Countdown bin Laden

by Chris Wallace

  To shut them up, Obama told his counsel Bob Bauer to obtain the long form and release it. Bauer and others thought it was a bad idea. But the president said it was the only way to put an end to the lunacy.

  And so the day before a critical meeting about the possible bin Laden mission, Obama held a news conference and released the document. The television news networks broke away from regularly scheduled coverage to carry the president’s remarks.

  Before he discussed the birth certificate, Obama noted that even though he was in the middle of important budget negotiations with House Republican leaders, the news had been dominated by talk of his birth certificate. He said America faced “enormous challenges and big decisions” about the direction of the country, how they can “shape a better future together.”

  “But we’re not going to be able to do it if we’re distracted. We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other. We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make up stuff and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” he said.

  Obama was as worked up as this calm, controlled man got in public. He looked at the reporters in the White House briefing room. He said he knew that no matter what he said or did, some people would still believe he wasn’t born in America. But he wanted the vast number of people—as well as the press—to know “we do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve,” he said, adding that he was going to focus on the problems—“not on this.”

  “We’re better than this. Remember that,” he said.

  Jalalabad, Afghanistan

  Robert O’Neill tried to relax in his bunk, but sleep eluded him. He was simultaneously tired but amped up. He hadn’t been able to unwind. That was to be expected with so much on the line.

  Days earlier, O’Neill and his team had boarded a Boeing C-17 Globemaster, a large military transport plane, at Naval Air Station Oceana, south of Virginia Beach. No one except the SEALs and mission personnel were allowed on board. The C-17 refueled at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. They got off, had breakfast, then flew to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan. They spent the night in Bagram, then boarded a C-130 for a quick flight to Jalalabad.

  They’d had time enough to get over the jet lag, but everyone still felt squirrelly, trying to kill time until they were told whether or not they’d hit the compound. O’Neill knew the window was closing on a raid, that conditions this weekend would be ideal. For the next few nights there would be virtually no moonlight over Abbottabad. After that, it would be another month until the lunar cycle was in its darkest phase. They didn’t have another month to wait. Something had to give.

  If The Pacer was bin Laden, how long would he stay there? He could bolt at any time, right? The SEALs were in place, on point, ready to strike. And O’Neill was tired of thinking about it. Let’s get this over with, he thought.

  SEAL Team 6 was placed in special barracks. They still worked out in the same gym and hung out with the other SEALs on the base, but O’Neill’s team couldn’t tell the others what was going on, and why they were in Jalalabad in the first place.

  The team tried to do what they’d normally do on any other deployment. They killed time working out, listening to music, playing card and video games. Much as they tried, they couldn’t stop thinking about their own mortality.

  With them at the base was Maya, the CIA intelligence analyst O’Neill had come to trust in the last few weeks. It was good to know she was going to be at Jalalabad through the mission. O’Neill knew that if given the chance, she’d fly with them right into bin Laden’s lair. But being here for support was the next best thing.

  Maya had become the liaison between the spy agency and the SEALs. Along with Gary and Sam, no one had done more over the years to find bin Laden. O’Neill had met Maya at the North Carolina mission briefing, when the SEALs first learned of their role in the proposed mission. They’d hit it off. Both were outgoing, intense, and had the same dark sense of humor.

  In North Carolina, she was the one who first said the word “Abbottabad.” The word rolled off her tongue with the ease of long familiarity. O’Neill had never heard of the place, but Maya’s confident knowledge made him feel like this mission was legit. So many times in his career he had chased bin Laden’s ghost. But not this time.

  For two hours she’d commanded the room, keeping the attention of grizzled fighters who had seen it all. She showed pictures on a PowerPoint. She pointed to key areas on the photos—the third floor, where she believed bin Laden lived. The balcony outside his room—the one with a security wall. She talked about al-Kuwaiti and his brother, and how they were shielding someone very important. The man who walked back and forth in a garden every day, a man she and her colleagues had dubbed The Pacer. She had satellite images and other information about the compound and its inhabitants.

  After that briefing, O’Neill sat down with Maya over coffee. They talked about the intelligence, and how she’d spent much of her career trying to track down information that would lead to the terrorist leader. Others hedged their bets about The Pacer’s identity, but not Maya. She was convinced it was bin Laden. Over time, Maya became one of the guys. Although she joked with everyone, she was deadly serious about the mission. If they had a question, the SEALs went to her. She knew every detail about bin Laden and the compound.

  O’Neill got up from his bed. He would head to the gym, put on a little Pearl Jam and hit the treadmill, like he did back in high school. The NFL draft was coming up. Maybe tonight he’d watch a preview show, study up a little. The Redskins needed a quarterback, but who would they take? Until they got word about the mission, the football draft would be a good diversion, a way to lose himself for a few hours.

  He’d face reality soon enough.

