Former CIA chief revealed details of operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed

On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, theCIA Tells President Barack Obama It Has The Best Lead In Years To Find The Mastermind And Al Qaeda Leader Osama bin Laden.

They had followed a high-level al Qaeda messenger to a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and believed he could lead them to Bin Laden. It turned out that the most wanted terrorist on Earth lived there.

The former director of the CIA, John Brennan, then Obama’s senior counterterrorism adviser, told the AFP on what he called the “most intense, secret and best planned” operation of his career: the high-risk raid by US special forces which, on May 1, 2011, killed Bin Laden.

The CIA warned that it needed to corroborate its intelligence information, but there was excitement during the briefing among senior officials about the possibility of ultimately capturing America’s most wanted fugitive.

“(We aspire) to find the man and give the victims of 9/11 the justice they deserveBrennan said.

Over the next few months, CIA agents became more convinced that a tall, bearded man seen walking inside the compound (they called him the “Pacer”) was Bin Laden, although they do not have a clear view of their face.

At the end of December, Obama was ready to act. In the midst of intense secrecy, White House officials began planning the operation around a table-sized mock-up of the complex, a replica of the terrorist’s hiding place..

Option one: a targeted missile strike could leave them without proof that they killed bin Laden.

Option two: a helicopter assault on a moonless night, but that came with huge risks.

US soldiers could be killed in shootout or caught in clash with Pakistani forces, that they would not be warned of the attack, defending their territory against the incursion.

As preparations progressed into early 2011, CIA expert on bin Laden was 70% sure Pacer was his man, while another team that evaluated the transaction separately placed the probability at just 40 percent.

But there was still no positive identification.

“We certainly didn’t have as much intelligence as we would have likedBrennan said.

Yet, he added, “nothing contradicts the view that it was bin Laden. And that’s what we were looking for, any indication that the Pacer was someone other than Bin Laden. “

Thursday, April 28, 2011, Obama met with senior officials in the White House underground crisis room.

“Obama wanted to hear from everyone,” Brennan recalled. Opponents of the raid included Defense Secretary Robert Gates and then Vice President Joe Biden., but the majority were in favor of what they saw as a difficult decision to make.

The next morning, Obama gave the green light to Special Forces to conduct a raid on Sunday afternoon US time. Meanwhile, Brennan continued to go through the plan step by step.

“You keep thinking over and over again, making sure not only what you’ve done so far, but also what will happen the next day, to make sure that all possible aspects of that have been taken into account.Said Brennan AFP.

Senior security and defense officials met in the crisis room on Sunday to prepare.

When the helicopters left Afghanistan for the 90-minute flight to Abbottabad, Officials made their way to a narrow side room where Brigadier General Brad Webb monitored the action on a laptop, communicating in real time with Special Operations Chief Admiral Bill McRaven.

A famous White House photograph shows Obama, Biden, Brennan and the other officials huddled side by side around Webb, nervously watching the video in silence as the raid unfolded.

One of the two helicopters had had a forced landing and a backup was to fly. There was no video from inside the complex.

After about 20 minutes, “McRaven heard the phrase ‘Geronimo Geronimo’ from his men,” said Brennan. Loaded bin was dead.

The main reaction was relief, he recalls. “There was no applause or celebration. It was a feeling of accomplishment. “

Brennan admits it was a risky operation.

But as the president said, even though the odds were 50-50, it was a much better chance than America had before catching bin Laden“, He said.

“It was absolutely the right risk at the right time.”

With information from AFP

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