American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden (2025) s01e03 Episode Script

[dramatic music playing]
[clicking]
[Panetta] CIA officers located at Khost
were very excited about the possibility
of being able to get a source
that might lead us to bin Laden.
And so he wasn't searched.
He was basically waved through.
[Miller] There is the entire CIA team,
contractors, special forces,
analysts, case officers.
They've all come outside to be there
for his arrival.
This is a potentially very big deal.
[Panetta] There is so much tension.
He got out on the other side of the car,
and our security people
went around and said,
"Take your hands out of your robes."
And they got very concerned
because he wouldn't do it.
They didn't understand
that the asset was the bomb.
[Walder] I was sitting on
my family room floor,
and I get a phone call.
She's like,
"Tracy, there was a big explosion."
I was like, "What are you talking about?"
I I don't think I even had the TV on.
Right? Like, I didn't know
what had happened.
Now to Afghanistan.
Tonight, there are startling new facts
about the suicide attack
that killed seven CIA officers.
The attacker was invited
to enter that base,
and he was not searched.
This is for you.
It's not watch. It's detonator.
You will be sent to the hell.
[reporter 2] Here's a man
who had never been seen by the Americans,
and yet they let him get into
this very secure CIA base.
Then he is able to
to explode this device.
[reporter 3] The flag at CIA headquarters
flew at half-staff today
for seven of its own.
Director Leon Panetta said they died
far from home and close to the enemy.
Too close, it turned out.
[poignant music playing]
[Storer] My colleague Jennifer Matthews
was the CIA base chief
in Khost, Afghanistan.
We were like a cadre.
I had been working with Jennifer
on al-Qaida
since before we knew it was al-Qaida.
Then Gina called me and told me
Jennifer had been killed.
[tearfully] It was so hard to hear.
And I remember going to church,
and the standard prayers,
everybody who served in the military.
I'm like, "What about us?"
[chuckles] "What about Jennifer?"
It was just hard to hear
the stream of people from her childhood,
you know, her kids, talk about her
'cause of course,
they didn't know what she did.
Mm-mm.
I remember going to the funerals
of every single one of the CIA officers.
And I noticed that, as we were driving
in very, very cold weather,
I saw a family standing
on their front porch
with a sign
that they were holding that said,
"Thank you for keeping us safe."
[Panetta] I remember
talking to their family members.
The parents I talked to said,
"Don't give up on the mission
that cost our loved one their life."
"Don't give up on it."
And the mission, obviously,
was to continue the search for bin Laden.
[all fire]
[Bin Laden, in Arabic]
I say to the American people
that, God willing,
we will continue to kill you.
If al-Qaida thought that
the Khost attack was gonna weaken us,
they were dead wrong.
It had directly the opposite effect.
It steeled our resolve.
[shouting]
[Michael Morell] Khost made it personal.
[dramatic music playing]
Made it very personal.
[clicking]
[suspenseful music playing]
We're getting closer and closer
to the ten-year anniversary of 9/11,
and there's an increased demand
and desire to find bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden is still wanted,
still continuing to haunt Americans.
A $25 million bounty remains
hanging over his head.
We've supposedly got spies
and strike teams
all over the place looking for him.
How could this guy still be out there?
[clattering]
["Tina"] We had had
our heart broken so many times
with all these terrible leads
and almost thinking we were there.
"He's in this location, in that location."
The military spun up more than once
trying to potentially capture him,
but it never panned out.
House is clear. Go ahead.
It was [sighs]
so frustrating.
It also begs the question
of just how intelligent
our intelligence agencies really are.
The CIA at that point
was under political attack
from both parties, really.
[shutters clicking]
Isn't it a failure of your administration?
You haven't captured him.
You don't seem to know where he is.
Well [chuckles]
It, um
I I think
capturing or killing, uh, bin Laden
would be extremely important
to our national security.
[Morell] There was
an immense amount of pressure
on CIA and the intelligence community
as a whole to do more.
Double down on bin Laden and al-Qaida.
[Shaeffer] On the day of 9/11,
I was working at the Pentagon.
On my branch,
I was the only, sole survivor.
[Shaeffer] I was badly burned,
but I was able to bounce back
and keep fighting every day thereafter.
- How do you feel?
- I'm feeling great.
Thank God.
In 2009, a friend
reached out to me and said,
"Kevin, we could really use your help
to be part of the bin Laden team."
"As its one and only mission,
find bin Laden."
I told my team, "Every week, I want you
to come into my office and report to me."
"What you're looking at,
what you're finding,
what clues do you have,
what possible evidence do you have?"
Where could he have gone
if he fled Afghanistan? Where did he go?
Is he still alive? You have
all these questions the whole time.
[tape fast-forwarding]
[Storer] And so,
when he made an appearance on television,
it would be analyzed to death.
[speaking Arabic]
We started focusing on every aspect
of bin Laden's media statements.
[Panetta] We would listen
to bin Laden's tapes to see whether or not
you could pick up the sound
of something that might tell you
where he might be located.
[bird calling]
The sound of a bird
or the sound of industry.
[whirring]
[Morell] Is he sending hidden messages?
What's in the background
that might give away where he might be?
[man speaking Arabic]
We also tried to trace
how his videos were delivered to the news.
He had to have a way of getting messages
in and out of wherever he was.
They were not trusting
any electronic devices
or phones or anything,
so they're probably going
by hand, by couriers.
If we could find and locate,
track a courier,
that would potentially lead us
to bin Laden's location.
[Morell] CIA followed every lead.
This lead about the courier
starts way back in 2002.
[tense music playing]
[Shaeffer] We knew there was an individual
who was a trusted bin Laden courier,
and great efforts were taken
to identify that name.
Detainees provided fake names.
Some said there was no courier,
and others said there was a courier,
but he had retired.
It was extremely difficult
to unravel the lies about the courier.
[Morell] And then, in late 2002,
there was an al-Qaida operative
in the custody
of a North African government
who had been arrested
and was being interrogated
about what he knew, who he knew.
And in that interrogation,
he mentioned that an individual,
who he said worked with bin Laden
prior to 9/11
and worked
with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed post-9/11
and who was a courier between the two
And he said the name of the courier was
Abu Ahmed.
That information, of course,
we were very interested in.
[clicking]
[Morell] We asked KSM,
still being detained
in a secret CIA prison,
"What do you know about Abu Ahmed?"
KSM had undergone
enhanced interrogation techniques.
He was telling us
pretty much anything we wanted to know.
He told us, "Yeah, I heard of Abu Ahmed,
but he's not with al-Qaida anymore."
He goes back to his cell,
which we have bugged,
and he told
all the other al-Qaida operatives
who were with him,
"Nobody nobody talk about the courier."
KSM was doing everything he could
to protect the courier
because he knew that Abu Ahmed
could take us to bin Laden.
[bleeping]
[Morell] So we are zeroed in
on trying to find Abu Ahmed.
["Tina"] Bin Laden and KSM couldn't
have picked a better person.
