the justice that he received,
and I think Americans
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and people around the world
are glad that he is gone,
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but we don't need to spike the football,
and I think that given the graphic nature
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of these photos it would create
some national security risk
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and I've discussed this with
Bob Gates and Hilary Clinton
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and my intelligence teams,
and they all agree.
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- There are people in Pakistan for example
who say,
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"Look. This is all a lie.
This is another American trick.
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"Osama's not dead."
- There's no doubt that Bin Laden is dead.
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Certainly there is no doubt among
Al-Qaeda members that he is dead,
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and so we don't think that a photograph
in it of itself is going to make
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any difference.
There is going to be
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some folks who deny it
The fact of the matter is you will not see
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Bin Laden walking on this Earth again.
- Was it your decision bury him at sea?
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- It was a joint decision.
We thought it was important
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to think through ahead of time
how we would dispose of the body
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if he were killed in the compound,
and I think that what we tried to do
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was consulting with experts in Islamic law
and ritual to find something
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that was appropriate
that was respectful of the body.
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Frankly we took more care on this
than obviously Bin Laden took
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when he killed 3,000 people.
He didn't have much regard
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for how they were treated
and desecrated
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but again is something that makes
us different.
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- When the mission was over
and you walked out of the situation room
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what did you do?
What was the first thing you did?
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- You know I think I walked up with my team
and I just said, "We got 'em."
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- The White House released video
that captured the mood.
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As aids and congressional leaders
were given the news.
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- The reason that I'm calling you
is to tell you we've kill,
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we've killed him.
- And the president thanked
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cabinet members and advisors
after Sunday night's speech.
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- Good job national security team.
Thank you.
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- Yeah.
- I'm proud of you.
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You guys did a great job.
It was a moment of great pride for me
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to see our capacity as a nation
to execute something this difficult,
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this well.
- In a moment president Obama
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talks about our allies in Pakistan,
why he chose not to tell them
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about the mission,
and where we go from here
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now that Bin Laden is dead.