Countdown bin Laden

by Chris Wallace

  It didn’t look like a Pakistani luxury villa and its next-door guesthouse, but its dimensions were a perfect match for the original. Chain-link fencing reproduced in exact measure the width and height of the concrete walls surrounding the Abbottabad compound. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. It was the best the CIA could do with the time and resources on hand. Every key feature was accounted for, except one: no one knew exactly what the buildings were like inside. They’d have to guess at that.

  Bash’s truck pulled into a gravel parking lot. Other vehicles were already there. At the site, Bash paid close attention as the SEALs huddled in small groups. They discussed whether they could fast-rope from a helicopter to the top of the shipping container representing the roof of the house in Abbottabad. They weren’t sure whether it was structurally sound enough to hold people. More discussions. Other sidebars. Then the SEALs put on their gear.

  It was late in a long day. Bash was bullshitting with the others, waiting to see what would happen next. Then he heard a loud noise. Bash turned around and saw two helicopters, a hundred feet up, headed toward him. About ninety seconds later, the SEALs were on the ground, attacking the compound.

  With their guns up, the SEALs weren’t running at full speed. No, they were in a “careful hurry” as they moved to their objective. Some went inside the shipping containers. And about ten minutes later, Bash heard someone say, “We’ve neutralized the object.”

  After the rehearsal, the SEALs were in no hurry to leave. They were all business. They stood around talking about tactics. Bash heard them say they’d make some adjustments. Then the SEALs called it a day. Bash was amazed at their proficiency. Hell, they’d slapped together and executed a basic plan in an incredibly short period of time. Imagine what they could do with a little practice.

  COUNTDOWN: 20 DAYS

  April 11, 2011

  Somewhere in North Carolina

  Colonel John “JT” Thompson rubbed his eyes. Another late night. He had spent hours going over every detail of the aviation plan for the bin Laden mission. Every little detail mattered.

  Helicopters had been his specialty for almost twenty-five years. From a tactical perspective, this wasn’t the most complicated operation he had ever planned. It wasn’t much different from the raids special operation units had conducted every night for years in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Thompson knew it was his most important mission—and that one mistake could take down the entire operation.

  The SEALs would be starting dress rehearsals soon at a base in Nevada. McRaven had brought in the best operators in the business, as well as the top operational planners. They had every resource they could need. As a key member of McRaven’s staff, Thompson wasn’t going to let them down.

  Back in February, McRaven had hinted to JT that something big was about to happen. So when the call came a few weeks later in March, Thompson wasn’t surprised. McRaven was back from Afghanistan briefly, in Fort Bragg to visit his wife. He wanted to meet Thompson, talk to him face-to-face.

  By coincidence, Thompson was already at Fort Bragg for a conference.

  “Can you swing by?” McRaven asked.

  “Not a problem, sir,” he said.

  McRaven greeted him at the front door of his home. A delicious aroma surrounded them as he led Thompson to the kitchen. The admiral’s wife, Georgeann, was just removing a tray of oatmeal-raisin cookies from the oven and offered him some. Who could refuse?

  Thompson sat down while McRaven opened the refrigerator. “You want a beer?” he asked.

  “No, sir. I have a meeting later,” Thompson said.

  “How about milk?”

  “Cookies and milk is ideal, sir.”

  McRaven filled up a glass. When Georgeann left the kitchen, McRaven pulled up a chair. A few weeks earlier, he told Thompson he needed air planners but didn’t elaborate. He didn’t disclose any information—not even the target. Now, he was ready. He leaned over and stared at Thompson. “You need to keep this to yourself,” he said. “You can’t say a word to anybody.”

  Thompson nodded, dunking a cookie in the milk. “I understand.”

  McRaven didn’t hesitate. “We think we found bin Laden.”

  Thompson didn’t say a word. He swallowed hard and tried not to show any emotion. Yes, it was a surprise, but Thompson had been down this road a number of times over the years. Once, in 2003, the CIA passed a “bin Laden sighting” along to the military. Thompson recalled “hauling ass” with McRaven from Baghdad in Iraq over to the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan to track down the lead. Shortly after they arrived, they discovered it was no lead at all. More bad information.

  McRaven knew Thompson would be skeptical, so he disclosed all the information he knew about the bin Laden operation. By the time he finished, Thompson knew this one had merit. “I want to be part of it,” he said.

  “That’s why you’re here,” McRaven said.

  Thompson joined the small team planning the mission. He enjoyed working with his old friend. McRaven was a charismatic commander, at ease with anybody—from enlisted men and women to U.S. senators and presidents. The two men had a lot in common, from their work ethic to their backgrounds. McRaven and Thompson both came from military families. Like McRaven’s father, Thompson’s grandfather had been a pilot in World War II. He was killed when his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire during a mission over Germany.

  Thompson’s father, Robert, had been a U.S. Army captain, a helicopter pilot with the legendary 1st Cavalry Division. In August 1969, during his second deployment in Vietnam, Robert’s UH-1C was shot down in the Quang Ngai Province. He was just twenty-eight years old. At the time of his father’s death, John was two years old.

