Story highlights Obama was inclined early on to strike bin Laden but got input from all advisers before final decision

"Meticulous" planning went into the raid, Obama said

Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama entered the Situation Room to watch the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistani compound just in time to see one of the specially equipped Black Hawk helicopters hit the ground.

The President remembered thinking it was "not an ideal start," he told CNN's Peter Bergen in a lengthy and exclusive interview about the May 2011 raid that killed the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama and key members of his inner circle spoke to CNN's Peter Bergen about the raid that killed the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks for the "Anderson Cooper 360°" special on Monday at 8 p.m. ET: "'We Got Him': President Obama, Bin Laden and the Future of the War on Terror." Bergen's exclusive interview marks the first time Obama has sat down with a journalist in the main Situation Room, known as the John F. Kennedy Conference Room.

Five years after the raid, the administration continues to point to it as an example of Obama's willingness to take aggressive action overseas to protect American interests -- often in response to criticism that the President's foreign policy is too hands-off.

"We came in here at the point where the helicopters were about to actually land," Obama told Bergen. "It's here where we observed, for example, that one of the helicopters got damaged in the landing."

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