  COUNTDOWN: 3 DAYS

  April 28, 2011

  Washington, D.C.

  Leon Panetta headed to the White House to meet with the president. It was spring and the cherry trees lining the streets were still in bloom. A beautiful day in the nation’s capital. But with everything going on, Panetta knew it wasn’t the best time to meet with reporters.

  After Panetta walked into the White House, he headed to the Oval Office, where he was greeted by Obama. General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, was there, too. Obama was going to announce that he was reshuffling his national security team.

  He was nominating Panetta to replace Gates as the next secretary of defense, and Petraeus to lead the CIA. The appointments had been set in motion by Gates’s impending retirement.

  Panetta already knew the president was going to nominate him. Obama had asked him a few weeks earlier if he’d be interested in the position. He said he had a lot of confidence in Panetta.

  “I need you, and I need you in that job,” Obama had said.

  Panetta said yes. He was old school. If a president says he needs you, you do what he asks. But he didn’t expect Obama to make the announcement so close to such a delicate and important operation.

  He already had so many things to do. For months, Panetta had been juggling the bin Laden operation in addition to his regular duties, which included monitoring developments in the Arab Spring and the war in Afghanistan.

  But this morning, Panetta had to focus on his new position. Panetta, Gates, Biden, and Donilon walked into the White House East Room in their dark suits, white shirts, and ties. Petraeus, in his army-green uniform, and Clinton, wearing a gray pantsuit, joined them. They looked solemn as they flanked Obama, who was standing at a lectern that bore the presidential seal.

  In a room filled with reporters and television cameras, Obama praised his new team.

  “I’ve worked closely with most of the individuals on this stage and all of them have my complete confidence. They are leaders of enormous integrity and talent who hav
e devoted their lives to keeping our nation strong and secure, and I am personally very, very grateful to each of them for accepting these new assignments,” Obama said.

  After the announcement, Panetta spent much of the day in the White House, calling members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, answering questions about his new post, and how he’d hand off the job of CIA director to Petraeus.

  But Panetta’s heart wasn’t in it. He couldn’t stop thinking about the mission. Before long, the day had slipped away. He glanced at the time. It was almost 4:45 p.m. He’d have to pivot to the key afternoon meeting with the president, who was still trying to decide what to do about the compound in Abbottabad.

  Panetta knew the president was still considering a drone strike. General Cartwright assured Obama that everything was in place for that option, too. He was just waiting for the order.

  Panetta had been urging the president to move forward with the helicopter assault. Time was running out. If they were going to strike, it had to be this weekend. That didn’t leave a lot of time for more deliberations.

  The director had used the long weeks of waiting to tie up loose ends. He was involved in every aspect of the operation. If there was a meeting—in person or over secure video phone hookup—he was there. He had discussed operational details with the members of the president’s national security team. They’d worked out every possible scenario, including what to do with bin Laden if he was taken alive. They’d also planned how they’d dispose of bin Laden’s body if he was killed during the raid.

  A day earlier, they had talked about whether to inform congressional leaders when the operation was underway. Panetta said it was a good idea to keep them in the loop, but several others worried about possible leaks. How would they notify them over secure, official lines when the members were at home for the weekend? Panetta proposed warning them late in the week that they might get a secure call over the weekend. It would raise the risk of a leak, but it was the right thing to do. That way, no one could say later that they’d been kept in the dark. The group agreed and the calls went out.

  Now, as Panetta entered the Situation Room, most of the members of Obama’s national security team were already there, including Donilon, Gates, Clinton, and Mullen. They had been together so many times recently it felt like they were roommates.

  Over the last month, they had held seventeen meetings to discuss all aspects of the bin Laden operation. Some sessions included the president. Others didn’t. They all involved officials from an alphabet soup of agencies—National Security Council, Principals Committee of the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency. They included officials from the Pentagon—the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of defense. As closely held as the deliberations were, Donilon had insisted on a meticulous process.

  If the president gave them the green light, the mission would operate under sections of the law that gave the CIA legal authority to run intelligence operations and covert actions in foreign nations.

  As Donilon waited for the president, he thought to himself that “history was in the room.” It had influenced the views of some key players who were still haunted by the ghosts of Operation Eagle Claw—the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission. But that operation was also the reason Obama might approve the bin Laden raid. In the wake of the tragedy, the U.S. military had reorganized its special forces, putting them under one command. They had the best training and equipment. The success of the SEALs and other special forces units in Iraq and Afghanistan had shaped a new generation of leaders, like McRaven and Obama, who weren’t obsessed by the mistakes of the past. Donilon knew the president was still weighing his options. But he also knew that Operation Eagle Claw wouldn’t determine Obama’s decision.

  When the president opened the meeting, everyone was ready. Mullen had prepared more than a half dozen slides on a PowerPoint presentation. He walked the president through the raid—“from A to Z.” He showed them where they would start, what would happen when they got to the compound, and how they were going to leave.