  After Robert’s death, his wife moved the family back home to Georgia. She became a teacher, and eventually remarried. She didn’t tell her son much about his father, but on his seventeenth birthday, she handed him a letter that Robert had written to the young boy on his second birthday—one that, if something bad happened to him in Vietnam, his son would open someday.

  It was a letter filled with the harsh realities of life, but one that inspired hope and optimism and offered sage advice to a boy on the cusp of manhood. It was a letter that would ultimately change the trajectory of his life:

  Ours is a world beset by perhaps every tragedy imaginable and the majority of them are created by the hands of man. It is in these hands and with God’s guidance that our world’s salvation lies through, and it is in its salvation and continuance that I pray you participate actively. Your participation will be your desire to strive for what’s right.

  As part of our active life a man has a career and, in all honorable causes, striving for the right is the end result. When you choose your life’s work, don’t have as your only criteria the fact it’s what you like best. I would be a proud father if I thought you also considered that people or mankind in general will benefit from your labors.

  At that point, Thompson was a typical Georgia high school kid. He loved football, chasing girls, and drinking beer. His mother suggested he attend North Georgia College, where she and his father had met. He took her advice. In college, Thompson took aviation classes and learned to fly helicopters, just like his father. When he graduated in 1987, he got his army officer’s commission and began his military aviation career.

  Over the years, he had been deployed to a number of hot spots. He saw combat during the liberation of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. During that period, Thompson could feel his father’s presence. He sensed that everything was going to be OK. He was picking up where his father had left off.

  Thompson later joined the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment unit, an Army Special Forces division known as the Night Stalkers. Their nickname derived from their skill in nighttime airborne operations.

  A year before the terrorist attacks on 9/11, John Thompson heard McRaven speak at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas. The two men hit it off and began working together at
the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in 2003. At JSOC, Thompson helped plan the aviation parts of thousands of missions. Now, here they were, together again.

  Colonel John “JT” Thompson.

  McRaven knew the expertise of people like Thompson was key to the mission. His skill with helicopter and airborne mission planning was second to none. If there were flaws, he’d find them, as well as every possible solution.

  Thompson proposed a combination of “tactics and technology” to evade radar and fly undetected to the target inside Pakistan. Air defense radar systems send out pulses of high-frequency electromagnetic waves. When those waves hit an object, they send a signal back to the radar’s antennae for processing. The systems are used as warning devices to detect approaching enemy aircraft or missiles.

  He studied Pakistan’s air defenses. Pakistan was a nuclear power, with sophisticated defenses set to detect anything entering its airspace. Its rocky relationship with neighboring India, another nuclear power, had prompted development of a first-rate Pakistani military infrastructure, much of it U.S.-made.

  The Americans needed to find a work-around. Thompson could use some countermeasures to fool radar—some tricks could even make objects disappear. There were dead spots in the air defense system, but those wouldn’t be enough.

  Thompson knew air defense systems are designed to look for enemies in the sky. They scan above the clouds, searching for planes flying at a high altitude. They are not designed to detect anything hugging the ground—fifty to three hundred feet above the surface.

  The situation called for some really good helicopter pilots, flyers who could navigate near to the ground. The choppers would appear on radar screens as “ground clutter,” along with hills and trees and animals. If the pilots flew low and hugged the mountains, that might be enough.

  If anyone could do that, it was the Night Stalkers—crack pilots with thousands of “goggle hours.”

  Technological advances might help, too. Specially modified Black Hawks had a coating that could absorb radar. Engineers had replaced the helo’s sharp edges with gentler curves. With that modification, a Black Hawk could scatter radar beams in so many directions that an air defense system would have trouble recognizing the helicopter.

  But even with the best pilots and stealth technology, Thompson knew that 99 percent of the time, something goes awry. He had to “prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

  He wrote out “mental rehearsals” for the pilots to study, ways to react to engine trouble or stand-down orders or ground fire from the Pakistanis. The pilots would practice so much that their response to any scenario would become instinctive.

  But even with all the training, Thompson knew that no one would know for sure how the pilots would react until the big day came and everything went to hell in a handbasket.

  Still, Thompson knew he had to provide an instant answer to every question, every scenario the team might encounter, both in the air and on the ground. He started building a “decision matrix,” so if something went wrong on the mission, McRaven wouldn’t have to think through all the alternatives in the heat of the moment.

  The possibilities were almost endless.

  McRaven had conducted thousands of missions. And the last thing he wanted to do in the middle of a crisis was to try to figure out “what the hell you’re going to do.”

  As the commander, he knew that he might have to make tough decisions. And this mission, with all its potential pitfalls, only amplified the need for the matrix.

  McRaven knew that from the time SEAL Team 6 launched, there were going to be “six or seven decisions” he might have to make. If Pakistani radar picked up the helos right after they crossed the border, would they continue or abort the mission? What if the Black Hawks were detected halfway or three-quarters of the way to the target? Do they stop or keep going? And what happens if they lose a helicopter when they reach their target? Do they bring in another one?

