In the end, Clinton said that for her, it was a “51–49 call.” Obama should order McRaven to conduct the special operations raid.
Obama listened carefully. He understood everyone’s concerns. President Carter never recovered politically from the Operation Eagle Claw disaster. The president knew his national security team believed that he would suffer the same fate if a raid went sideways. For Obama, it wasn’t about running for another term. His decision would be based on intelligence, not politics.
Obama had heard enough. In fact, he was getting a little annoyed. “I know we’re trying to quantify these factors as best we can. But ultimately, this is a 50-50 call,” he said.
As far as he was concerned, there were four outcomes when it came to a raid. They involved going in easy, meaning the SEALs met no resistance, or going in hard, which meant they faced opposition. The men could go in easy and bin Laden would be there. They could go in hard and he would be there. They could go in easy and he would not be there. Or they could go in hard and he would not be there. Obama said there was only one disaster scenario: They went in hard—things got messy—and bin Laden wasn’t there. He said he could live with three of the four outcomes.
So after almost two hours, Obama adjourned the meeting. “I’ll let you know my decision in the morning,” he said.
If he decided on the raid, Obama wanted to make sure that McRaven had enough time to get it right. McRaven would have last-minute things to do. If the president gave the order, the helicopter assault would take place that weekend. He knew everyone around him was anxious, but they’d all have to just sit tight.
COUNTDOWN: 2 DAYS
April 29, 2011
Washington, D.C.
As the sun rose over Washington, President Obama sat alone in the family quarters of the White House, thinking it over one last time. This was it. He couldn’t keep McRaven or his national security advisors waiting any longer. If they were going after The Pacer, they had to move now.
For months, the president had heard all the evidence, studied all the intelligence, read all the memos. He knew every detail of McRaven’s plan. He’d watched a video of the SEALs’ dress rehearsal. He’d sat through endless meetings where the best minds in the country had argued for and against moving on the Abbottabad compound.
Now it was time. Obama didn’t say anything to his advisors, but he’d narrowed his decision weeks earlier. He wasn’t in favor of a drone strike because there wouldn’t be a body.
The intelligence community didn’t need more time to collect information. They’d learned all they could from outside the compound walls. With all the planning going on, with so many people in the loop, information was bound to leak soon.
The only question before the president was whether to order the raid. The stakes didn’t get any higher. As Gates had said from the start, something always goes wrong in these kinds of operations. U.S. service members could be killed. They could get into a firefight with Pakistanis. SEALs could be taken prisoner. U.S.-Pakistan relations could be irreparably harmed. A single screwup could cost Obama everything.
The president understood Gates’s trepidation, but Operation Eagle Claw had happened in 1980, thirty-one years ago. This was 2011, and U.S. Special Forces were much better trained and equipped. They’d been conducting these kinds of missions for years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president had utmost confidence in McRaven. He was the consummate professional. If they were making a movie about a special operations raid, he’d be the star. And he’d play himself.
Obama didn’t make big decisions on the fly. Whether it was saving the automobile industry during the financial crisis, or increasing American troops in Afghanistan to help stabilize that nation, he had always done his homework. He was always deliberate. He stayed up late at night studying the issues and evaluating the odds before coming to a decision. It drove some people crazy, but he didn’t care. He had to get it right.
And last night, he’d been up late again. He had dinner with Michelle and his girls. They laughed and teased him, how he always wore his “ratty old sandals around the house” and how he “didn’t like sweets” because there was “too much joy” in “delicious things.” After tucking his daughters in, he went to the Treaty Room, his office in the family quarters on the second floor of the White House, and turned on a basketball game—the Los Angeles Lakers with Kobe Bryant were playing the Charlotte Hornets. And in that room, by himself, Obama made a decision, then went to bed.
Now Obama was ready. Nothing had changed. So he sent an email to Donilon, Brennan, and two other advisors, asking them to meet him in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. When they arrived, he’d give them his answer.
White House
Tom Donilon rushed from the West Wing over to the residence. It was 8 a.m. and he had just gotten an email from the president. This was it.
He knew the president was getting ready to board the helicopter Marine One to begin a trip to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Obama and his family were going to look at the damage caused by devastating tornadoes that had swept across the South, killing more than three hundred people.
Donilon had to get there fast. He didn’t want to keep the president waiting. Other members of Obama’s team were on their way, too, including Brennan. They arrived at the Diplomatic Reception Room at about the same time. When they did, they formed a semi-circle around the president. He usually wore suits, but today he had dressed down: He was wearing casual brown pants, a white shirt open at the collar, a windbreaker, and brown shoes. His family was already on the South Lawn, headed to Marine One.
It was hard to hear over the din of the helicopter, but Obama didn’t waste any time. He said he approved the raid, adding that McRaven would have full operational control. And there was one other thing: McRaven would determine the exact timing of the mission.