He was exhibiting
a lot of good operational security
that made it very difficult to find him.
[Morell] Eventually,
we figured out he was Kuwaiti.
["Tina"] We pursued every possible lead,
and we had no idea what he looked like.
He was an enigma.
It was a long, hard, steady strain
to try to determine his pattern of life,
his movements, where he would travel to,
what type of communications he was using,
how he was using those communications.
["Tina"] We were worried
about making mistakes
that would inadvertently tip him off
to the fact that we were looking for him.
So all of that goes from 2002 to 2010.
Eight years to find him,
you know, on the planet.
[clicking]
[Shaeffer] In the summer of 2010,
we had a breakthrough moment.
[Panetta] We tracked his phone
to a town in Pakistan called Peshawar
and we were able to pick up a phone call.
[distorted voices]
[Panetta] He was talking
to somebody who knew him from the past.
His friend was asking him,
"What are you doing now?"
"I haven't heard from you.
I haven't seen you."
"Uh what are you doing?"
And he kept trying to say,
"You know, I'm just
I'm staying busy. I'm working."
And his friend just didn't give up.
He said, "Well, yeah,
but but what are you doing?
"What exactly are you doing?"
And there was a moment of silence.
[camera whirring]
[Panetta] And then he said,
"I'm doing what I did before."
Immediately, the friend said,
"Then go with Allah."
It was clear that what he had done
before is to work for bin Laden.
[tense music playing]
[Panetta] We needed to have
human intelligence on the ground.
People think about intelligence work
as analysts reading reports.
I mean the people on the street.
As a task force commander,
I was based in Kabul,
and then I had places all over the region.
We need intelligence
that validated all the information.
What do we think we know?
What do we know we don't know?
What do we see?
[Panetta] We watch the courier
get into a little white SUV.
There are a lot of white SUVs in Pakistan.
And our CIA officers followed it
from Peshawar
to a town called Abbottabad.
Finally, the vehicle pulled
into this large house.
[click]
A bunch of indicators strongly suggested
that there's something
going on in this house.
This was very different
from anything that we had seen.
[clicking]
What we saw was a compound
that was much larger
than any compound in the area.
We learned that the courier, Abu Ahmed,
had purchased the house in 2005,
in an expensive part of Abbottabad,
with no visible means of income.
There were walls
that were 12 to 18 foot high,
topped with barbed wire,
and there was a balcony
[camera shutter clicks]
with a privacy wall.
[shutter clicks]
[Panetta] Abbottabad is known to be
a tourist area because of the mountains.
[chuckling] So why would you put
an eight-foot wall on the third floor?
The security of the top floor
is just weird.
You know, you start
putting these pieces together.
This is someone
who didn't wanna be seen at all.
This was highly suspicious,
set off alarm bells across the team.
[shutter clicks]
[Panetta] It was pretty clear
that somebody of high value
was located there.
[clicking]
[tense music playing]
[Panetta] I immediately went
to the President of the United States
and briefed him on what we had found.
[shutter clicks]
[Morell] We first briefed
senior Department of Defense official
Mike Vickers,
and Head of Counterterrorism
at the White House, John Brennan.
Michael Morell called me the day before
and let me know that this was gonna be
very sensitive information that was
gonna be passed to President Obama.
From this first meeting
with the president,
Leon Panetta comes in and said,
"We were able to geolocate
bin Laden's courier
and then follow him back,
and then here's this compound."
I said, "Mr. President,
we had a very high suspicion
that bin Laden
might possibly be located there."
President Obama was cautiously optimistic
that this might in fact be something
that we had never seen before
as far as an actual lead.
[Morell] At the end of the briefing,
the president gave us two orders,
and Barack Obama was not
the giving orders type.
The first was, "Leon, Michael,
find out what the hell is happening
in that compound."
And number two, "Don't tell anyone."
"This is the circle of trust, right here."
"Nobody else in our government
is to know about this."
[whirring]
[Panetta] We began constant surveillance,
looking at everything
that went on in that compound.
[Morell] It's very difficult
to get intelligence.
There was no phone and no internet.
The cell phones Abu Ahmed used,
he didn't put the batteries in
until he was well away from Abbottabad.
He practiced
extraordinary operational security.
Director Panetta came up with
his own ideas for collecting intelligence.
Like, "Can't we put
cameras in those trees?"
[Panetta] Others thought,
"What if we could collect their garbage
for possible clues?"
But they would never allow
their garbage to be taken out.
They basically burned their garbage.
We were working with a doctor
to go to the compound,
provide polio shots,
and get a sample of the blood.
Our hope was to be able to use that
to verify that it was bin Laden's family.
The couriers refused
to allow them to come in.
[Bennett] Over time,
we began seeing women and children
coming in and out of the compound,
so we start tracking them,
monitoring them.
[Shaeffer] And what we discovered
was that there were two families
living at the compound,
Abu Ahmed and his brother.
[clicking]
[Morell] But when we looked very closely
at the satellite photography
we learn that
there's a third family in the house.
It never leaves the compound.
The children did not go to school,
unlike all the other kids
in this particular part of Pakistan.
[Panetta] We identified,
by looking at the clothesline,
how many members of the family
were living there.
[Shaeffer] We did have enough of a count
of children and the adults
to create a high degree of suspicion
on who this third family might be.
[clicking]
[Panetta] At one point, we saw
an individual who was a little older
who would come out of the house
and walk in circles,
like a prisoner in a prison yard.
[Morell] Every day, he would
come out and walk in the garden.
Every day.
We called him the Pacer.
[Stern] Using what's called mensuration,
we see a person,
the sun is shining this way,
it casts a shadow.
Measure the size of the shadow,
figure out the precise height
of whatever's making the shadow.
And the precise height was
about the same height as Osama bin Laden.
[Morell] Literally, the hair
on the back of my neck stood up.
"Oh my God, we may have found him."
I had seen many
of the other leads to bin Laden.
They were nothing
in terms of the same caliber of this one.
[Panetta] I remember saying, "For
goodness' sakes, this could be bin Laden."
"Do whatever you need to do
in order to get me a facial."
And they said, "You know,
it's very difficult to do, Director."
"We got 18-foot walls on one side,
12-foot walls on another side."
"We can't get a good shot."
[camera shutter clicking]
And I remember saying to them, "You know,
I've seen movies
where the CIA can do this."
And we laughed. Everyone laughed.
But they weren't able
to get a clear picture.
[click]
Director Panetta puts
an immense amount of pressure
on the Counterterrorism Center
to learn more.
[clicking]
One day, I was asked
to come to the bin Laden unit at the CIA
and give a briefing
on interviewing Osama bin Laden.
And I'm like, "Mmm,
it's kind of an old story, but okay."
[speaking Arabic]
[Miller] I did
the bin Laden interview in 1998.
And it was the only interview
I've ever done in my lifetime
that kept getting bigger afterwards.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Miller] Now I'm sat down with the CIA
going through the footage.
