Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace

by Leon Panetta

  Having heard the options and amended the plan, the president authorized the assault team to move into position in Afghanistan. Accompanied by McRaven, those Navy SEALs and the army pilots from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, as well as a CIA officer and a military dog named Cairo, deployed on April 25. They were to be ready to launch on a moment’s notice, though the drone option remained on the table as well.

  The following day, with McRaven joining by secure videophone hookup, the Principals Committee met yet again, this time with Donilon chairing. We had a few new nuggets of intelligence—we discovered, for instance, that the brothers living at the compound were using assumed names, an incremental bit of information but one that continued to reinforce the conviction that something surreptitious was going on there. We also shuffled through some operational details—how the team would fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted there by Pakistani forces; how to dispose of bin Laden’s body if he was there and killed; what to do with prisoners if they were taken. One contentious question was whether and when to inform Congress that the operation was under way. Several participants naturally worried about leaks, and since we were now aiming to launch over the weekend, there was the additional complication of how to make notifications over secure lines to members presumably not in their offices at night over the weekend. I proposed that we notify members late in the week to be ready for a secure call over the weekend. Yes, that raised the risk of a leak, but bringing in Congress, I argued, as I had before in defense of my earlier briefings, was both the right thing to do and tactically important so that members could not later claim to have been left in the dark. “Keeping Congress informed is to our advantage,” I said, noting that if the operation were a success, they would want to share credit; if it failed, at least they couldn’t complain that they were left out. The group agreed. The calls went out.

  As if all this weren’t enough to keep me busy, the president had one other piece of business that week involving me. On Tuesday, April 28, President Obama nominated me for secretary of defense, replacing Bob Gates. The president and I obviously had worked closely together over that same time—especially, though the public did not yet know it, over the past few months—and when he raised the idea of my moving to Defense, I accepted despite some reservations. I had not expected the timing to coincide with the launch of this delicate and difficult operation, however, and the two crashed together in those final days in April.

  After the president made the announcement—which also included the move of General Petraeus to replace me at the CIA, and General John Allen to replace Petraeus—Jeremy and I retired to the White House Situation Room to call the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Barely had I finished those calls before we headed into the climactic meeting of the preparations for our imminent assault on Abbottabad.

  This meeting of the National Security Council Principals included the full team: the president, the vice president, Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, DNI Clapper, National Security Adviser Donilon, and Joint Chiefs chairman Mullen. President Obama opened the meeting at 4:45 p.m.

  I updated the group on our latest fragments of intelligence—the news that the courier and his brother were using assumed names and that sources in Abbottabad “consistently comment on the secretive and suspicious nature of [the house] and its occupants.” In addition, we had learned that the women who lived at the house would not answer the door unless the men were present, and we were told that dogs could be heard barking inside. That last point seemed marginally relevant because earlier intelligence indicated that bin Laden had kept guard dogs at previous locations. We estimated that seventeen people were inside the compound, but Ibrahim was away only temporarily. If he returned with his family before we carried out our operation, the number would jump to twenty-two.

  And then I concluded. “The bottom line, Mr. President: This information confirms what we know—the secretive nature of the compound, the security precautions, the living under aliases. We have no contrary information. Our basic assessment remains the same.”

  McRaven then briefed the group on the status of our team and the options for action. Like me, he reiterated that this was the best intelligence we’d had in years suggesting bin Laden’s presence. And yet it was far from unambiguous. Still, McRaven’s recommendation was to go, and to go with the assault team.

  As others chimed in, the doubts and worries were heavy. Gates raised questions about the strength of our information, noting that our evidence remained entirely circumstantial. Clinton acknowledged that more time might give us better intelligence, a sentiment others advanced as well, but she concluded that this was a rare opportunity and believed we should seize it. Biden argued that we still did not have enough confidence that bin Laden was in the compound, and he came out firmly in favor of waiting for more information.

  Moving to the question of which course to pursue if the president authorized a strike, the group was similarly split. Gates continued to have reservations about the helicopter assault, and Cartwright favored relying on the drone. I argued against using the drone, repeating my concern that it might miss and cost us a unique opportunity.

  As for whether we should go ahead at all, I strenuously said that I believed we should act. Any delay risked a leak. This was our best chance, and we needed to take it. “There’s a formula I’ve used since I was in Congress,” I said. “If I asked the average citizen, ‘If you knew what I knew, what would you do?’ In this case, I think 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 it, we’ll regret it.”

  The president promised to decide the matter within a day. The next morning, Donilon called to say the president had approved the operation and had opted for the assault team. “It’s a go,” he said.

  I called McRaven on a secure line, told him we had approval and the operation would go that weekend. He was to judge the best day based on weather conditions. He said he was leaning toward conducting the operation on Sunday, as opposed to Saturday, and that he’d let me know that afternoon. Before hanging up, I left him with my prayers and a last piece of advice: “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.”

