For the mission, the SEALs would utilize two specialized MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, flown by JSOC’s “Night Stalkers.” The helicopters were a stealth version of the Black Hawk that the United States had long been rumored to be developing. The unique aircraft had never been discussed publicly. The Black Hawks had been specially modified with advanced technology that would allow it to fly silently and to avoid radar detection. To further mask their presence, the pilots would fly at high speeds as close to the ground as possible, using a tactic known as “nap of the earth.” General Hugh Shelton, the former commander of SOCOM, whose son is a JSOC pilot, said the Night Stalkers are the best in the US military. “They can literally—the pilots can fly a helicopter upside-down if they want to, they can land on a moving train—at night,” he told me. “Any time that you’ve got a mission that you don’t want to fail, those are the guys that you want to have doing it.”
Three MH-47 Chinooks took off from the same Jalalabad airfield once the Black Hawks had entered Pakistan. One set down on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan. The other two flew to a remote riverbank in Kala Dhaka, located in the Swat region, roughly fifty miles north of bin Laden’s compound. There the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) would wait. In the event that the SEALs’ raid ran into serious trouble, the QRF could get to Abbottabad in approximately twenty minutes. Meanwhile, the Black Hawks whizzed quietly toward the compound and eventually made it to the outskirts of Abbottabad.
In Afghanistan, Admiral McRaven was running the operation from a secure location in Jalalabad. In Kabul, General David Petraeus and one of his aides monitored the events in a classified control room. If the Pakistanis scrambled their fighter jets, Petraeus was poised to mobilize US warplanes to respond.
“We Got Him. We Got Him.”
PAKISTAN, 2011 —President Obama and his team huddled around a table in the small room adjacent to the Situation Room, watching grainy footage of the Black Hawks approaching Abbottabad from the northwest. It was standing room only, but everyone was silent, save for the occasional question for McRaven’s deputy, General Webb. On board the choppers, some of the SEALs had tried to catnap en route to what was undoubtedly the most important mission of their careers. Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette said he awoke fully when his helicopter was ten minutes outside of the city. He pulled his night-vision goggles down and prepared the fast-roping equipment. With his legs dangling outside the helicopter, he observed the landscape passing below his feet. “Several of the houses we passed over had lighted pools and manicured gardens behind tall stone walls. I was used to seeing mountains or villages made up of clusters of mud huts,” he recalled. “From above, Abbottabad reminded me of flying over the suburbs in the United States.”
Passing over the southeast wall of the compound, the Black Hawk hovered near the area where the SEALs had planned to insert. Through his night-vision goggles, Bissonnette could make out details of the ground below. “Looking down thirty feet into the compound, I could see laundry whipping on a clothesline. Rugs hung out to dry were battered by dust and dirt from the rotors. Trash swirled around the yard, and in a nearby animal pen, goats and cows thrashed around, startled by the helicopter.”
That’s when things began to diverge from the original plan. The Black Hawk began to drop suddenly. The high temperature was partly to blame, but it was also a consequence of the added weight of the stealth system on the aircraft. At high altitudes, a pilot can attempt to fly vertically in order to avoid the drop, but it can be deadly at low altitudes.
The pilot of the struggling Black Hawk tried to control the aircraft as it spun ninety degrees to the right. Bissonnette felt his body lifting from the floor of the chopper as he fumbled for a handhold. Packed so tightly with the other commandos, he could not scoot back. “Holy fuck, we’re going in,” Bissonnette thought to himself, as the wall of the compound came closer and closer. Bissonnette pulled his legs to his chest, hoping to prevent them from being smashed under the helicopter, should it roll onto its side. “The helicopter shuddered as the nose dug into the soft ground like a lawn dart. One minute, the ground was rushing up at me. The next minute, I was at a dead stop. It happened so fast, I didn’t feel the impact,” Bissonnette remembered.
The Chalk One pilot had managed to follow through on his contingency plan to bring the helicopter down in the compound’s larger courtyard. The Black Hawk’s tail was pressed against the property’s twelve-foot perimeter wall at an angle that prevented the chopper’s rotors from digging into the dirt and breaking into dangerous pieces of shrapnel. “If any other part of the helicopter hit the wall, or if we had tipped and the rotor hit the ground first, none of us would be walking away unscathed,” Bissonnette later wrote. The pilots, he said, “pulled off the impossible.”
The “hard landing” saved the lives of the SEAL team members, but the possibility of a deniable mission was gone. So, too, was any hope of surprising the compound’s occupants.
The original plan had to be nixed. Instead of rappelling into the compound, the SEALs would now have to launch their raid from outside the walls. Losing the element of surprise could potentially allow their targets to arm themselves and prepare to face down against the American commandos. “My heart sank,” Bissonnette recalled. “Up until I heard the go-around call, everything was going as planned. We had evaded the Pakistani radar and anti-aircraft missiles on the way in and arrived undetected. Now, the insert was already going to shit. We had rehearsed this contingency, but it was Plan B. If our target was really inside, surprise was the key and it was quickly slipping away.”
