All language subtitles for Revealed.The.Hunt.For.Bin.Laden.2021.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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(man on radio)
Anybody know what the smoke is
in Lower Manhattan?

(man 2)
I'm sorry, say again?

Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

‐ It's coming outta the top

of the World Trade Center
building,

a major fire.

‐ If you do us harm,

justice will be done.

‐ The number one priority
was finding bin Laden.

‐ Over ten years, every possible
lead led nowhere.

‐ This was
the best lead they'd had.

‐ How could he have lived
there in that compound

without anybody knowing?

‐ Every one of you have
wished you were the man

going on the mission
to get bin Laden.

Well, you are the men,
and this is the mission.

‐ Obviously it was
a very dangerous operation.

‐ If Pakistani forces got there,
they had to fight their way out.

‐ We probably wouldn't
be making it back

‐ This is what I was born for.

This is it.
We're doing this for 9/11.

♪

(Condoleezza Rice)
In many ways, it was
just a normal day.

It was a Tuesday morning
and I was standing at my desk.

And so when
my young assistant came in

and said that a plane had hit
the World Trade Center,

I thought, my God,
that's a strange accident.

And I talked to President Bush
and he said, keep me informed.

(Letitia Long)
I was the deputy director
of naval intelligence.

In the OP center conducting
our morning meeting,

we, like the rest of the world,
thought it was an accident.

‐ My SEAL team had just finished
work in Kosovo.

We saw the North Tower was hit
and it was smoking.

And the television analysts
were saying that it sounds like

a small plane hit
the North Tower.

We're like, that's a huge hole
with a lot of smoke,

that's not a small plane.

And we were sitting there
discussing it,

a handful of Navy SEALs
and a few intelligence people.

And then we‐‐ we saw
the second plane.

(Charles Allen) And I saw
the South Tower be hit.

And I said, that's al‐Qaeda.
That's Osama bin Laden.

I thought to myself, my God,
how could we have been so wrong?

How could we have
missed so much?

‐ And went back up to my office,

and about ten minutes later,

the plane hit
the Pentagon.

Right where I had been,

right where I left my folks.

And naval intelligence
lost eight people that day,

eight of our finest.

‐ United 93, have you got
information on that yet?

‐ Yeah, he's down.
‐ He's down?

‐ Yes.
‐ Why didn't she land?

‐ She did‐‐ she did not land.

‐ Oh, she's down?

‐ Nobody knew what
was happening.

Nobody could have imagined

four aircraft attacking...

US cities.

(SEAL #2) I remember watching
the Twin Towers go down

in the library of
my high school.

It definitely strengthened my
belief in what I wanted to do

to join the military
and serve my country.

(Robert Gates)
This was of an order
of magnitude the country

hadn't seen anything equivalent
to since Pearl Harbor.

(Leon Panetta) These people
did not hesitate to kill

almost 3,000 people in 9/11.

(Robert Cardillo)
It called into question

who we were.

And how strong we really were.

America does not forget

that we are resilient,

that if you do us harm,
justice will be done.

‐ This nation stands
with the good people

of New York City,

and New Jersey and Connecticut
as we mourn the loss of

thousands of our citizens.

(man)
We can't hear you.

‐ I can hear you.

(laughter, cheering)

I can hear you,

the rest of the world
hears you,

and the people who...
(cheers and applause)

And the people who
knocked these buildings down

will hear all of us soon.

(cheers and applause)

(chanting)
USA! USA! USA!

♪

(Redacted) Bin Laden was
unusual among terrorists in that

his top priority was
major attacks

in and against
the United States.

When 9/11 happened,
there was the horrible feeling

that something else could
be coming right down the pike.

And we knew,
we had intelligence,

we knew the enemy
was indeed trying

to generate additional attacks.

(narrator)
On September 26, 2001,

a small team of CIA officers
arrived in Afghanistan.

They are the first Americans
deployed in what will become

a long war against al‐Qaeda

and the Taliban‐led
Afghan government

which was harboring
Osama bin Laden.

(Redacted) The number one
priority was finding bin Laden,

destroying al‐Qaeda and other
terrorist associates.

My job there was to
try to collect intelligence.

Where were they hiding?

There was battlefield
intelligence.

(narrator) Soon after, a US‐led
military coalition launches

a massive assault to bring down
the ruling Taliban government

which refused to
hand over bin Laden.

As ground forces advance
in Afghanistan,

American intelligence picks up
bin Laden's trail.