[speaking Arabic]
[Miller] And I think
they're gonna be interested in,
"What was the security like
around bin Laden?"
"How did he move in? How did he move out?"
Radio communications.
So I'm going through it
in a good deal of detail,
and they say, "Do you have
any extra footage of him walking around?"
Why would they want
more film of him walking around?
[murmuring]
[Miller] I had no idea at the time,
but it turns out that they wanted footage
to determine if the gait, the slight limp,
the posture of the Pacer
matched bin Laden's walk
from the closest footage
that anybody had of him walking,
which was him coming
to that meeting with me in 1998,
for comparison.
But I had no idea about that.
[Morell] Although Miller's footage showed
there were similarities,
it wasn't conclusive evidence
that bin Laden was there.
Of course, I'm thinking
that that could be bin Laden.
Everyone was thinking it.
It's a matter of proving it to the degree
that a decision maker felt confident
enough to take some action on that.
[Panetta] Every week,
they would report to me.
Sometimes they would come in and say,
"We haven't found anything new."
And I said to them,
"That's not good enough.
That's not good enough."
[keyboard clacking]
[Bennett] As a survival mechanism
for what you're dealing with at work,
you become so detached from emotion.
[poignant music playing]
It was hard on so many levels.
[children shouting]
[Bennett] I was building
these movies of memories of my son,
because he was getting ready
to graduate from high school,
and all these movies
of things that he had done
that I didn't remember.
I had no memory
of these events in my son's life.
And
I remember
going into work that night angry.
I had to really kind of grapple with,
I chose to keep doing it.
["Tina"] There was always a sense of,
"We're not doing enough,"
you know, working weekends,
you know, missing family members.
[tearfully] And then my mom passed away
during the middle of the hunt.
And
I had told her before she died
You know, I said, "I'm working
on something really important."
[sniffles]
You know? "And hopefully, you'll"
[sobs] "Hopefully,
you'll end up seeing it."
And so when she died of cancer,
the only thing
that got me through my grief
was having a really big responsibility.
I knew we were making progress.
[faint radio chatter]
["Tina"] But I was obsessed
with building the intelligence case
that bin Laden was in that compound.
[tense music playing]
At that point, the chances
of being able to acquire 100% certainty
that he was there were extremely unlikely.
There was also the fear that bin Laden
could realize that he'd been discovered.
Bin Laden could leave that compound
at any moment,
and so it was too much of a risk
to continue to collect.
[clicking]
[Brennan] We were getting closer
to making a decision
about taking action against the compound.
So the president wanted to know
what were the prospects
for us getting more intelligence,
being able to confirm
bin Laden's presence there.
We did not have 100% evidence
that bin Laden was truly there.
[Morell] It was a circumstantial case.
There was not a single piece
of direct evidence that he was there.
I said, "Mr. President, you need to know
that the case that Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction"
[slides clicking]
"is stronger than the case
that bin Laden is at Abbottabad."
You could've heard a pin drop
in that room.
This is a major
national security decision.
His political advisors told him that,
if this was a failed operation,
that his public image
would be diminished significantly.
So that that, to me,
was the greatest political risk,
is an operation that could kill
a bunch of US service members.
A kind of Carter rerun.
When the Islamic Revolution happened
in Iran, embassy gets overrun,
a whole bunch of hostages get taken.
President Carter ordered the helicopters
into Iran to rescue the hostages,
and they crashed in the desert,
and a lot of people died.
And it just made him look weak.
It made the US look weak.
The Carter comparison was like,
"If this is a botched operation,
the year before an election"
Carter didn't get reelected.
[Brennan] I heard President Obama say,
"I don't care about the politics."
"It's been too long
that bin Laden has been able
to escape the hands of US justice."
[Panetta] The president said,
"I would like you to prepare operations
to go after this compound."
[Vickers] He says,
"I haven't decided to do this,
but if we do, we're gonna do it
sooner rather than later."
"Prepare the plan."
[dramatic music playing]
[McRaven] A phone rang.
It was the vice-chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He says, "Look, the CIA thinks
they have a lead on Osama bin Laden."
His eyes lit up. This is a SEAL.
This is like a dream come true.
[McRaven] The business I'm in
is hostage rescue
and raids on terrorist organizations.
But this was the biggest mission,
uh, certainly in my career.
A year earlier,
I'd been diagnosed with cancer,
chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
But the cancer had not evolved
to the point
where it was, uh it was taking away
from my ability to command.
As unfortunate as it was,
it gave me cover for action,
meaning that I had a plausible reason
for going back to the States.
So I flew back to DC and I met
with the director of CIA, Leon Panetta,
and he told me about this compound.
[Panetta] And I said,
"Look, what I need you to do
is to come up with an operation
to go after this compound."
[clicking]
[dynamic music playing]
[helicopter blades whirring]
[McRaven] We're gonna pick
the best people to do the job
for the United States of America.
We're gonna bring the SEALs in
for the mission.
[O'Neill] SEAL Team 6 is
the Tier 1 unit in the Navy.
First, we had SEAL Team 1,
SEAL Team 2, and then around 1980,
Commander Richard Marcinko
commissioned SEAL Team 6.
And the reason he named it 6 is
because he knew the Russians would say,
"There's SEAL Team 1, SEAL Team 2,
and there's SEAL Team 6."
"Where the hell are 3, 4, and 5?"
Which is good counterintelligence, right?
I say, "It's not just a hat rack,
my friend. We're thinking."
We'd just gotten back from Afghanistan,
and we're in Miami, Florida,
to do some diving
and get a little bit of liberty
so we can hang out
with the boys on the beach.
We're out there on the patio one night,
and we get a call
that we're being recalled
to Virginia Beach, and we didn't know why.
It was disappointing because the
the spin-ups never turn into anything.
You just get briefed
on a bunch of nonsense
that doesn't have anything to do with me.
And it just it sucks, man.
We've been looking forward to Miami
since I was in, uh in Jalalabad.
[suspenseful music playing]
[McRaven] When I first brought them in,
I brought them in off leave,
and I could tell from their body language
they weren't happy about this.
They thought they were involved
in an exercise.
[O'Neill] We pulled up to a spot
that was unimpressive.
It was like a small schoolhouse,
a one-story building.
Armed guard outside.
We go in and sit down.
And it's simply set up like a classroom.
Like, there's some whiteboards.
[McRaven] We brought 'em into the
briefing room. The CIA briefer comes out.
He explains to them they'll have to sign
these nondisclosure agreements,
which, again, wasn't unusual, because
we did some pretty sensitive training.
[O'Neill] When the officer
for the CIA stood up there
and I heard her say the word "Abbottabad"
And I'd never heard
of the city Abbottabad.
It almost gives me goosebumps right now.
Like, this is a city in
a different country you've never heard of.
Then the commanding officer
of SEAL Team 6 walked up,
as nonchalant as ever, and just said
"Gentlemen, we're going
after Osama bin Laden."
[O'Neill] "This target
is Osama bin Laden."
Most wanted terrorist in history.