  So if they went ahead with the raid, McRaven would have a piece of paper in front of him. He’d know all the answers in advance. He was leaving nothing to chance.

  COUNTDOWN: 18 DAYS

  April 13, 2011

  Somewhere in North Carolina

  O’Neill’s body was hurting. For days, he and the SEALs had swarmed over the makeshift compound, practicing over and over who’d drop first, second, and third, how they’d take this corner, how they’d secure that cable. They worked through the days and deep into the nights.

  They followed the plans their leaders had devised on how they’d attack and take the fortress. But as they rehearsed, they revised some parts to make them stronger. Four teams, four team leaders. The main house was A1, the guesthouse C1. The helicopters that would take them to Abbottabad were Chalk 1 and Chalk 2.

  CIA analysts told them that bin Laden probably lived on the third floor of the main building. His son, Khalid, lived on the second floor. There were probably at least one or two wives and a dozen children there, too. Al-Kuwaiti’s brother lived on the first floor of the main house with his family.

  Under the original plan, Chalk 2 would drop O’Neill and his team just outside the north gate, where they’d set up to provide “external security.” His team would include snipers Jonny and Robby; machine-gunner Mack; Chesney and Cairo; and an interpreter. When the helicopter lifted back up above the main house, another team would fast-rope onto the roof, jump down to the third-floor balcony, then work their way inside.

  The other helicopter—Chalk 1—would fast-rope the primary assault team into the courtyard between the main house and the guesthouse. This was the most vulnerable spot. The chopper could be hit from any angle while hovering over the compound.

  The external security job was one of the most dangerous on the raid. If the guys inside took too long, they’d have to deal with first responders—most likely police, but possibly military forces.

  As team leader for external security, O’Neill wasn’t supposed to go inside the perimeter. But as he watched the scenario play out in training, he noticed a flaw. If bin Laden was on the third floor, he had to be well protected. The SEALs needed more shooters inside right away, especially as they worked their way through the third floor.

  He expressed his concern to Willy, their master chief. He agreed. He put O’Neill, an experienced shooter, on the rooftop with the other team. Jonny stepped into O’Neill’s team leader slot on the exterior security crew.

  They hit the mock compound for days. O’Neill fast-roped so much he developed tendinitis. Others were feeling it, too, but no one wanted to complain. This was too important, the mission of a lifetime.

  When Chesney first saw the mockup compound, he was impressed. When they prepared for missions, the target was almost always “theoretical,” only bits of intel until they arrived on the scene. But this model allowed them to actually rehearse their tactics—the approach, insertion, setup, and successful extraction. For the interior, they’d have to use their intuition, based on their past missions inside similar structures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  As long as everyone knew their role, they’d be OK, he told himself. Chesney liked to compare missions to a game of pickup basketball with friends. Sometimes it’s all about “read and react”—you go this way and I’ll go that way. Everyone knew the mission front to back, and everyone trusted one another implicitly. That would go a long way.

  Chesney only had one screwup—but it had nothing to do with the rehearsal.

  Cairo always practiced right along with the guys on every rehearsal. But once, when they were practicing using explosives to breach the compound gates, Chesney decided to leave the dog in his kennel inside his Chevy Suburban. Explosives are stressful to dogs, and there was no need to expose Cairo to needless trauma.

  He should have known better. Cairo wanted to be at work with the team, and the dog was a Houdini. He had learned to squeeze his foreleg through the bars of his kennel and use his paw to open the latch. He didn’t do it often, but that day he di
d. Even so, he couldn’t open the car door.

  When Chesney returned, he found Cairo loose in the vehicle, among tufts of white fabric. He had chewed a headrest to shreds.

  “Cairo, what did you do?” Chesney shouted.

  When he opened the door, Cairo jumped out as if nothing had happened. Good thing they weren’t taking that car with them anywhere.

  The work wasn’t finished when the practice sessions were done. They returned to the Operations Center and examined the model of the compound. They stood around it, running through different scenarios. What would happen if a car left the compound? Which helicopter would chase it? What about crossfire from the guesthouse? Chemical weapons, gas, flamethrowers? What if the bad guys used the children as shields? What if the women were armed? The SEALs tried to account for everything that could go wrong.

  They focused on technical details, including how much time would pass between the first sound of a helicopter approaching the compound and the team entering the building. President Obama had asked about that. Right now, it was ninety seconds. They wanted to reduce that. They didn’t want bin Laden to have enough time to get up and flee.

  Finally, when they finished working, the men headed back to the small, cramped barracks and tried to unwind. That was getting difficult. They had a game room with Ping-Pong and pool tables, but the mood was somber. Everyone was feeling serious. The gravity of the operation was sinking in.

  There was a growing feeling in the room that no one wanted to talk about. One night, O’Neill finally broached the subject. The likelihood of them all coming home safely wasn’t good. The compound had to be rigged, especially the main building. If the house blew up when they were on the roof, they were dead. If they got that far.