(Charles Allen)
We knew he had fled Kandahar,

and then we had reporting
he was in Kabul and Jalalabad.

(narrator)
By December 2001, the hunt moves
to the Tora Bora cave complex

in the White Mountains,
an area where bin Laden

had taken refuge years before
during the Soviet Afghan war.

And then we heard
bin Laden leading a prayer

in Tora Bora with his leaders
when he was there.

♪

‐ The geography in
the White Mountains,

the Tora Bora mountains,
is just‐‐

you have to set foot on it to
understand the enormity of it,

the scale, the depth of it,

and the ability for people
to disappear in that mass.

I mean, there are
literally more caves here

than we are capable
of counting.

‐ The trail went cold.

By February, it had
gotten very chilly,

and by early March,
it was cold.

(narrator)
With no leads left to follow,

intelligence agencies
take up the hunt.

♪

(Charles)
We had about

40 or 50 analysts
devoted full‐time

to working al Qaeda
and the hunt for bin Laden.

They were all sorts of
imagery analysts, CIA officers.

We involved, people from
NSA, people from DIA,

people from NGA.

We had a lot of rumors,

a lot of clandestine reporting
that was not accurate.

‐ There were a number
of bin Laden sightings,

and you were always
really required

to kind of run that to ground.

‐ We called it
a Bigfoot sighting.

You know, a supposed
bin Laden sighting.

(Government Interpreter)
Some people were just
making up stories

and telling us that I saw

bin Laden at
such and such place.

And we had to follow
all the leads,

although we knew
that probably it's nothing.

‐ The source would just say
anything in order to get paid.

‐ George W. Bush didn't want
another memo saying

we really don't know
where he is,

but we have some reporting that
suggests he may be there.

And I can understand the
president in his frustration.

(NGI Analyst)
Various policymakers at
various times in this cycle

would be ruffled about the fact
that there was nothing new.

That's the same thing you
told me last month,

six months ago,
and a year ago.

How can there be nothing new?

And that feedback comes back

to the interagency
analytic team,

well, we can't tell you
what we don't know.

(narrator)
While intelligence analysts
press for new leads,

bin Laden's organization,
al‐Qaeda, orchestrates a series

of brutal attacks
around the world.

For the intelligence community,

the hunt for bin Laden
becomes part of a deeper effort

to understand the inner workings
of al‐Qaeda

and disrupt
their deadly planning.

‐ Our goal wasn't just to
get Osama bin Laden,

it wasn't just to get al‐Qaeda,

it was to do that in such an
intense fashion that we were not

going to take another
9/11 along the way.

‐ So the goal was basically
put al‐Qaeda on the run

so that they can no longer
generate those major operations.

They're focused more
on their survival.

(narrator)
The intelligence community
moves their analysts

to the front lines,
integrating with military units,

leading the fight
against al‐Qaeda.

The National Geospatial
Intelligence Agency,

or NGA, plays a key role.

‐ So what does NGA provide?

They provide the imagery
of the battlefield.

If a compound is going
to be raided,

what's the compound look like?

Are there blind spots
in the compound?

So when the assault team,
or when the troops go in,

what are they going
to be expecting?

‐ You go conduct the operation,

you collect
all the intel you can,

you come back, you turn over

all of that information
to your intelligence team.

They start putting
all that together,

connecting all the dots.

‐ If the analysts didn't have
the information there,

they would reach back
to Langley, FBI headquarters,

NSA or wherever they needed to

to get the information and make
it readily available to us.

‐ We understood
how they operated,

their up tempo, and we fit
right into that.

(SEAL #1) The sooner you
can hit the next target,

you can catch them when
they're not prepared for it

and just keep going that way,
start building your web,

getting to
the higher level enemy.

(Tina) In pulling them out
and detaining them,

you're neutering bin Laden's
organization by taking out

his most seasoned,
competent lieutenants.

‐ We knew that we had to
generate an onslaught

against the enemy,
to take the initiative.

(Adm. McRaven) The forces on
the ground were working

generally 20 hours a day,

sometimes 24 hours a day,
several days in a row.

When you're running
that many missions,

the ground forces are just
very, very good at what they do.

(narrator)
In spite of these efforts,

al‐Qaeda's leader
remains at large.

Seven years, four months,
and nine days after 9/11,

a new president
takes up the hunt.

‐ I, Barack Hussein Obama,
do solemnly swear...

I had committed to
reinvigorating

what appeared to have
been a stalled approach

to getting bin Laden.