  Hanging up, I was struck by the enormity of what the president had just approved. The lives of two dozen men would be at risk, and the Obama presidency, including his prospects for a second term, could well turn on the outcome. My own place in history would almost certainly be defined by what transpired over the next forty-eight hours. With such stakes, it seemed worth memorializing this point in time, so I took a moment to jot out a note for the file. It is dated Friday, April 29, 2011, 10:35 a.m. It reads, in its entirety:

  Memo for the Record—

  Received phone call from Tom Donilon, who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1. 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 back 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

  • • •

  The president and I attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that Saturday night. He was gregarious and funny, unfathomably cool under the circumstances—he used the occasion to trumpet the release of his birth certificate and to witheringly mock Donald Trump, who was in the audience and who had waged a sustained and weird campaign to challenge the president’s place of birth. The audience, save Trump, reeled in laughter, none aware of the historic drama unfolding beneath Obama’s remarks. He was light and jovial. I was seated at Time magazine’s table, an
d though I was tense, I tried not to show it.

  The dinner, incidentally, had produced a minor disagreement regarding the timing of the raid. I and others had warned that if the operation were conducted on Saturday night, it would be hard to explain the absence of the president and other key officials from the event, a high-profile evening that brings together Washington journalists and political figures and one that we had already committed to attending. That rankled some of the military leaders, who groused about having to accommodate the “Washington social schedule” in a matter of national security. That wasn’t my intention. I was happy to skip the party, but I worried that the operation might leak if the press suddenly started asking questions about where the president and others were or if we suddenly got up and left. Fortunately, we avoided a clash when McRaven concluded that the weather was slightly more advantageous on Sunday than Saturday.

  Sunday morning, May 1, I went to mass and offered unusually directed prayers. “I hope this works,” I offered to God. “And I hope it works well.”

  I headed for the office and joined a Principals Committee meeting by secure video link. The president was not present yet, but Donilon wanted a last check of where everyone stood. “Absent some change,” he said, “the president’s decision stands.” He then asked for any new information. “Does anybody want to register anything to make this a no-go?” he asked. There was silence. “The president has made his decision, and it’s a go,” Donilon concluded. It was 1:24 p.m.

  Twenty minutes later, the video link from Afghanistan lit up at Langley, where Mike Morell and I anchored our communications from the conference room across the hall from my office, which had been converted that day into an operations center. I was joined at CIA by Admiral Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command; Roger, the head of our Counterterrorism Center; Tish Long, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; and several senior CIA and NSA officers. We hooked up the Situation Room at the White House. The president now joined the rest of his national security team gathered there.

  The helicopters lifted off precisely at 2 p.m., 10:30 p.m. in Afghanistan (and 11 p.m. in Pakistan), flying low and fast to the east. The total flight was 171 miles. The first twenty minutes or so were in Afghan airspace, but then the two helicopters bearing the assault teams crossed into Pakistan, followed by two backup CH-47 Chinook helicopters that would land in fields outside Abbottabad and proceed to the compound only in an emergency. Two more helicopters stood by at the border, prepared to enter Pakistan if our teams needed to battle their way out.

  It took one hour and forty minutes for the helicopters to reach Abbottabad, so those of us in Washington fell into a nervous silence as they crossed into Pakistan. I fingered my rosary beads, and members of the president’s team in Washington, at Langley, and in Afghanistan spent those fretful minutes reviewing final details. Assuming we found bin Laden, we were prepared to take him prisoner, but we anticipated resistance and were prepared to capture him only if he conspicuously surrendered. This was a military raid, not an arrest. If he was killed, we would bring his body with us to photograph it, measure it, and secure a DNA sample. Within a few hours, we felt we could be 85 to 90 percent sure of his identity; within a day or so, we would know conclusively.

  At 3:30 p.m., or 12:30 a.m. in Abbottabad, our helicopters arrived on target. Within seconds, things began to go wrong. According to the plan, the first helicopter was supposed to hover over the compound while twelve team members rappelled into the courtyard. Instead, it swung over to an adjacent animal pen and set down. The rotors abruptly stopped turning. Then the second helicopter also deviated from the script. Rather than drop six Navy SEALs on the roof, as planned, it skirted over the compound without stopping, circled, and headed for a spot outside the walls.

  The tension in our operations center, already on a knife’s edge, now crested. Two helicopters were bouncing around the compound, and none of our team was yet inside the house. Surely the residents were up and either preparing to defend themselves or fleeing.

  “Bill,” I said, addressing McRaven on the screen, “what the hell’s going on?”

  Unflappable as ever, McRaven briefly disappeared from the screen and then returned. “It appears we have a helicopter down in the animal pen,” he announced. “All of the guys are okay. They are exiting the helicopter and moving to the objective.”