I thought, "This is the most important
mission in modern history."
"What an honor.
What a great team to be a part of."
One thing they said, though,
was "This is time sensitive."
"We've got a couple weeks
until there's 0% illumination
in the lunar cycle, and we're gonna launch
on one of those two days."
"Gentlemen, this is not an exercise."
"We've got a job to do,
and let's get out and start preparing."
[dramatic music playing]
Our job was preparing them
for what they're about to do.
Um, it's giving them the tools
to do what they have to do.
And in this case,
we did something a little bit different.
We determined that we could literally
build the compound as it exists
for them to practice.
[McRaven] The CIA built us a mock-up.
[O'Neill] The exterior looked
like Osama bin Laden's compound.
So that we could have
the SEALs come in and rehearse
through their tactical movement
on the objective.
Helicopter pilots
rehearsed their profiles.
SEALs could fast rope down
onto the top of the three-story building
and into the courtyard.
We did that so much over and over,
the wrists are starting to hurt.
You're getting tendinitis.
It was almost to the point where,
"Look, we've proven we can fast rope.
We don't need to keep doing this."
[Pereira] We knew the shape of it.
We knew where the buildings were.
What we didn't know is,
what did it look like inside?
Was it an open space,
or did you walk into a corridor
with a room on the left
and a room on the right?
So the structure was modular.
- [SEAL 1] I'm in.
- [SEAL 2] Room clear!
[Pereira] It changed
every time they went through.
- [SEAL 1] Here.
- [gunshot]
They were so good about it that they could
break the compound down every single night
just in case enemy satellites
were flying over the top.
[clicking]
[dramatic music continues]
[Pereira] The number of times
they did their training
numbers over a hundred.
You plan, and you plan, and you plan,
and you rehearse, and you rehearse,
and you rehearse,
and you look at every single contingency.
[O'Neill] Everything that seems simple,
like "Where in the helicopter
are you gonna sit?"
"What are you gonna sit on?
Are you using this kind of a chair?"
"Where does the dog go?
Let's simulate that a car left."
"Let's simulate
the fast rope didn't work."
[McRaven] "What happens
if this guy gets shot?"
"What happens if this room blows up?"
"What happens if we're down
from 24 guys to 12 guys?"
I can tell you they destroyed things
that had to be fixed.
[SEAL 1] Back out!
- [firing]
- [explosion]
And we would then go back in
and and rebuild that.
[McRaven] "What did we do good?
What did we do bad?"
Twelve hours a day, maybe longer
than that, rehearsing and planning.
Then, we'd go back to the barracks
where we were staying,
and we'd stand around the model,
and we'd talk about it.
"Was there gonna be
some sort of ridiculous contraption
with a slide that comes out
of the top floor into the alley?"
"Can someone
climb out of the sewage system?"
And one night, one of the bosses said,
"What's the worst thing
that could happen?"
The youngest guy in the room said,
"The helicopter could crash
in the front yard."
And we're kind of
looking at him like, "Wh
"Why would you jinx us like that?"
[clicking]
[helicopter blades whirring]
[Stern] The main staging base
for the operation
was in Jalalabad,
on the Afghanistan side of the border.
Between those 350 kilometers
are all kinds of problems.
Risks were significant.
You're flying in Pakistani airspace.
The compound was right near Pakistan's
West Point, its military academy,
and other important
military installations.
So they were training military officers
there in Abbottabad.
[Brennan] A lot of care must be taken
because, if a threat is detected,
who knows what they will do?
President Obama was clear that
we're not going to inform the Pakistanis,
because Pakistani intelligence has worked
both sides of the fence for many years,
and they had relationships
with a lot of the militant
terrorist groups in the area,
including with al-Qaida.
And so we could be in a war with Pakistan.
With an army, special forces,
an intelligence service, an air force,
an armored force, nuclear weapons.
[McRaven] Can we get
those 162 miles undetected?
So we take a look at where
all the Pakistani radar systems are,
and what the swath of the radar looks
like, and you're gonna try to avoid that.
[O'Neill] There were so many variables
flying into Pakistan.
From getting shot down on the way in
to getting shot down on the way out.
Even joking around,
I remember talking to guys like,
"We need to take this more serious.
This is a one-way mission."
"We're not comin' back from this.
This is the last mission we're gonna do."
And then we walked around a corner
in a hangar, and we saw these helicopters.
[clicking]
[Panetta] We had
two classified forms of helicopters
that were harder to detect by radar.
We were kind of laughing.
I remember the conversation was,
"Well, our chances of surviving
increased just now
because, you know, we didn't know
we were going to war on Transformers."
This would be the first mission
with these new helicopters.
I'm not sure how much testing they'd done,
but we knew we had serious technology.
All these operations are very scary.
It's why we bring machine guns.
It's very high risk,
it's extremely dangerous,
and it has to work.
[clicking]
[O'Neill] Admiral McRaven
came up with the idea
that "We're gonna send you guys
to Jalalabad, Afghanistan,
in case you get a green light."
"You'll be ready to rock and roll."
[poignant music playing]
[O'Neill] It was always hard
to say goodbye to the kids.
And unfortunately, being a SEAL Team 6,
that was something we were used to.
That's just something I did with my kids.
From the time they were babies
till the time that I left the Navy,
you gotta say goodbye.
You gotta rip the Band-Aid off,
and at some point,
you just gotta give them that last kiss,
turn around, and that's it.
[interviewer] Did they know you were
saying goodbye and you may not come back?
Yeah, they were smart enough to know,
and they had friends that their dads
never did come home, so they knew.
[clicking]
[Panetta] The moment came
to brief the National Security Council.
[man] I know Obama very well.
That was kind of one of my jobs,
was to be the guy that knew Obama.
You could kind of feel his body language,
like he was going to be
taking a gamble on this, you know?
He was so dialed in to this whole thing.
[Morell] The president polled
all of the principals
about whether they thought
we should go ahead with the raid or not.
A lot of mixed views.
A lot of people raised questions.
[Brennan] Secretary Clinton
came out in support of it.
Jim Clapper,
the Director of National Intelligence,
and I were very supportive of it as well.
[Rhodes] When it got to me, I just said,
"Yeah, you always said you'd do this."
But there were a lot of arguments
against it.
[Morell] The vice president voted no.
He did not think
the intelligence was good enough,
and he was concerned about
the impact on US-Pakistani relations.
And Bob Gates, the Secretary of Defense,
was concerned
about the safety of the force.
[Rhodes] Bob Gates, who was in the
US government when we did Desert One,
his opposition to doing the raid
was a Desert One-style helicopter crash.
So, Gates said this, and I was like,
"Oh God, don't say it out loud,"
because what if that happened and then
these meetings all get out, right?
Look, I'm just here talking to you.
Like, you know.
It would have gotten out
that, you know, someone raised this,
and "Oh my God,
you know, uh, Obama ignored it."
[ominous music playing]
[Panetta] The president listened
to all of that,
but said,
"Let me take it into consideration."