I assigned Leon Panetta,
our CIA director,

to mobilize all the assets
that had already worked on it

and take a fresh look at it.

‐ The president made clear to me

the importance of going
after bin Laden

and I not only
agreed with him,

but I said that effort
was in many ways responsible

for my desire to become
head of the CIA.

‐ Finding bin Laden
was always a priority

for both President Bush
and President Obama.

They never let us forget that
it was a high priority.

But in truth,
not much was going on.

You know, CIA was
trying to find him,

but we weren't having much luck.

When President Obama
came in,

he obviously wanted
a more intensified search.

Frankly, I thought it was
a little bit like

asking Michelangelo
to paint faster.

(Tina) I'd been working
al‐Qaeda for several years,

working on threats
mostly to the homeland

and US interests overseas,
trying to disrupt plots.

Working threats every day
that there wasn't an attack

was success, right?

You knew you had
done your job.

I started working on
bin Laden specifically,

right around 2007.

When you're moving into
a manhunt scenario,

every day that nothing happens
is a failure.

(narrator)
Driven by the potential costs of
the failure to find bin Laden,

intelligence officers accept
greater personal risk

in the intensifying hunt.

‐ You have to have
the human intelligence.

If you don't, your war is going
to be longer, much more costly,

the outcome much less certain,
which means at some point

you are gonna have to put your
people in the company

of members of
a terrorist organization.

(narrator)
Towards the end of 2009,

the intelligence community
mobilizes around

a possible lead to bin Laden.

‐ The Jordanians had suggested
that they had their hands on

a possible spy who had
some medical training,

and that they thought there was
a good chance you might be able

to go into Afghanistan,
but also Pakistan,

and see if he could
locate Zawahiri,

who was bin Laden's second
in command.

‐ We sent about a dozen of our
best officers out to a base

in eastern Afghanistan
so that we could vet him.

(narrator)
On December 30th, 2009,

the CIA sets up a meeting
with the possible spy,

Dr. Humam al Balawi,

at Forward Operating
Base Chapman,

named for Sergeant
Nathan Chapman,

the first American soldier
to die in Afghanistan.

‐ Chapman sits in
kind of a bowl.

Some people call it
the coast bowl,

where you have mostly
mountains around you,

and in the middle
there's the city.

This is literally the end
of the line.

‐ Director Panetta had
briefed the president,

had briefed
the National Security Council

about this important,
tantalizing lead.

And we all waited for that
meeting to occur.

(narrator)
At a remote base on
the front lines in Afghanistan,

American intelligence officers
wait to meet a man

they believe might lead them to
the highest levels of al‐Qaeda.

‐ The day of,
we're all grouped together,

waiting for the arrival.

Everybody's excited to do
the job that they needed to do

and to get the information
they needed to get.

(Panetta) The car pulled up,
and this individual,

instead of getting out
on the side where people

were all standing,
got out on the other side.

That spooked
the security officers

who immediately went up to him,

and they noticed that he
had a hand inside of his cloak.

‐ With any sensitive
operation like this,

there's already risk involved.

And that's the nature
of that business.

Unfortunately, to learn
about bad people,

you have to meet with
bad people.

‐ And they told him,
get your hands up,

get your hands out of your robe,
and he refused to do that.

But by the time they had
a chance to do anything,

he had pulled the pin
on a suicide vest

that was extremely powerful.

♪

‐ It sent metal shrapnel.

And not to mention the rocks
that were under his feet

became shrapnel,
it just sent it all out.

And I ended up with eight‐‐

eight shrapnel wounds
in my legs,

but one in the forehead.

And the last thing I remember

is being loaded onto
the helicopter.

And then I woke up maybe a week
later in Bethesda, Maryland.

‐ That vest killed seven
of our CIA officers

and security individuals,

it wounded at least another
four or five others.

(Redacted)
The bombing at FOB Chapman

was one of the most
terrible days

we've had a long time.

Personal friends of mine,
people that I loved died there.

(Letitia Long) I believe that
had a real impact for all

of the intelligence community,

While all of us certainly
knew theoretically

that this could occur
as folks are deployed forward,

until it actually happens,
it's not real.

And, that said, we still
had volunteers lining up

to deploy forward.

(Redacted)
I've heard people say there's
no piece of intelligence

that's worth the life
of one of our officers.

I disagree.

I think there are times
when you, a single person,

can get intelligence that
might save another person

another two people,
a car full of people,

an embassy full of people,

an airplane full of people,

a city full of people.