  The wounded helicopter hung in the yard, and the president’s insistence on supplying a backup in case the team needed to fight its way out now seemed brilliantly prescient. “No problem,” McRaven added. “Backup helicopter on the way.”

  Undeterred by the rough landing and change in plans, the SEALs adjusted and moved to blast their way inside from the street. Six members of the team went to the guesthouse, six to the main house, and six to the north entrance of the main house. Pouring inside the compound, they dropped out of our sight, since we were watching from above.

  One of the first people they encountered at the guesthouse was the courier who had led us there. Ibrahim fired on one of the team members, and was killed instantly. His wife shouted that he was dead, and that she and her children were the only ones left in the guesthouse. She was ordered to remain there, surrounded by her children, with the door open. At the main house, other women and children were moving about in confusion; our team members, shouting in Arabic, sent them to a secure room, where they were not allowed to leave but where they were protected from harm.

  The courier’s brother suddenly appeared with something in his hand. He and a woman next to him were shot and killed. She would be the only woman killed that night.

  As the teams moved up the stairs of the main house, they encountered gates at each level and broke them down to move on up the stairs. Between the second and third floors, a bearded young man whom the assaulters recognized as Khalid bin Laden, bin Laden’s son, was shot and killed. As the SEALs moved to the third floor, a tall, bearded man poked his head out of a doorway. A member of our team, recognizing him instantly, shot at him and missed. The man disappeared back into the room, and an AK-47 was visible in the doorjamb. Team members moved toward the door. As they moved inside the room, two young girls and an adult woman rushed the SEALs. Our operator grabbed the girls and shoved them to the side as they screamed in fear. One woman shouted at the man upstairs, calling him “sheikh.” Our team members saw the bearded man and shot him twice, once above the left eye and once in the chest. A woman in the room, whom we later learned was bin Laden’s third wife, was shot in the leg, but not seriously wounded.

  All of this took about fifteen minutes. I and the other members of the security team watched in excruciating anticipation. At 3:51 p.m. our time, just before 1 a.m. in Abbottabad, McRaven relayed word that the team had sent a preliminary call of “Geronimo,” our code word for the successful killing or capture of bin Laden. I was not clear in that moment whether that meant we had taken bin Laden prisoner or killed him. I asked for confirmation. “Geronimo,” he repeated. “EKIA.” Enemy Killed in Action. A few moments later, the SEALs reappeared on the screen, six of them dragging a body bag to the helicopter.

  In our operations center, that was a long-anticipated moment, but no one rejoiced. There was no high-fiving or triumphant whoops. Our men were still deep in Pakistan, surrounded by danger, a long way from home.

  And the situation on the ground was growing more tense and complicated by the minute. The explosions and gunfire from the compound had begun to draw the attention of neighbors, and they came into the street, some venturing toward our forces. One member of our team, assigned to keep an eye on the neighborhood, saw them approaching and worried that we were in for a fight.

  “Brothers,” he yelled in Pashto, “please go back inside. This is government business. Please go back in your homes.”

  Most stopped, but two kept coming. “Stop,” he yelled, more forcefully this time. “Go back. This is government business.”

&n
bsp; That was just enough to hold them off. Our team members scrambled inside the compound to scoop up computers, hard drives, files, anything that might have value. Outside, our Pashto-speaking officer bravely held the crowd at bay. Then it was time to go. The backup helicopter and surviving helicopter swooped into position, and our team rigged the wounded chopper with explosives and blew it up in the compound, creating a fireball that lit up the screen we were watching. There was no further disguising our presence, so our troops hastily boarded to hightail it back for the border and the safety of Afghan airspace. They were accompanied by one body bag, and they took DNA samples as they flew. When the Chinook lifted off with all our forces on board, it was a huge relief.

  At 5:41 p.m. in Washington, we received word that our helicopters and team members were out of Pakistan. They had killed three men and one woman, and injured one other woman, bin Laden’s wife. We lost a helicopter, but not a single member of our team was hurt. Then it was time for joy.

  “From now on,” I told McRaven over the link, “any problem I have, I’m going to assign it to you and your forces.” My colleagues laughed with amazement and relief. At 5:50 p.m., our helicopters touched down in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

  There, the team unloaded the choppers and focused on the question the world would want answered momentarily: Did we have the right guy? Two women in the compound had identified him as bin Laden before we left, but we wanted more than that, especially since they were no longer available to us and we weren’t planning to be back in Abbottabad anytime soon. A team member took photographs of his face, immediately subjecting them to photo authentication. Others tried to measure the corpse, but no one had thought to bring along a tape measure—proof that no matter how much anyone plans, something is always forgotten. Instead, a member of the team who was just over six feet tall lay down beside the body and determined that it was a few inches taller than he.