[Brennan] President Obama said
that he would make a final decision
and wanted
to think about it more overnight.
[clicking]
[camera shutter clicking]
The next morning,
I remember it very clearly,
I was at headquarters,
and Tom Donilon,
the National Security Advisor, called me,
said, "The president's decided
to go with the mission."
This is a big bet.
We're betting that bin Laden's there,
and we're betting
that we can pull this off,
but this is the best shot we
we're ever gonna have on bin Laden.
Yes. Let's go.
[clicking]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Panetta] 24 hours before the raid itself,
there was a major event in Washington,
the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
And so we all decided
that we would show up,
otherwise, if we didn't,
questions would be raised.
Going to the White House
Correspondents' Dinner that night
was one of the strangest experiences
in my life.
[man] The President of the United States.
[cheering and applause]
[Brennan] People who were involved
in this, from the president on down,
understood the importance of secrecy.
[Brennan] And so
the Correspondents' Dinner, I think,
was in some respects a good cover
[chuckles]
because it was business as usual.
[Obama] It's wonderful to be here
at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
- [woman] Whoo!
- What a week.
[laughter]
[Panetta] It was difficult.
I had tremendous respect for his ability
to basically play the part [chuckles]
of President of the United States.
It's good to be back
with so many esteemed guests,
essential government employees
[laughter]
Non-essential government employees.
You know who you are.
And then a comedian got up
and made jokes about the bin Laden issue.
People think bin Laden
is hiding in the Hindu Kush,
but did you know that every day,
from four to five,
he hosts a show on C-SPAN?
[laughter and applause]
[Panetta] Everybody laughed.
And we all kind of deep down thought,
"If only you knew
what I knew."
[chuckling]
And what was gonna happen the next day.
The most classified operation
in the last 20 years.
- Thank you and good night.
- [cheering and applause]
[dramatic music playing]
[applause drowns conversation]
[clicking]
[tense music playing]
[Panetta] The next morning was
Sunday morning, so I went to Mass,
and used that opportunity
to pray a great deal
about what was gonna happen that day.
Prayed that, hopefully,
we'd be successful.
I left church
and went directly to the CIA.
The day of the raid. It's time.
[O'Neill] A lot of the preparations
in the Counterterrorism Center
in the United States were made in silence.
We were all on edge.
My role for this
was to be a communication relay.
Tina was in the cubicle next to me.
I didn't sleep the night before.
It was tremendous pressure.
It was the first time
that I felt a shade of doubt.
Having worked this lead
and we're now sending troops
potentially in harm's way,
all of us felt a responsibility.
It all became much more real.
We were either going to have
an incredible success
or a horrible failure.
[McRaven] The SEALs were family men.
My job was to make sure
I put them in a position to be successful.
And that's all I was worried about.
[O'Neill] We'd done the things with
the wills, with the powers of attorney,
to make sure your family's
taken care of in the event you die.
But this mission is one
where we're probably not gonna make it,
so I need to handwrite
letters to everyone.
And I remember handwriting letters
to my kids, and it was more of, um
"I'm sorry that I wasn't there for this,"
with tears hitting the page.
[Brennan] I got
to the White House very early.
During the weekend, you will have
individuals coming in for tours.
But we canceled each of them
because it would have sparked
a lot of concern
if people walking through the halls
saw a lot of senior officials
coming in on a Sunday.
[click]
[Brennan] Many of us convened
in the White House Situation Room early.
You're anxious.
You're you're worried. You're nervous.
[click]
[Rhodes] It really had the feel
of a command center.
Obama's sitting at the head of the table.
Then he's got, basically,
his senior cabinet-level people
sitting around the table.
Bob Gates, Hillary Clinton.
You had Leon Panetta on one screen.
He's at the CIA in kind of
their version of a situation room
with a bunch of people.
And then on the other screen
is Admiral McRaven, who's in Jalalabad.
[click]
[Brennan] It was tremendous anticipation.
The commander in chief,
he's the one who gave the order.
He's the one who had the most on the line.
[click]
There's a look on his face.
It is, like, really intense.
But you could tell
he was a little nervous too.
[click]
[Morell] We have connectivity
with Admiral McRaven in Jalalabad,
which is where he is.
[clicking]
[McRaven] I didn't get
a lot of sleep before.
This was a potentially historic moment.
I just didn't want anything to go wrong.
I had told the guys, "Okay, we got
a job to do. Let's go get the job done."
[clicking]
Bin Laden's code name is Geronimo.
That was agreed to in advance.
[Panetta] There is so much tension
that something could go wrong.
And what if bin Laden is not there?
[Shaeffer] I remember the call out
that the helos were launched and thinking,
"Here we go."
[clicking]
No one's ever flown in these before.
How do I keep my mind off it?
"Think of something simple.
I know how to count. I'll count."
"One, two, three, four."
So I'm counting.
And then around 557,
I just remember saying,
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning
by a faceless coward,
and freedom will be defended."
That's what President Bush said on 9/11.
I don't know how I remembered that.
But I'm like, "Forget counting.
I'm gonna say that again."
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning
by a faceless coward,
and freedom will be defended."
That's when it's like,
"All right, I'm on this mission."
"This is the team,
and we're gonna kill him."
[Morell] They leave Jalalabad,
and there's a period of time
where they're flying in Afghan airspace,
and you're breathing easy.
And then there's a moment
when they cross the border into Pakistan,
and your worry level goes way up.
[bleeping]
When does the Pakistani military
detect them?
[McRaven] The Pakistanis
had shot at us before, a number of times.
There was no doubt in my mind that if
the Pakistanis picked up the helicopters
and they thought it was a US force
coming in, they would engage us.
[Shaeffer] It was so tense.
We were listening very closely
to see if there's any indication
that they'd been detected.
[O'Neill] And now, we're at a point where
this is where we find out
if the technology works.
While these guys are in the air
for this hour-plus helicopter ride
in Pakistani airspace,
there's this kind of interregnum
sitting in a room in Washington
because there's literally nothing to do.
So Obama takes a break.
He says, like, "I'm gonna go upstairs."
You know, "Let me know
when I need to come back," basically.
He goes up there to play cards.
He compulsively played spades
when he he was nervous
or just needed to distract himself.
We're all just kind of sitting around, and
we started to just chat about 9/11.
People standing up, drinking coffee, like,
"Yeah, you know,
this is what I was doing, and"
There was this natural reversion
to that day.
You realize that, kind of,
we were all somehow
there because of bin Laden.
[click]
[Rhodes] And then Obama comes back,
and right across the hall,
there's a small conference room
with a general monitoring this operation.
[click]
[Rhodes] And Obama, he goes in there,
and so then,
everybody kind of starts to fill in
to this tiny little conference room.
[clicking]
[Rhodes] And McRaven
basically just starts narrating.
He's the the voice of God
for this whole operation.
A real anxious moment
was about two minutes out from the target.
That was a huge point of vulnerability,
because the Pakistani West Point
was in close proximity,
and it was a couple of miles
from the major infantry battalion.