‐ It was tragic what happened,

and the lives that were lost,

but that incident created
an even greater impetus

within the CIA,

particularly those involved with
the hunt for bin Laden.

‐ Something that I noticed in
CIA is when we suffer a loss,

you know, in the line of duty,
there is always, every time,

an increase in resolve on
the part of everyone

to do their job better.

And I think people realize

that you can grieve
while you work.

You can grieve while
you work harder.

(military drumming)

(Barack Obama)
Nine years have now passed.

In that time, we have shed

more tears than
we will ever know.

And though it must seem
some days as though the world

has moved on to other things,
I say to you today,

that your loved ones endure in
the heart of our nation

now and forever.

‐ The question that people were
constantly asking us was,

where's bin Laden?

So we were constantly looking
for locations.

As time goes on,
you start to realize, well,

there's an infinite number
of possibilities on

where bin Laden could be.

We have to be smarter about
how we approach it.

We flipped the question
and the strategy from, you know,

where's bin Laden to who is
harboring bin Laden,

because that's a more limited
number of possibilities.

You don't have
millions of people

who could be harboring
bin Laden,

you've really got,
you know, two dozen at best.

‐ We had already
sort of understood that

he would be likely to be
with his family.

And so, you know,
that sensationalized story

that he's with 100 fighters
in a cave in Afghanistan

really doesn't start
to look very likely.

‐ We had a strategy where
we had individuals on a list,

and these are the people
that we need to go after

in order to find bin Laden.

Abu Ahmed was in many ways
qualitatively different

than some of the other leads
we would get.

It just made a lot of sense.

He was a Pashtun,

he was a Pakistani
who grew up in Kuwait.

So he spoke native Pashto
and he spoke native Arabic.

He also, as we would learn very
quickly into the hunt,

he worked for
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

who was the gatekeeper
for bin Laden.

He can operate in
Pakistan as a Pakistani,

but he has kind of
an Arab mindset, right?

That's somebody that, you know,

would be a great harborer
for bin Laden.

(narrator)
Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed,
known as Abu Ahmed al‐Kuwaiti,

had a history of working for
senior al‐Qaeda leaders.

In August 2010,
American intelligence locks on

to the cell phones of al‐Kuwaiti
and his brother

in the Pakistani city
of Peshawar.

Their movements indicate they
may be acting as couriers.

‐ The couriers were taking
their cell phones

well away from the compound
then activating them,

then making the calls home,
then turning them off

and then going back
to the compound.

‐ The couriers were
talking discreet.

It was not open talking,
like normal talking.

‐ One phone call was from
a friend who basically said,

"what are you doing"
to the courier.

And the courier
kept ignoring it,

trying to dodge the question.

And he said, "No, no,
tell me what you're doing.

"I haven't seen you
in a long time.

What are you doing?"

And there was
a pause, and he said,

"I'm doing the same thing
I did before."

And there was suddenly silence,

and the person on the other end
of the line said,

"Go with God."

Surveillance tracked
these couriers

who had a little white SUV,

and they tracked this
little white SUV

from Peshawar to
a place called Abbottabad,

which is near the capital.

‐ There was an understanding

that this was
far more real

than anything else that we had
been presented with in the years

since I had been working it.

‐ I remember the meeting
in August of 2010.

An officer who we call Gary

opened the binder
and he said,

"Director, we have
something new to report."

And he said, we have been
tracking two brothers

who historically were couriers
for bin Laden,

and we have followed them.

We have located them,
and we have followed them

up to a town called Abbottabad,

which is north of Islamabad,

down the end of
a dead end street.

And at the end of
that dead end street,

there's a large home there that
looks like a fortress.

And I'll never forget,
Director Panetta looked up

from his briefing materials
and he said, "A fortress?

Tell me about that fortress."

‐ It had 18 foot walls
on one side,

12 foot walls
on the other side,

barbed wire at the top
of these walls.

And on the third floor
of this compound,

there was an eight foot wall.

‐ If you're on the third floor,
you'd kind of like a view.

There was a privacy wall
that was constructed

that limited the view,

or was it to limit the view
into the compound?

(Panetta)
And my eyes lit up
because I said,

well, this is probably
the best piece of evidence

we've ever had since Tora Bora.

‐ The land and the compound was
registered to two brothers.

And though the value
of the compound

was $1 million, they had no
visible source of income.

No one really left
the compound.

The children didn't leave
the compound for schooling.

