12/1/2023 0 Comments Neptunes spear“I remember the moment in the Sit Room with General McRaven,” Clinton said, “and, you know, someone said, ‘Well, this sounds really dangerous and we’re going to expose our guys and what do we know is going to happen?’ And he said, ‘Well, with all due respect, we’ve done this hundreds of times.’” In March of 2011, the president ordered Admiral William McRaven, then commander of Joint Special Operations, to outline a possible raid on the suspected bin Laden compound. He and his advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hammered out the possibilities.Ĭlinton said that she was brought into the process in January 2011 when a series of intensive meetings began in the White House Situation Room, or “Sit Room.” “Ultimately it was a 50/50 proposition as to whether this was actually bin Laden,” Obama said. Satellites revealed someone else living at the same compound: a tall man walking in the courtyard that analysts dubbed “The Pacer.” Helmed by then CIA Director Leon Panetta, the agency identified the home of bin Laden’s courier in the upscale town of Abbottabad, not far from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Bush was frustrated by the al-Qaeda leader’s ability to evade capture.Īfter years of hunting bin Laden, the Central Intelligence Agency got its biggest break in late 2010. President Bill Clinton fired 75 cruise missiles trying to kill bin Laden while President George W. The killing of the 9/11 mastermind had been years in the making, a mission that Obama’s two predecessors had been unable accomplish. “We didn't know at that point whether there might be underground tunnels coming out of that compound that would allow him to escape.” “Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away,” Obama said. The president did not share news of the mission’s launch with his staff, or with the first lady. “There were only a handful of staff in the White House who knew about this.” “This had to be such a close-held operation,” the president said. The interviews occurred before the president made an unannounced visit to Kabul on Tuesday, where he and President Hamid Karzai signed an agreement on the future of U.S. “The reason I was willing to make that decision of sending in our SEALs to try to capture or kill bin Laden rather than to take some other options was ultimately because I had 100 percent faith in the Navy SEALs themselves.”Ī year after the May 1, 2011, raid on bin Laden’s compound, Obama and several of the advisers who helped plan the operation, known as “Operation Neptune’s Spear,” spoke exclusively to NBC News, reflecting on the tense months spent planning and debating the feasibility of this daring raid. “I did choose the risk,” the president said in an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams. President Barack Obama describes the killing of Osama bin Laden as the “most important single day” of his presidency and said that the decision to carry out the raid was one that he had to ultimately make alone.
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