  Mullen said he was confident the SEALs could carry out the mission.

  Obama then turned to Panetta. The CIA director said they didn’t have any new intelligence that could change what everyone already knew about the compound.

  In fact, just about everyone in the room believed the analysis they had was pretty strong. But the president wanted to know more—he wanted to gauge everyone’s confidence in the mission. To make sure the CIA had “adequately pressure-tested its work,” Obama had ordered a fresh team of intelligence analysts to review the available information about the compound. The president wanted to see how their conclusions matched up with the analysts who had been working the case.

  Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, had led a special group from the Defense Department to review all the intelligence. He set up two “red teams” of analysts not involved in the bin Laden operation to examine every possible scenario. He said they determined there was a 40 to 60 percent degree of certainty that The Pacer was bin Laden. Forty to 60 percent? That was much lower than the CIA team’s 60 to 80 percent assessment.

  “Even at the low end, we’re 38 percent better than we’ve been in ten years, since Tora Bora, so we have to do something,” Leiter said.

  Obama was puzzled about why the estimates were all over the place. He asked Panetta to explain. But Panetta turned to his chief deputy, Morell. “Michael, why don’t you handle that one?” he said.

  Morell was caught a little off guard. He took a deep breath and tried to explain the discrepancy. He told Obama that everyone was working with the same information, but the analysts who had been directly involved in the fight against Al Qaeda were more confident than their counterparts that bin Laden was inside the compound. Their judgment was shaped by their success in recent years in disrupting terrorist plots and taking out senior Al Qaeda leaders.

  The analysts who believed that the intelligence didn’t support a raid were shaped by the failures of the past, including the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Morell said in his opinion there was only a 60 percent chance that bin Laden was in the compound.

  “Mr. President, I believe the circumstantial case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in 2002 was stronger than the circumstantial case that bin Laden is in the Abbottabad compound. Even if I had a source, a human source, inside the compound, telling me that bin Laden was in there, I wouldn’t be at 100 percent. Sources get things wrong all the time.”

  Dead silence. The case for WMDs had been stronger? People in the room were stunned and shifted uncomfortably in their leather chairs. They couldn’t believe Morell had said that.

  “So, Michael, if you’re only at 60 percent, would you not do the raid?” Obama asked.

  “Even at 60 percent I would do the raid. Given the importance of who this is, the case is strong enough,” he said.

  The president leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, what do you all think?” He turned to his right, to Vice President Joe Biden.

  Biden said he’d be more comfortable if they had additional information. Why put troops at risk and further damage U.S. relations with Pakistan if they weren’t sure bin Laden was there?

  Gates said the intelligence was too weak. He recommended against a raid, although he was still open to a drone strike. He was still haunted by the failed mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran back in 1980. Hell, he recalled sitting at this same table in this same room three decades earlier as that tragedy unfolded. He was worried about U.S-Pakistani relations deteriorating to the point that it would affect the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. depended on Pakistani supply routes. And what about the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters operating along the border? Forget about Pakistan’s cooperation in rooting them out.

  Mullen supported the raid. So did Panetta, who believed this was the most important decision of his career. They would deploy forces into harm’s way, but their object
ive was the world’s number one criminal: Osama bin Laden. For ten years everyone had talked about getting bin Laden. They never thought it was possible. But now, here they were with the president, deciding whether to go after him. If they were successful, it would send a powerful message to the world about the United States’ ability to track down and stop bad guys. To show everyone that the U.S. will never give up until justice is done. For Panetta, this would be the defining moment for the Obama administration.

  Panetta decided to make another passionate plea.

  “There’s a formula I’ve used since I was in Congress,” he said. “If I asked the average citizen, ‘If you knew what I knew, what would you do?’ I think in this case, the answer is clear. This is the best intelligence we’ve had since Tora Bora. I have tremendous confidence in our assault team. If we don’t do this, we’ll regret it.”

  Secretary of State Clinton was the last person to respond to the president’s question. She had never been in a meeting where the stakes were higher. She knew this would “make or break Obama’s term in office.” If they were successful—if they got bin Laden—Obama would get the credit. But if it turned out poorly—the Pakistanis showed up and there was a firefight and America lost men—it would be the end of his presidency.

  She had worked with Obama long enough to understand that he was a methodical decision maker. He’d look at all the pros and cons and analyze them before making a final decision. She owed it to him—and the others at the table—to lay things out in a methodical way. And so she carefully went through all the arguments for a raid—as well as all the arguments against.

  Clinton said she, too, wished they had time to collect better intelligence. She knew the president would be taking a considerable risk. But Clinton said she strongly believed that The Pacer was bin Laden. And after years of searching for the terrorist responsible for taking so many lives, this was a “rare opportunity” to get him. They had to roll the dice. They might not get another chance.