Everything was done on site.

‐ We looked for a cell phone,
we looked for Wi‐Fi.

We looked for other emanations,
there were none.

We looked at whether there was
a local telephone we could find.

We looked at, also,
to the degree that we could,

all local records.

‐ The residents here
burned their trash.

No one else burned
their trash.

They put it at the side of
the road like we do here

in the United States.

‐ There was a vehicle garage

and it was double‐gate secured,

which essentially means that
you would be able to

pull a vehicle in from
the street without exposing

the interior view
of the compound

to anyone who might just
be happening to peer in.

(Panetta)
There was an individual

who would come out sometimes,
you know, every other day

and go into a yard,
and walk in circles

very quickly like a prisoner
in a prison yard.

Walk in circles, probably
about 10, 12, 20 times,

and then immediately go back in.

And I remember
telling our people

that could be bin Laden.

It was an older gentleman.

I said, let's get
some cameras on the walls.

Let's get some telescopes
on the mountains.

I mean, you've got to give me

an ID of this person
who's doing that.

(Kelton)
We thought about
putting cameras up

in the trees that
surrounded the compound,

but then they cut down
the trees.

Obviously, they, too,
were worried about security.

(Letitia Long) We knew it was
a high value individual.

We knew it was someone
of deference.

There was a level of frustration

that we could never see
Osama bin Laden.

We‐‐ we just couldn't.

In September 2010,
CIA director Leon Panetta

goes to the White House
to inform President Barack Obama

about a suspicious compound
in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

(Cardillo)
It was around 5:00 pm,
and Leon Panetta

taps me on the shoulder
and says we need

to go upstairs
to brief the old man.

Now, as I walked into the Oval
that evening,

I had no idea what topic
we were updating the old man on.

One of the analysts rolled out

a very large
format photograph.

A satellite image

of a facility
I had never seen before.

I recall the president asking
a few questions, you know,

clarifying ones, you know,
how do we know this,

how do we not know that,
et cetera?

I don't feel the meeting went
longer than 15 minutes or so.

It was pretty short.

And I remember the president
thanking the team.

He said, okay, come back
when you have more.

(narrator)
Over years of hunting,

intelligence analysts
produced a checklist

for the kinds of conditions

they thought bin Laden
would want in a hideout.

The more they learn about
the Abbottabad compound,

the more confident they become

that this is
a critical location.

‐ You would find, no matter who
you talked to on this team,

that we were very certain
that we were on a place

that required our attention.

None of us believed at
any point in time that we were

overestimating the potential
importance of this location.

‐ We would press them
and we would say, okay,

what's your honest evaluation

of the odds that bin Laden
is in that compound?

And among
the different analysts,

it ranged from 40% to 80%.

‐ It didn't matter to me
too much

what the seniors thought,

what I was
more interested in

and what influenced me much more

is what the confidence level

of the working level analysts

that had been working
this problem

and what their
confidence level was,

which was pretty high.

And so I put
a lot of faith in that.

(narrator)
Military planners develop
options for the president.

Bombing risks extensive
civilian deaths

in adjoining homes.

Even if bin Laden is in
the compound when it's hit,

how will the US know?

The only way to be sure
is to send troops to find him.

‐ I initially
favored the raid

if it could be pulled off,

because I thought we would never
know if bin Laden were there

if we had used a bomb.

(Clapper)
I was in favor of a raid

simply because I thought
it'd be better to have

thinking people on the ground
who could observe

and make judgments about
what to do.

And then there was
still ambiguity

as to whether
he was there or not.

‐ I mean, I wanted bin Laden
as bad as anybody,

but my primary responsibility,

as I saw it,
was the war in Afghanistan.

And my worry was that if
we flew into Abbottabad,

blew a bunch of stuff up
and got back out,

the violation of
Pakistani sovereignty

and the embarrassment to their
military would be so severe

that they would cut our supply
line from Karachi to Afghanistan

and we would lose the war
overnight.

(Obama) Obviously it was
a very dangerous operation.

There was the diplomatic risks

of going into
a foreign country

without their permission.

And we considered
the possibility

of tipping off the Pakistani
government ahead of time.

But there were also factions
within the Pakistani government

that were not as trustworthy,

and we thought it was too risky
to give them a heads up.

‐ I had gotten to know
Admiral McRaven,

and was not surprised that
he made a very compelling case

that he could mount
a successful raid.

‐ I wrote my thesis at
the Naval Postgraduate School

on special operations.