So we could have hundreds of soldiers
attack the SEALs.
We would be surrounded by Pakistanis.
The president was very clear that,
if you get in that situation,
be prepared to fight your way out.
We didn't want to have
some type of hostage situation
of our forces being held
by the Pakistanis.
[radio chatter]
[O'Neill] The air crew guy reaches over,
and he opens the door.
We're looking out the window,
two minutes away from bin Laden's house.
We're not in a training area anymore.
This place has electricity.
We're in a resort part of Pakistan.
The perfect plan is,
they'll hover, we'll drop guys off.
My team's going to the roof.
We'll hit 'em like this.
That's the perfect plan,
and that's when all hell broke loose.
[clicking]
[Panetta] As the helicopters
were settling over the compound
one of the helicopters,
it it kind of quivered.
[Morell] It falls hard.
It crashes.
It's that moment when
your stomach comes up to your mouth.
[dramatic music playing]
[Rhodes] I was only
a few feet away from Obama.
He had this look
of profound shock and concern.
It was like,
"Oh. The Desert One thing is happening."
I thought, "Oh my God,
we may have lost people
as a result of of this lead
that we've been pursuing."
Everyone's on pins and needles
waiting and waiting
to see if there was going to be
any type of response.
Ultimately, the people in the neighborhood
are responding. Lights are coming on.
[Stern] And in that moment,
the operation was compromised
on social media.
[beeping]
A lot of people knew a helicopter crashed.
They didn't know it was American.
They assumed it to be
a Pakistani helicopter.
From a counterintelligence perspective,
that's a fail.
That's an indicator and a warning also
for Pakistani intelligence.
You could see the mission in danger.
[click]
I said to Bill McRaven,
"What the hell's going on?"
I knew the guys were okay.
I could see them
getting out of the helicopter quickly.
But what happened was,
when the helicopter came in,
the down blast from that helicopter
hit that 18-foot-high wall
and created a vortex,
and the helicopter lost lift.
Swings over and then hard lands
into the animal pen.
Bill didn't miss a beat. He said,
"I've called in a backup helicopter."
"We're gonna breach through the walls.
We're gonna continue the mission."
And I said, "God bless you. Let's do it."
[McRaven] The guys moved
from the downed helicopter.
The second helicopter comes in
immediately after that.
I didn't know
the first helicopter had an issue.
My team is supposed to drop some guys off,
and then my team's going to the rooftop.
So we drop our guys off,
just like in training.
We lift up, and then go right back down.
[McRaven] The second helicopter,
the pilot didn't know what had happened.
So to be cautious He didn't know
whether they had taken gunfire.
So he he lands outside the compound.
And so the pilot is telling us to get out.
[McRaven] Well, now the guys aren't
anywhere where they're supposed to be,
based on plan A.
[O'Neill] I'm to be on the roof.
And I remember thinking, "Okay.
I guess we just start the war from here."
The good news is we had plan B,
plan C, and plan D.
[faint radio chatter]
[dramatic music continues]
[McRaven] They're trying
to get in the compound.
On the outside wall,
there was what appeared to be a door.
So as I'm watching,
a demolition charge goes against the door.
- I see the explosion
- [bleeping]
[McRaven] But they're not moving.
Turns out there is a false door
on this four-foot concrete wall.
He looked back and goes,
"All right, failed breach, this is bad."
And I said, "No, this is good.
That's a fake door."
"Nobody does that. He's in there."
We know that the carport off to our right,
that definitely opens 'cause
we've seen cars come in and out.
We'll just go blow that door.
So I came over the radio.
"Failed breach, northeast corner."
"We're gonna blast the carport."
[faint radio chatter]
And somebody said, "No, no, no.
Don't blast it. We'll open it."
And so the door opens,
and a glove came out
with a thumb that I recognize.
We walk in there.
[McRaven] Then, within a few minutes,
everybody is inside the main area
of the compound.
[high-pitched whirring]
[McRaven] It's dark.
Guys got night vision goggles on.
Clearly, the adrenaline is pumping.
You could see the laser target designators
on their guns. You could see them moving.
You could see the guys
sweeping the compound looking for threats.
And then, you know, I could see
guys enter the three-story building.
And then that's all I could see.
[music fades]
[clicking]
[tense music playing]
[click]
[ticking]
[Panetta] There is so much tension.
God knows
what the hell's gonna happen now.
This is the moment
when everything you've planned,
everything that you've hoped for
in terms of being able to get bin Laden,
is on the line in the next 20 minutes.
It's gonna tell you whether or not
this is a success or a failure.
There was 20 minutes of silence.
Probably the longest 20 minutes
of my life.
[ticking]
[Morell] During those 20 minutes,
the SEALs on the ground
[dramatic music resumes]
[Morell] first ran into Abu Ahmed,
and they shot and killed him.
[O'Neill] So then we get
in this house on the first floor,
and one of my guys
shot one of the couriers and his wife.
She jumped in front of him.
The women are effectively
turning into human shields.
That's another indicator. He's here.
We're going up the stairs.
We run across locked doors,
called the breacher up,
and the breacher blasted that door.
So I'm about six guys back
on what we call a train,
and we're moving up the stairs.
The guy in front saw bin Laden's
20-year-old son, Khalid bin Laden.
[gunfire]
[O'Neill] Khalid jumped behind a banister.
The guy in front,
I heard him whisper a few things
to Khalid to confuse him.
[man whispering in Arabic and Urdu]
Come here. Come here.
He said, "Come here, come here,"
in two different languages,
and it confused Khalid,
and Khalid kind of came out
[gunshots]
And then he shot him and killed him.
So we're on the second floor,
and we wanna go to the third floor.
That's where bin Laden's gonna be.
But we need to clear that second floor
before we start moving.
The guys start to peel off.
So they're all moving out in front of me,
and now I'm the last guy,
which turns me into the number two man.
So the one man's job
is to point up the stairs,
the two man's job
is to tell him when we have enough guys.
I want four guys, and I'm lookin' around.
We had 23 dudes on the ground,
several different houses,
several different stories.
You're gonna run outta guys,
and we just did. We were down to two.
[muffled radio chatter]
[O'Neill] There's a curtain above
the stairs to the third floor,
and there are people moving behind it,
and the number one man can see 'em.
He's like, "They could be suicide bombers,
but we can beat 'em, but we gotta go now."
"Okay. We're gonna go meet a suicide
bomber. I'm tired of thinking about it."
"Let's get it over with." I squeeze
him and we went up the stairs.
So we went up to the top of the stairs.
And the number one man opened
this curtain. People standing there.
[grunting and scuffling]
- [O'Neill] He tackled them.
- [clattering]
He's gonna take the blast.
So because he went this way,
I turned this way,
and standing in front of me,
two feet away, is Osama bin Laden.
[heartbeat pounding]
It was one of those moments in life
where it did slow down.
He's taller than I thought.
He's skinnier than I thought.