There was silence in the White House as Obama and his advisers waited to hear word from the downed aircraft. “We were able to monitor the situation in real time,” the president later said. “So right off the top everybody, I think, was holding their breath. That wasn’t in the script.”
“Those were really intense moments,” Secretary of State Clinton recalled. She later told author Peter Bergen, “This was like any episode of 24 or any movie you could ever imagine.” Biden, who had opposed the raid option, nervously caressed his rosary as he watched the crash unfold. “What you see there is the very first thing that was needed to happen in order for the mission to be a success as we were told, didn’t happen,” said Biden. “That helicopter didn’t make it in the right spot and everyone went, like, ‘Whoa.’”
While Obama’s national security team was shaken by the crash, Admiral McRaven was not. At least he didn’t give that impression. “We will now be amending the mission,” McRaven calmly told Panetta. “Director, as you can see, we have a helicopter down in the courtyard. My men are prepared for this contingency and they will deal with it.” McRaven’s calm confidence impressed the officials in the room. “Admiral McRaven was extraordinarily unflappable and professional,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes later said. “His demeanor did not change.” Obama later called McRaven “a cool customer.”
According to Obama, “We had a sense that, despite that helicopter having landed in a violent way, that the passengers inside had not been hurt and that they were still going through with the mission.”
THE SEALS IN THE CRASHED CHOPPER had all survived with no serious injuries. As the second Black Hawk, which was supposed to drop its SEALs onto the roof of the building, landed instead outside the gates of the compound, Plan B kicked into gear.
Bissonnette and Will, the SEAL-translator, made their way toward the guesthouse, where they say they came under attack from AK-47 rounds and fired back. Moments later, a woman emerged from the guesthouse carrying a small child in her arms. It was Mariam al Kuwaiti, the courier’s wife. “He is dead,” Mariam said. “You shot him. He is dead. You killed him.” Will searched her for weapons and passed her message on to Bissonnette. Crouching low, Bissonnette opened the door and looked inside. “I spotted a pair of feet lying in the doorway of the bedroom,” he said. With Will at his back, he entered the guesthouse and shot Kuwaiti several more times. Although Bissonnette claimed he was fire
d upon, other accounts, including that of Bergen, suggested that Kuwaiti was unarmed. “The courier’s AK-47 was later found by his bedside. It seems unlikely that he fired it, given its location and the fact that no casings from such a weapon were later found at the scene,” Bergen wrote. Meanwhile, another group of SEALs made their way toward the main building in the compound, shooting dead two more members of Kuwaiti’s family, as women and children looked on in horror.
The men had been on the ground for roughly ten minutes. The SEALs from Chalk Two had managed to enter the compound through the main gate. When the commandos stepped into bin Laden’s building, they fell out of contact with Obama’s team at the White House. The president later said, “There were big chunks of time in which all we were doin’ was just waiting. And it was the longest forty 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.” In Targeting Bin Laden, a documentary for the History Channel, Obama added, “We were really in a blackout situation and it was hard for us to know what exactly was taking place. We knew that gunshots were taking place, and we knew some explosions were taking place.”
Meanwhile, inside, the gate blocking the stairway was blown. The SEALs began making their way up the stairs, which “were set at ninety-degree angles, creating a sort of spiral staircase separated by small landings.” There were four doors on the second floor. The SEALs cleared each room and began moving toward the third floor, where they believed the Pacer and his family resided. As they did so, they saw a head briefly pop out from behind the wall at the top of the staircase.
Intelligence analysts had indicated that bin Laden’s son Khalid lived on the second floor. The intelligence reports also indicated Khalid was clean-shaven. So was the man who peered around the corner.
“Khalid,” a SEAL whispered. “Khalid.”
When the twenty-three-year-old worked up the nerve to peek around the corner again, he took a bullet in the face. “What was Khalid thinking at that time?” Bissonnette later asked. “Look around the corner. Curiosity killed the cat. I guess Khalid, too.”
The commandos made their way up the stairs, passing over tiles wet with Khalid’s blood. As the SEALs walked through the hallway of the third floor, they saw a man’s head pop out from a doorway. One of the SEALs fired two suppressed rounds at the figure. The man vanished into the room. When they entered, the men encountered two women. Believing they might have had suicide vests on, one of the SEALs grabbed them and forced them into a corner, so his colleagues could continue on. Another SEAL stood face to face in the dark with a tall man. “In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he’s going down,” he recalled. “He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath.”
Bissonnette and another SEAL entered the room. “We saw the man lying on the floor at the foot of his bed,” he recalled. “Blood and brains spilled out the side of his skull. In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.”
The room was still completely dark, so Bissonnette flipped on his helmet light to better examine the man’s face. It was covered in blood. “A hole in his forehead collapsed the right side of his skull,” he recalled. “His chest was torn up from where the bullets had entered his body. He was lying in an ever growing pool of blood.” The SEAL who originally shot the man said, “the American public doesn’t want to know what that looks like.”