And what you saw on
the successful mission

was simplicity was key.

So as I looked at this,
it became pretty simple.

I just decided we will
fly directly to the target,

you know, take down the target,
get bin Laden and fly back.

Now, that‐‐ when we went
to do the detailed planning,

I knew it would not
be that easy.

I had an opportunity
to brief the president

before bringing in the planners.

And at one point in time,
the president asked me,

so can you do this mission?

And I was very candid with him.

I said, Mr. President,
I don't know.

‐ We had to worry about
the possibilities

of interception by
Pakistani Air Forces.

Landing, we had to take into
account the possibility

that they would cause
a commotion when a bunch

of helicopters land in
a community like that.

This is a residential community

just a few miles from
a military college.

This is a town in which you have

a whole lot of Pakistani
military there.

And so,

could we get
in and out safely?

‐ I said I haven't had
a chance to bring in

the aviation planners
and the SEALs.

I need to do that first before
I can come back and tell you

with 100% certainty
that we can do this.

And he said,
how much time do you need?

Recognizing that we were
up against the clock,

I told him I needed three weeks.

‐ We were under
a time pressure

just not knowing what
bin Laden would do.

If he were there,
how long would he be there?

‐ Another factor we considered
is, you know,

we delay this,
it's bound to leak.

‐ There was a lot of concern
that if some action

wasn't taken quickly,
we'd be back to square one.

(narrator)
In January 2011,

Admiral McRaven begins
organizing the raid.

To heightened secrecy,

the mission, known
as Operation Neptune Spear,

will be carried out under
CIA authority.

‐ The inclusion, if you will,
of the special operations forces

to the agency really
wasn't anything unusual.

We have for decades,
when the time was required,

essentially been secunded to
the agency for various missions.

I had one other person that was
part of my planning element

for the first several months
because the list of people that

the president agreed could be
part of this with very small.

‐ Admiral McRaven told me
to go over to the agency

and go get a brief.

So that next day, I drove over
to CIA headquarters.

They pointed me back
to a side closet,

and there were
some desks in there,

and there were three guys
sitting in there.

And I walked in,
I knew two of them,

and they handed me a binder.

They said, go ahead
and read through that

and then we can talk.

And upon flipping
the binder open,

the first picture that
I saw was UBL.

And that's the first time

that I knew that that's
what this was about.

(Redacted) As soon as
I read through everything,

it just all made sense.

And I bought it, you know,
hiding in plain sight.

The measures that were taken by
those that were at the facility

were extraordinary,
would not have been happening

were there not something
very interesting there.

So once we got the direction
from the president that,

yes, I want to see more on

what a unilateral military raid
would look like‐‐

you know, again, I had been
driving this solo, but obviously

we were going to have to call
more folks in to do that.

‐ I knew the senior leadership
of the raid force.

These were folks that I had
worked with off and on,

and I think very positively,
since 9/11.

And I knew that they
were finest of the finest.

‐ The ground force commander
was an experienced operator,

and he had been in command

of his squadron for a while,
and had done a couple

of operational deployments
with them.

‐ I had exceptional confidence
in this particular officer.

He had worked for me
for many years,

had a tremendous amount
of combat experience,

very heroic in combat,

very level‐headed,
would not rush to failure.

‐ The aviation lead
is very quiet,

but he had a tremendous amount
of flying experience

and had been involved
in a number of operations

and had flown me
a number of places

and flown all of us
a number of places.

You needed somebody who not only
knew how to fly the bird,

but understood everything else
about terrain masking

and enemy radars.

‐ I was brought into this
small room of less than

a dozen individuals and
was given a piece of imagery

in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

And I'm looking at
a ground force commander

who I have risked my life for,
for him and his teams.

And when they told me that
we're going after bin Laden,

my only reaction is
like, let's go.

And I looked at the map,
and I looked at the distance

on the map, I looked
at the capability,

and my first reaction
is absolutely, we can do this.

But there's going to be risk and
we need to reduce that risk.

‐ It looked like an awful lot
of other raids we have done

except the the distance
was a long way.

So the helicopter piece
was very complicated.

‐ You're still trying to fly
at 130, 150 miles an hour,

you know, 100 or 200 feet
off the ground,

looking for wires,
looking for birds,

looking for antennas and towers.

Looking for the terrain,
you're still flying the aircraft

while you're managing
the electronic spectrum

that's trying to
search and find you.

(Lead Planner)
Anything we asked for, we got.