With that, Obama turned around and walked out the door. Donilon stood there for a moment, watching the president and his family board Marine One. In the distance, Donilon could see the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. Then it hit him. Now that the mission was a go, he had binders filled with things he had to do, calls he had to make. If he thought the last few weeks had been hectic, just wait.
Kabul, Afghanistan
McRaven checked in with General Petraeus for his weekly Friday meeting. He liked Petraeus, who headed the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. He had just been nominated by the president to replace Panetta at the CIA.
But the general had been kept in the dark about the planning for Operation Neptune’s Spear. McRaven knew that decision was probably made by someone in Washington who was afraid of expanding the inner circle to too many people. After the last bin Laden meeting, General Cartwright was supposed to fill in Petraeus about the operation. So when McRaven walked into Petraeus’s office, he assumed he had been briefed. But McRaven quickly realized that Petraeus wasn’t told everything.
“Cartwright mentioned something about a cross-border operation,” Petraeus said.
McRaven took a deep breath. “Well, it’s a little more than that.”
“What is it?”
McRaven pulled out slides with plans of the mission and laid them in front of Petraeus. “We’re going after bin Laden.”
Petraeus was stunned, “What?” he said and laughed.
Slide by slide, McRaven walked the general through the plan. When he laid down the slide of the compound, Petraeus said, “Holy shit.” He repeated the same phrase as McRaven showed him more pictures.
“We’re just waiting for the president’s approval,” McRaven said.
After the meeting, he took a chopper for the short hop from Kabul back to Bagram, where he greeted members of a congressional delegation. He’d thought about canceling the visit, but went ahead with it. No one wanted the politicians snooping around, but here they were.
He finally finished giving them a tour of the special operations headquarters. It was late afternoon, cocktail hour f
or the senators. McRaven went back to his office. There really wasn’t much he could do for the moment, but that was OK. He’d been taking care of business since he’d touched down in Afghanistan.
His deputy commander, Brigadier General Tony Thomas, had traveled with the assault force to Jalalabad to ensure everything there was ready to go. When the time came—if they got a go from the President—McRaven would fly to Jalalabad and oversee the raid from the air base there.
Weeks earlier, he had asked Colonel Erik Kurilla, one of the most aggressive special operations combat leaders, to assemble a quick reaction force of two dozen SEALs in case Team 6 got into trouble. During the raid, two Chinooks carrying the QRF would wait in place inside Afghanistan at the Pakistani border. Two other Chinooks would fly into Pakistan and land in a remote area about thirty miles north of the compound. Then they would set up a refueling site where the Black Hawks would stop on the way back to Afghanistan. If the SEALs had any trouble with one of the helos at the compound, a Chinook at the refueling site would peel off to Abbottabad.
Now he told Kurilla to have the QRF on standby. McRaven also put his “gorilla package” on standby—the fighter planes and AC-130s that would protect his forces in case they were pursued by Pakistani aircraft.
He finished his decision matrix. If the helos were spotted as they crossed the Pakistani border, they’d abort the mission. The same if they were detected all the way up to the halfway point to the compound. After that, they’d keep going.
Yes, everything was ready. McRaven was just waiting for a call.
Langley, Virginia
Panetta paced. The president was deciding. If it was “yes, move forward with the raid,” Panetta would relay word immediately to McRaven.
It was early. The president had a busy day ahead. Panetta knew Obama was traveling to Alabama, then to Cape Canaveral, Florida, with his wife and daughters to watch the final launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Later in the day, Obama was giving the commencement address at Miami Dade College.
Morell walked into Panetta’s office just in time for the phone to ring. Panetta picked up. It was Donilon. “It’s a go,” he said. Obama had said yes.
Panetta smiled. “OK, I’ll get on it.”
Morell stood by as Panetta phoned McRaven. “We got the approval. We’ll go this weekend,” he told the admiral.
Just when they would hit the compound was McRaven’s call. He’d have to look at the weather. McRaven said he was leaning toward Sunday instead of Saturday, but he’d let Panetta know more that afternoon.
“I’m praying for you,” Panetta told McRaven. “For the mission, for all of you to get home safely. And one more thing.”
“Yes sir?”
“Get in, get bin Laden, and get the hell out of there. If bin Laden’s not there, get the hell out of there anyway!”
After he hung up, Panetta sat in his office with Morell and let himself breathe. So much had happened since Gary told him about the fortress in Abbottabad. No one could have known it would lead to a special operations strike to take out the son of a bitch. The scale of the president’s decision almost overwhelmed Panetta. So many lives at risk. America’s prestige on the line. Who knew what would happen over the next forty-eight hours? One way or another, history was about to be made.
At that moment, before he did anything else, Panetta decided he wanted a “command record” for historical sake. So, in longhand, he wrote a brief note:
Memo for the Record—
Received phone call from Tom Donilon, who stated the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [The code name for the compound.] The decision is to proceed with the assault. The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and, if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:15 a.m.