His beard was gray, white,
but I recognized his nose.
This is definitely him.
He's not surrendering.
He's a threat, not just to me,
but my entire team.
He has to die.
[gunshots]
[thud]
[silence]
[clicking]
[ticking]
[tense music playing]
[Shaeffer] As time went by,
it was so tense.
We were waiting and waiting to hear
any type of response.
[Brennan] There was hushed silence,
waiting to hear.
Uh, in some respects, it reminded me
of a waiting room of a hospital
when somebody is going to give birth.
You know, you're anticipating.
You're worried.
[ticking continues]
It was a long 19 minutes.
And then I get the call
from the ground force commander.
The ground force commander
said over his radio,
"For God and country,
Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo."
"We got him."
[Rhodes] We know that means
Osama bin Laden has been killed
by US forces.
It's like, "Holy shit." And, like, I just
Like, nobody really says anything.
[Brennan] There was no applauding.
It was a very, very silent room.
[Rhodes] The silence is broken by Obama,
who didn't move from this chair,
and he just says, "We got him."
[poignant music playing]
When I heard that,
tears welled in my eyes,
and I looked over at my colleague
who was up there with me.
We just looked at each other.
Hearing that inside the space was surreal.
For me, there was some closure there.
Justice delayed, not denied.
Justice delayed, not denied.
We got him.
I thought,
"Oh my God, you know, this is it."
I hoped that my mom knew,
wherever she was.
[Brennan] It was just a
a real sense of relief
after a decade of effort to get bin Laden.
Events that day
are forever etched in my mind.
[Shaeffer] It was emotional,
but it only lasted for a couple seconds
'cause, in the heat of that moment,
we were still focused on the SEALs
and the helicopters getting back safely.
[Rhodes] Obama still looked
pretty stressed out,
and he stood up, and he said,
"I want you to tell me the minute
they're out of Pakistani airspace."
[McRaven] The mission wasn't over,
because we still had to get the guys
out of Pakistan and back to Afghanistan.
No one takes a deep breath
until these things are done.
[clicking]
[O'Neill] I'm there, I look over,
bin Laden's body's right there.
One of my guys comes up to me,
and he goes, "You good?"
And I said, "What do we do now?"
He said, "We find the computers.
Come on, man."
I said, "You're right.
I'm back. Holy shit."
[dramatic music playing]
[McRaven] Call from
the ground force commander. He says,
"Look, we have found a treasure trove
of intelligence on the second floor."
We're in offices with everything
from old-school tower hard drives
to compact disks.
I said, "Okay, get as much as you can.
We need to start gettin' out of here."
By this time, outside the compound,
people were showing up because there
was a disturbance in the neighborhood.
We had an agency colleague
who was the linguist.
He was on the periphery of the compound.
He was trying to keep them at bay.
My buddy, who was
a sniper outside, was like,
"I'm fully prepared to engage these
people, so you better talk 'em out of it."
And I had told the guys,
"Look, I I don't wanna kill anybody
unless you feel like,
you know, you are threatened."
[men shouting]
I was having a lot of anxiety. I said,
"Can we pick this up a little bit?"
- [bleeping]
- [McRaven] Make no mistake about it.
We didn't take our eyes
off the Pakistani radars.
[O'Neill] We're finding
so much good stuff.
We wanted 32 minutes on the ground, but
now we're pushing 40, we're 45 minutes.
The closer we cut it to the edge,
we might save a lot more lives.
We might save an American city
or London because of stuff we find,
something they're planning.
So we gotta just stick it out to the end.
The amount of time on the ground
was longer than anybody would want.
At the time, a large crowd had formed.
[McRaven] He says, "Nothin' to see here."
"Pakistani exercise. Don't worry about it.
Get back to your homes."
Now we gotta get bin Laden's body
in a body bag. We're bringing him back.
[intense music playing]
[Morell] They come out
with bin Laden's body
to get in the helicopter
and the backup helicopter,
and they leave.
[McRaven] And they blow up
the downed helicopter,
'cause it had
some sensitive material on it.
Watching that unfold
was right out of a movie.
[O'Neill] We're leaving. The pilot's
up front, flying as fast as we can.
Pakistanis gotta know we're there.
[bleeping]
We see radar turned on.
We start seeing their silos open.
[McRaven] They launched a couple of F-15s,
trying to intercept our helicopters
on the way back.
An F-16 against a 47 is not a good fight.
They could shoot us down.
So I just start my watch,
and I gotta get to 90.
And 90 minutes means we cross the border
from Pakistan to Afghanistan,
and we can no longer be shot down
because we've got F-15s on the border
that can protect us.
All right, cool. Ten minutes.
We gotta get to 20 minutes.
[McRaven] Helicopters moving
at low speeds across the terrain.
[Morell] We're getting
call-outs from the ground
of how far out they were
from returning to base.
30 minutes. Gotta get to 90.
All of us inside that center
were kind of pushing the helicopters
to fly as fast as they could.
It's been 60 minutes, gotta get to 90.
Now it's 70 minutes.
I'm trying to keep my mind
off of everything.
I start thinking about,
in 1980, the Olympics in Lake Placid.
[commentator] The excitement
and tension building.
The Olympic Center filling to capacity.
The greatest hockey team ever assembled
in the Russians.
They haven't lost a gold medal
since, like, the '50s.
They're playing these young Americans
who are just out of college,
no business being on the ice,
but now they're winning.
Four to three, third period.
You can hear the crowd.
Ten, nine We could still screw this up.
They're nervous.
- Eight. Seven.
- [bleeping]
[O'Neill] Six. Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
And then the pilot came over
85 minutes into the flight,
and he said, "Gentlemen,
for the first time in your lives,
you're gonna be happy to hear this."
"Welcome to Afghanistan."
[commentator 1] Do you believe
in miracles? Yes!
[commentator 2] Unbelievable!
[Stern] When the helicopter makes it
across the Pakistani border,
the Pakistanis turn around.
[poignant music playing]
There's a huge sigh of relief
'cause they're safe.
[clicking]
It's just surreal just to succeed
because, again,
we'd accepted death on this mission,
but it's nice to live.
When those helicopters landed
back at Jalalabad in Afghanistan,
that was the moment
where all of us around the table said,
"Mission accomplished."
"Mission accomplished."
Everything we had done,
all of the planning,
all of the work,
had paid off
in achieving something I thought
we never thought we would be able to do,
which was to bring bin Laden to justice.
And we hugged each other
and congratulated each other.
- [Obama] Good job, National Security Team.
- [man] Sir.
- Thank you.
- Yes, sir.
- Yeah, I'm proud of you.
- Thank you.
- Your guys did a great job.
- They did.
When the President of the United States
tells you you've done a good job,
you never forget that.
You never forget that moment.
[poignant music continues]
[Morell] The day of the raid,
my daughter was a senior in high school.
It was her last concert.
And my wife is saying,
you know, "Where are you?"
Um
And I said, "I can't."
And she said,
"You can't? You can't take an hour?"