If we needed an analysis
of all of the radars

in the entire region,
then we got that.

We got the best analysts for
whatever radars were required.

‐ Am I gonna be heard,

am I going to be seen
visually, electronically?

How noisy am I
in that country?

(narrator)
But radar's not
the only concern.

If the American helicopters
are discovered,

can the Pakistani Air Force
track and shoot them down?

‐ For example, the training

of those that
are flying F‐16s

or other helicopters
in a specific country,

you would want to know
how proficient are they.

Even though they have
the equipment

on board that airframe,
do they know how to use it?

Do they know how to
operate it in day

and equally as proficient
at night?

(Lead Planner)
Given the geography

of the part of the country where
the mission was going to be,

we had learned over
the years operating that

the MH‐47 Chinooks were the best
platform for the elevation

and for the types of weather

that we would need
to fly through.

Their ability to carry
a larger number of people

was also important.

So from the beginning,
we saw it as a 47 mission,

as a mission for the Chinooks.

(Aviation Planner)
The Chinook is very loud.

It's very big, it's visible
across all spectrums.

‐ As the briefs went through
the chain of command,

there was a sensitivity
expressed on exposure to radars

and discovery of the helicopters
as the force was infiltrating.

And that shifted
the conversation to using

the Black Hawks that had some
of the capabilities

to defeat radar.

And that assuaged the concerns
at the national level.

‐ Black Hawks can get in and out

of certain areas quicker
than a Chinook can.

(narrator)
Though the Black Hawks are
more maneuverable

and better shielded
from radar detection,

they cannot carry enough
fuel for the round trip,

and will need to be refueled
inside Pakistan.

‐ The contingent part of
the planning was that

we would need
refueling helicopters.

We would need the 47s to fly in
and park on the way back out

so that the Black Hawks
could refuel.

And they would set up
a ground refueling site,

Black Hawks would land,
take fuel on,

and then everybody
would fly out.

‐ I'd been in the White House
almost exactly 30 years earlier

for the Iranian hostage
rescue mission,

which failed due to problems
with helicopters.

So in those discussions about
the raid on Abbottabad, I said,

I think you need to add
another helicopter or two

to your plan just in case
something goes south.

(narrator)
Ultimately, two Black Hawks

carrying the primary assault
force will lead the way,

followed by two larger Chinooks

with a fuel supply and
a contingency force of SEALs.

‐ It was in the end
the president that added

the extra helicopters
to the force

to be able to give them
the possibility of fighting out.

I mean, part of our worst
nightmare would have been

one, we don't get him,

and two, we have
US military personnel

who are captured
inside Pakistan.

(narrator)
For all the detailed
planning involved

in sending Navy SEALs after
Osama bin Laden,

nothing can change
the greatest risk of

Operation Neptune Spear.

American forces will be
deep inside Pakistan

without permission.

To improve the odds of success,
the SEALs focus on the ways

the mission could fail and how
to prevent a disastrous outcome.

(Adm. McRaven) Normally on
a compound this size,

we probably would have
had a SEAL force of,

you know, 25 guys,
just the assault element,

and then probably another
30 or more Rangers

that would be kind of
the outer security element.

Well, I had to make do
with just the 24 SEALs

and our one interpreter
and the dog.

That was the maximum I could fit
on the helicopters based on

the altitude of Abbottabad,
and the heat at the time.

(Aviation Planner)
The hotter it gets,

the higher
the density altitude is

and the less people we can bring
to an objective.

That's really what it
boils down to.

So May really was
the last comfort zone.

Beyond that, we were gonna
start incurring more risk,

'cause June, it gets very hot,
it's in the hundreds for a high.

‐ Everybody who was on that
mission was handpicked.

Everyone on that mission
had combat experience,

a lot of combat experience.

‐ It was the three of us, me,
the squadron commander,

and the squadron master chief
sitting and going through.

And the primary criteria we used

was could the operator

snap right in and
just do the op?

And that doesn't necessarily
have to do with your seniority,

your experience level,
what we wanted was temperament.

‐ There's multiple teams at home

and different levels
of readiness

on standby and preparation.

We were kind of the most
off the grid squadron

because we had just got home,
it shouldn't have been our time

to rotate back over
for many more months.

‐ We'd finished a few weeks
of leave with our families,

and then we started
training again.

So guys split up in
the typical training cycle.

‐ I got recalled when I was at
Free‐Fall Jumpmaster School.

‐ I think we were in lock
picking school or something.