Leon Panetta, DCIA
He took a deep breath. It was done
Meanwhile, everyone had to maintain a sense of normalcy. They couldn’t do anything that might spark suspicion.
Panetta looked at his calendar. Obama had a busy day planned. It was a good thing he didn’t cancel his events. But then he noticed Saturday night’s schedule. It was the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It was part celebrity roast, part fund-raising gig for journalism scholarships. The president would be expected to show up, sit on the dais, and poke fun at Washington personalities.
The president would have to attend, even with such a weight on his shoulders. Panetta didn’t envy him. But right here and now, Panetta had to get on the phone and spread the news to everyone in the loop. They were going ahead with the raid.
Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Gates was finally on board. Before the president announced his decision, Mullen; Michael Vickers, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations; and Michèle Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, had visited Gates in his Pentagon office.
They thought it was important to have Gates support the raid. Maybe it would help persuade Obama to green-light the mission. The three officials understood why Gates opposed the operation. He had lived through the failed 1980 Iranian hostage rescue.
The secretary sat impassive as Vickers went over the intelligence in the bin Laden operation one more time. He told Gates the evidence was “really quite strong.”
“Our forces can do this,” he added.
Then it was Mullen’s turn. He and Gates had known each other for decades. Gates once told Mullen that Joe Biden hadn’t been right about an important issue in forty years. After yesterday’s meeting with the president, the two had shared a ride back to the Pentagon. That’s when Mullen turned to Gates and reminded him about his Biden comment.
“What’s going on here?” Mullen said. “Over the last forty years, he’s got it all wrong and now you voted with him two days in a row?” They both laughed. In Gates’s office, Mullen made the same pitch as Vickers: They could pull this off.
At the end of the meeting, Gates thanked them for the briefing. He didn’t say what he would do. But after they left, Gates called Donilon. “Tell the president I’m all for the raid.”
“Obama made the decision to go,” Donilon told him.
Bagram, Afghanistan
McRaven hung up the phone. The mission was on. It was morning in D.C., but in Kabul, eight and a half hours ahead of Washington, it was already late afternoon.
McRaven was businesslike. He’d start to let his inner circle know about the president’s decision. All the training was done. The SEALs were prepared.
McRaven felt remarkably calm. Had they been 100 percent certain that bin Laden was there, maybe he would have felt more excited about the mission. But he knew they might fly to Abbottabad, raid the compound, and come up empty. He had learned a long time ago to “never get too high, never get too low.”
His main job right now was to watch the weather. If it cooperated, the operation would go off on Saturday as planned. If not, they’d go on Sunday. Either way, he’d be up early, ready to go.
Washington, D.C.
The day was packed with meetings, but Donilon and Panetta called another one. The president was on the road. Still, they gathered the major players in the Situation Room anyway, just to make sure everyone was on the same page.
The room filled up as the afternoon stretched on. Panetta said McRaven would decide when the operation would begin and how it unfolded. They went over who was responsible for what, but they weren’t going to micromanage the mission from this distance.
This was officially a CIA operation. It had been classified as a “Title 50,” referring to a section of the U.S. code that authorized the agency to carry out covert missions. This way, if something went wrong, the United States could deny it had anything to do with the raid. But everyone knew the mission was McR
aven’s to direct.
Someone brought up the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The president was expected to go. But should he be laughing and glad-handing with a major military operation unfolding half the world away?
“Fuck the Correspondents’ Dinner,” Hillary Clinton snapped.
Everyone stopped. Clinton explained. The dinner was set for 8 p.m. Saturday night. Pakistan was several time zones ahead of Washington. If things went according to plan, they’d know long before the dinner started whether the mission was a success or not.
If Saturday was the best night for the raid, McRaven should go for it, Clinton said. Would it be difficult if something went wrong? Yes. But it would be more difficult if they said, “Oh, sorry, you can’t go after bin Laden because we have a dinner that night. If we ever let a political event get in the way of a military operation, shame on us.” That was absurd.
In the end, they agreed the decision was McRaven’s to make. The timing of the operation had been delegated to him. Now they could only wait.
Meanwhile, Donilon and Brennan had some important unfinished business. Several key cabinet members still had no idea about the bin Laden operation. Now it was time to tell them.
The two White House advisors expected blowback. They knew some officials might ask why they had been excluded. Weren’t they critical members of Obama’s team? Donilon and Brennan read in FBI Director Mueller and Attorney General Holder. Both men said they understood. Brennan “drew the short end of the straw” and had to brief other members of the national security team.
When he told Susan Rice, the United Nations ambassador, she said, “Way to go.” But Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, was less than thrilled. Her job was to stop terrorist attacks against America. If the raid was successful, Al Qaeda might try to retaliate against the United States. Napolitano said she wished she had more time to prepare, but her department would be ready.
Countdown bin Laden Page 20