"What you're doing
is more important than your daughter?"
And I said, "I gotta go," and I hung up.
The rest of the day,
she's sitting on the sofa
trying to figure out,
"How does this divorce thing work?"
I've been working so many hours,
seven days a week,
no days off.
My marriage was
in deep, deep, deep trouble.
When the president decides
he is gonna tell the nation,
I call her, and I say, "Turn on the TV
and you'll understand."
And she said, "You got him."
[reporter] Breaking news,
President Barack Obama
is expected to make
a surprise announcement.
We do not know what it's about,
but we do expect it to be
a huge announcement
because this is very unusual.
[Miller] I'm home,
and I'm in bed with my daughter,
and I'm reading her bedtime stories.
Emily comes in, my wife, and she says,
"All the phones are ringing."
I'm like, "I'm reading this story."
She's like, "No, all the phones
are ringing." That's never good.
Uh, the White House called,
uh, informing each news
uh, news organization individually tonight
that there would be a statement sometime
Obama's like, "Well, I need a speech."
And I hadn't written it. [chuckles]
And so I was like, "Oh shit."
[click]
I turn around, and I'm like,
"I need five minutes!"
And I'm like, "Oh shit. You don't talk
to the president like that."
You certainly don't talk to him like that
in front of, like, his whole cabinet,
But I was like
And he's like, "I got you."
So we came up and talked a bit about,
"What do you want in the speech?"
[click]
[Rhodes] I've written
thousands of speeches in my life.
Nothing remotely approached
the feeling of writing that.
I think, when I wrote that first sentence,
the enormity of what I had
the opportunity to do kind of hit me.
Like, "I'm telling the world about this."
It was frantic, but I was used to frantic
finalizing speeches with Obama.
He likes to edit to the end.
Literally, I've got
his written edits on a draft,
and I had to sprint
to the teleprompter operator
to beat Obama walking behind me, you know?
[click]
But then what was eerie is
you know, there's a very small group
of press that's assembled for this.
And then, there's a handful of us,
but it's this huge, empty room.
And so what you see on TV
is just Obama walking down
the long, red hallway to the podium.
[camera shutters clicking]
And what he's speaking to
is just some cameras, you know?
Like, there's not an audience.
And we're just kind of sitting there
at the back of the room.
Good evening.
Tonight, I can report
to the American people and to the world
that the United States
has conducted an operation
that killed Osama bin Laden,
the leader of al-Qaida.
I hear President Obama say
"Osama bin Laden."
I looked at Osama bin Laden,
and I thought,
"How in the fuck did I get here
from Butte, Montana?"
And then we kind of get back,
and he's talking,
and guys around me are like,
"Say it. Say that no one was hurt."
A small team of Americans
carried out the operation
with extraordinary courage and capability.
No Americans were harmed.
[Rhodes] I looked at Brennan
as Obama's talking, and I was like,
"How long have you been
trying to get bin Laden?"
And, like, without missing a beat,
he's like, "15 years." You know?
Like, he knew it exactly in his head.
You know, Sudan to Afghanistan.
And and that was
the kind of feeling of like,
"Oh my God, like, there's so many people
that have tried to get this guy."
It was nearly ten years ago
that a bright September day was darkened
by the worst attack
on the American people in our history.
[sirens blaring]
[poignant music continues]
[Obama] And on nights like this one,
we can say to those families
who have lost loved ones
to al-Qaida's terror,
justice has been done.
Tonight, we give thanks
to the countless intelligence
and counterterrorism professionals
who've worked tirelessly
to achieve this outcome.
The American people do not see their work,
nor know their names,
but tonight,
they feel the satisfaction of their work
and the result
of their pursuit of justice.
Thank you.
And may God bless
the United States of America.
[Brennan] After he gave his speech,
I went back down to my office,
and as I started to make my way
out of the West Wing,
I could see that outside
it was lighter than usual
for that time of night.
And I could see throngs of people
converging on Lafayette Park,
and they were chanting, "USA, USA."
[cheering]
[music swells]
[Panetta] People were sharing in the joy
of what had happened,
and I realized at that point,
we'd not only brought justice
to bin Laden,
but in many ways,
we had really brought justice
to all of those victims
whose families had died
in the Trade Towers and elsewhere.
[cheering]
[Miller] I go downstairs,
and I grab a beer from the fridge,
and then I thought,
"This is probably more than a beer thing,"
so I grabbed a bottle of whiskey
from the cabinet.
And I started to head to the porch,
and I stopped and grabbed a cigar
from the box in the den
'cause I thought,
"Well, this is gonna be a good night."
[man] Thank you, USA!
[Miller] And now I'm ready,
and I'm thinking,
"Here you are about to celebrate,
you know, the
the death of another person
in a violent way,
and aren't we more civilized than that?"
And I thought for just one more second,
I said, "You know what? Fuck him."
"He died the way he was supposed to die."
[somber music playing]
[Panetta] The president was concerned
about what we would do
with bin Laden's body.
The decision was
that we would transfer the body
to an aircraft carrier
in the Indian Ocean,
and he would receive
the last Muslim rites,
uh, but that he would be buried at sea
so that it would not be located someplace
that could become a shrine.
[music fades]
The thing that I'll never forget is
the military put together
this photo album
of the journey of bin Laden's body.
It started with him just shot, you know,
and then back in Jalalabad,
then face cleaned up.
What I remember
so powerfully about it is not, like,
the picture of bin Laden's face shot off,
it was the naval vessel.
There's his body wrapped in a shroud
being lowered into the water,
just slipping under the water.
I remember being very affected by that.
After all these world events,
this human being
is just somewhere in the Indian Ocean
wrapped in a white shroud.
[poignant music playing]
[Morell] The United States
definitely won the battle after 9/11.
No more attacks on the homeland at scale.
Capture, killing
of the entire al-Qaida senior leadership
that was responsible for 9/11.
But I fear bin Laden may have won the war.
I think bin Laden weakened America.
The trillions of dollars we spent
on counterterrorism,
the lengthy war in Afghanistan,
the war in Iraq divided Americans.
It's still playing out today.
I was beyond impressed with everyone
who was involved
in getting us to that point.
But [sighs]
Uh, I don't know.
I want
someone who deserves
to suffer
to suffer in the way
that they fear the most.
I wanted him to die an old man,
completely forgotten,
to live to know
that no one cared about him
or thought about him or knew who he was.
That, to me, was the worst thing
you could do to him, to any terrorist.
I just think people don't understand
the power we have to destroy terrorism
by not being influenced by it,
by not being afraid of it,
by not making decisions because of it.
That is the greatest way
you can neutralize it and destroy it.
Just to say, "F you," you know?
"You are not changing who we are
or what we do."
[Miller] You see the turmoil of the world
stirring that pot again,
where it will, um, cause tragedy,
anger, excite emotions,
and someone else will come along
and exploit that.
It's not the end of the story,
but it's the end of this chapter,
the bin Laden chapter.
[dramatic music playing]