White House held breath during bin Laden raid

WASHINGTON  After playing nine holes of morning golf, President Obama joined his senior aides in the White House Situation Room at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday to go over final preparations for that day's top-secret raid on a complex 35 miles outside Islamabad that those in the room believed was built to hide Osama bin Laden.

Few beyond that room had any inkling that the government had been planning this raid for months and had worked to find the sprawling complex for years — all based on a tip from a detainee who gave authorities a nom-de-guerre for a man he said could be hiding the world's most notorious terrorist.

At 3:32 p.m., Obama rejoined his aides as a small team of Navy SEALs boarded helicopters in the dark and headed toward the affluent suburb of Abbottabad in their quest to capture or kill the man responsible for 9/11.

Monday, White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan described the scene in the Situation Room as one of the most "anxiety filled" of his life.

He would not describe how the group followed the raid in real time — whether they could watch it unfold on video or whether they had audio from the scene — but he said the room was near silent as events unfolded.

A photo of the scene released by the White House illustrates the stress. Obama, Vice President Biden and a dozen top aides are huddled on one side of the room, staring at something on the other side. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is holding her hand over her mouth.

Although the entire raid, during which bin Laden and those hiding him were killed, passed in 40 minutes, those "minutes passed like days," Brennan said.

The commandos knew how the complex was laid out and even where bin Laden and his family likely could be found on the second and third floors of the largest building on site. According to the National Journal, they had been practicing at a mock complex, a replica of bin Laden's home, built at a secret base in nearby Afghanistan.

"You can imagine that for something as important as this, and something as risky as this, every effort would be made to do the practice runs, understand the complexities and the layout of the compound," Brennan said. "There were multiple opportunities to do that in terms of going through the exercises to prepare for it."

But the SEALs could not know for sure what would happen once they dropped in to the complex. They didn't know whether they could get in and out before the Pakistani government — which had not been informed about the raid before it was launched — would be able to scramble fighter jets and get them to the scene to respond to what to Pakistan was a threat from a mysterious source.

There were "a lot of people holding their breath," Brennan said. It went like clockwork — almost.

Bin Laden and the courier hiding him, along with the courier's brother, put up a fight — as expected.

Brennan said U.S. forces were prepared to take bin Laden alive but knew he would probably not go down easy. It was unclear Monday whether he "got off any rounds," Brennan said, but he reached for a weapon as a firefight broke out, and the SEALs shot him in the head.

After the U.S. forces secured the area, collected bin Laden's body and sent word to the White House that he had been tentatively identified, it became clear that one of their helicopters, which had stalled on its way into the compound, could not be restarted. Reinforcements came in, the broken aircraft was destroyed so it wouldn't fall into hostile hands and the SEALs got out before Pakistani jets got to the scene.

The commandos were able to make off with a cache of information that could help the government root out more al Qaeda leaders, Brennan said, and no Americans were injured in the raid.

In the Situation Room, "there was a tremendous sigh of relief," Brennan said. "Thankfully, no Pakistani aircraft engaged."

Analysts say it was one of the most successful raids they can recall. "This is probably the most historic raid in U.S. history," said Rick Nelson, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

It had its roots in a tip, years ago. According to the Associated Press, it came from al Qaeda's No. 3 leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden's couriers — men who could be hiding the al Qaeda leader. The CIA homed in on one man when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, provided interrogators with more information. Two years ago, the CIA figured out where the man might be living, and in August 2010, it identified the complex.

It was a house eight times bigger than any other in the affluent neighborhood of mostly Pakistani military retirees. Located near a military training academy, it had 12- to 18-foot walls topped with barbed wire, security gates and guards — and no phone or Internet service.

The CIA knew for months that the complex, which was built in 2005 at the end of a dirt road, was being used to hide someone important. It took a while to become certain that someone was bin Laden.

While they worked to nail it down, Obama ran months of secret meetings with top advisers to go over a plan. They discussed many options, including an assault from the air, and there was not unanimity about the plan, that was executed, Brennan said. "The president had to look at all the different scenarios, all the different contingencies that are out there," he said. "What would have been the downsides if, in fact, it wasn't bin Laden? What would have happened if a helicopter went down?"

Brennan agreed that the commandos should go in.

Friday morning at 8:20 a.m., before he boarded a plane for Alabama to view tornado damage, Obama gave the go-ahead for the weekend raid. It was scrapped Saturday because of bad weather. That night, the president attended the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner.

He gave no hint of what was happening behind the scenes.