Early reports on the troubling raid have also repeatedly stated that the Obama administration knew full well about the target, but did not execute the raid for "operational reasons." What that generally means is that the Obama administration surveyed this situation and did not feel that they had the intelligence needed to run the operation. Trump, it appears, threw a middle finger in the air, and ran with the operation in spite of this. One of the three military officials who spoke to Reuters confirmed this very thing. They said, "The decision was made ... to leave it to the incoming administration, partly in the hope that more and better intelligence could be collected."