The roar of helicopters cutting though the night over Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the early morning hours was likely the only warning al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden had before a fierce, unrelenting 40-minute spray of gunfire erupted, ending his life with at least one American bullet to the head. Halfway around the world, Obama sat in the White House Situation Room with his war Cabinet, watching a live video feed of the Navy SEALs he had ordered to fly from Afghanistan to the fortress-like compound in Pakistan where he believed bin Laden was hiding.
“Minutes passed like days,” said John Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, describing the mood in room Sunday. “It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time.”
Anxiety in the room peaked when one American helicopter malfunctioned during the landing. It would have to be left behind.
Ignoring the setback, the SEALs opened fire the moment they landed inside the compound, working their way up the three-story building where they found bin Laden. The 6-foot-5 militant grabbed one of his wives to use as a shield just as the SEALs opened fire, Brennan said, “decapitating the head of the snake known as al Qaeda.”
The woman and three men — including one of bin Laden’s sons — were killed. No Americans were seriously injured.
“I think we can all agree this is a good day for America,” Obama said Monday. “Our country has kept its commitment to see that justice is done. The world is safer, it is a better place, because of the death of Osama bin Laden.”
Obama authorized the operation on Friday morning before flying for Alabama to view tornado damage. That green light came eight months after the president first learned of the compound from al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody.
“When we saw the compound … we were shocked by what we saw,” a senior administration official said, describing 12- to 18-foot walls surrounding an enormous building. “It is roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area.”
Military and intelligence officials watched the compound for months, gathering information. Over the next couple of months, Obama held at least five top-secret meetings in the Situation Room to discuss their findings. The decision to take out bin Laden on Sunday was not unanimous among Obama’s advisers, Brennan confirmed.
It was never certain that U.S. forces would find bin Laden in the compound, but it was the best chance the U.S. had to capture or kill him since bin Laden slipped away from American forces at Tora Bora in Afghanistan 10 years earlier, Brennan said. U.S. officials didn’t tell the Pakistanis about the raid until it was over, concerned that their ally was actually aiding bin Laden.
“It’s inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time,” Brennan said.
U.S. officials handled bin Laden’s body according to Islamic religious practices — washing the body and disposing of it within 24 hours of death — before dropping it into the sea on Monday.