The SEALs were not certain that the man they had shot was bin Laden. His face was now a mangled mess. They began taking DNA samples from the body and one of the SEALs sprayed the man’s bloodied face with his CamelBak. Bissonnette began wiping the face. “With each swipe, the face became more familiar. He looked younger than I expected. His beard was dark, like it had been dyed. I just kept thinking about how he didn’t look anything like I’d expected him to look,” he wrote. One of the SEALs radioed over the command net: “We have a possible, I repeat POSSIBLE touchdown on the third deck.” Bissonnette began snapping photos of the man’s body. He then knelt down to focus on the man’s face. He pulled his lifeless head from side to side for profile photos. He had his teammate open one of the man’s eyes so he could get a tight shot of it.
On the balcony, the Arabic-speaking SEAL was questioning the women and children. An order came over the radio to prep the downed Black Hawk for demolition. Meanwhile, because the mission had gone on longer than planned, fuel for the remaining helicopters, including the rescue CH-47 hovering nearby, was running low.
Bissonnette continued to take photos while his teammate collected samples of the man’s blood and saliva. The SEALs had two identical sets of the photos and DNA that would be carried back to Jalalabad in each of the Black Hawks. “This had been carefully planned so if one of the helicopters was shot down on our flight back to Jalalabad, a DNA sample and a set of pictures would survive,” Bissonnette later explained.
The Arabic-speaking SEAL questioned the older woman in the room. When he asked who the dead man was, she told him, “The sheik,” but declined to clarify. After being given several aliases, the SEAL turned to the children. He asked one of the little girls, and she told him the man was Osama bin Laden. When he asked if she was sure, the little girl said, “Yes.” The SEAL turned back to the older woman. “Stop fucking with me now,” he demanded, as he asked her again who the man in the bedroom was. She cried as she confirmed that it was Osama bin Laden. The SEAL reported the dual confirmation. Just then, two lead SEALs on the operation, including Bissonnette’s squadron commander, entered the room. The commander examined bin Laden’s face. “Yeah, that looks like our guy,” he said. The senior SEAL stepped out of the room and radioed McRaven. “For God and country, I pass Geronimo,” he said. “Geronimo E.K.I.A.” Enemy Killed in Action.
In the packed White House conference room halfway around the world, Obama’s national security team was overwhelmed. “We got him,” Obama said quietly. “We got him.” Admiral McRaven was careful to dispel any premature celebration. “Look, I’ve got a Geronimo call, but I need to tell you it’s a first call. This is not a confirmation. Please keep your expectations managed a little here. Most operators when they are on a mission their adrenaline is sky high. Yes, they are professional, but let’s not count on anything until they get back and we have some evidence.” The JSOC chief added, “We’ve got SEALs on the ground without a ride.”
The SEALs had been at the compound for a little over half an hour by the time bin Laden was killed. The possibility of an encounter with the Pakistani military was increasing with each passing second. Back on the second floor of the compound, the SEALs were attempting to gather as many of bin Laden’s belongings and potential intelligence clues as possible.
Once the process of taking bin Laden’s photos and DNA samples was completed, a pair of SEALs dragged his corpse out of the bedroom by the legs. Bissonnette began searching the area, grabbing papers and some cassettes. They also found two guns: an AK-47 and a holstered Makarov pistol. Neither was loaded.
Time was running short. The interpreter and the SEALs outside the compound had managed to deter curious onlookers, but Abbottabad was waking up. Pakistani authorities could arrive at any moment, and the choppers circling above were running out of fuel. The interpreter’s presence was warranted, as residents of the typically tranquil neighborhood heard the sounds of helicopters and explosions and some found their electricity had been cut off. Gul Khan told India Today, “I saw soldiers emerging from the helicopters and advancing towards the house. Some of them instructed us in chaste Pashto to turn off the lights and stay inside.” An unidentified man interviewed b
y CNN in the aftermath of the raid said through a translator, “We never saw their clothes but they were speaking Pashto and told us to go away. After a while, [when the] electricity blackout ended and the light came back on, they told us to turn them all off.” Another man speaking to CNN through a translator added, “We tried to go there and they pointed their laser guns on us and said ‘No, you can’t go.’ They were speaking Pashto, so we thought that they were from Afghanistan, not America.”
The SEALs inside were overwhelmed with the volume of materials on hand but could only gather and carry so much. They had five minutes. “We all knew the risks of running out of gas or remaining on target too long, giving the local police or military time to react,” Bissonnette later recalled. “We got what we came for: Bin Laden. It was time to get out while we still could.”
Bissonnette proceeded to the landing zone. He was soon joined by the SEALs from the second floor of bin Laden’s compound, who were overloaded with materials they had gathered from inside. “We looked like a gypsy camp, or like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve,” he wrote. “Guys had mesh bags over their shoulders so full they seemed to waddle more than run. I saw one SEAL carrying a CPU in one hand and a leather gym bag overflowing in the other.”
Bin Laden’s corpse, now in a body bag, was loaded on the remaining stealth Black Hawk, which the SEALs thought had the best chance of escaping Pakistan unscathed. The big Chinook—the CH-47—would carry the remaining SEALs. Before taking off, the commandos blew up the downed Black Hawk so that its stealth technology could not be examined by the Pakistanis. Obama and his team watched the video feed of the $60-million bonfire.
Dirty Wars Page 63