All of a sudden things
started spinning up,

they said, hey, we need
these people back.

‐ You know, there's
obviously luck involved,

but they picked
the most experienced guys

of the available guys in
the search spot they wanted.

‐ Nobody knew where these guys
were, they just assumed

they were on leave
with their family,

or Disneyland or someplace.

So that gave me three weeks of
kind of cover for action.

We actually brought
these 25 guys in

to this undisclosed location

and briefed them.

‐ We're traditionally set up
in different troops,

and they pulled the 24 most
senior guys from the squadron.

So it's a little different,
but, okay.

‐ I wasn't a very senior guy.

The reason I got chosen for
the mission was because

I was a dog handler
and I had Cairo.

The dog would be
very valuable in smelling

any sort of explosive,
finding any escape tunnels,

safe rooms, crowd control.

‐ We were just talking about
why are we back?

What kind of stupid
training exercise

did they just come up
with us to do?

And they brought us in a room

and they told us it wasn't
a training exercise,

this is definitely real, but we
just have to go get something

and bring it back to them
so they can see it.

‐ It was pretty vague

to say that they needed us
for something.

A couple rumors were
flying around.

‐ Then we just started assuming

what it could be around
the world,

but no one thought
bin Laden off the bat.

They drove us down to
a base south of Virginia,

and the boss came in and just
said, all right, guys,

the reason that you're here
is because this is as close as

we've ever been
to Osama bin Laden.

‐ And immediately,
game faces were on

and they began to to plan
and rehearse the mission.

We only had three weeks
to do that.

♪

(Long)
As part of any operation,

NGA develops
three dimensional models

that you can fly through to,
you know, make you think

like you are actually there,

and we also developed
a scale model.

And then that scale model
was used to develop

a full scale model.

‐ Whether it's SEALS,
whether Delta Force,

we all do this kinda
the same way,

everyone gets a say.

Everyone looked at
that target.

Everyone had access
to the information.

‐ We spent all morning
standing around the model,

and everybody chalk talking,

hey, how we would tactically
take this down?

‐ If you were going to fast rope
here, here, here, here.

‐ The plan was straightforward.

Two helicopters flying
to the target.

One helicopter would hover

over the roof of
the three‐story building,

and a small force would
fast rope down onto the roof,

get right down to the balcony,

and come right in on
the third floor

where everybody assessed
that's where he lived.

The second helicopter would be
hovering over the courtyard

and fast rope the majority of
the force down onto the ground,

where they would set up
sniper positions on the walls

and clear the second building
in the compound

and then clear the main building
from the ground up.

(narrator)
Training for the mission moves

to a facility in
North Carolina

where the ground force runs
through their raid assignments.

By mid‐April, the training
shifts to the mountains of

the western United States,
where the weather and terrain

are closer to flight conditions
in Pakistan.

(Adm. McRaven)
One of the things that

I wanted to do was to duplicate

as best we could the entire
profile of the mission.

And there were a number of
folks that said, sir,

we know to fly a helicopter,
we know how to fly a helicopter

for 169 miles,

we just kind of fly
and come into the mockup.

I said, no, no, we are going
to fly for 169 miles,

we are gonna go through the
exact profile as best we can.

‐ We are being observed
by senior members of

the US government military

because they want
to make sure that we,

as one of their options,
are capable.

But they knew who we were,
and I think that a lot of them

just wanted to make sure
that helicopters could fly

the way they wanted them to.

‐ The number one contingency
that was the most probable

was an aircraft crashing
in country.

(narrator)
The Western rehearsals focus on

how the Black Hawks
will perform.

Though they have been
developed for situations

just like this one,

they have never before been
flown on an actual mission.

(Commander Master Chief)
Very early on when

we got out and saw them fly,

they were unstable, particularly
when they came in to hover.

And I said, hey, you know,
with all due respect,

I don't think we should use
these helicopters.

The time to try something new is
not on the most important raid

arguably since World War Two.

(Lead Planner)
Another one of the factors

we had to take into account was

that the air crews flying

the Black Hawks had been
in a separate program

and didn't have a lot of time
flying overseas.

‐ The hot crews
were less seasoned,

just the true knowledge
of that environment

that those Hawker's
just did not have.

And those particular crews had
been taken out of the fight

for a while and really had been
part of just research.

‐ The closer that we got to
the day we're going to launch,

they did decide to forward
deploy us to Afghanistan

and that's when it sunk in,
like, they're serious about this

and we're probably
going to do it.

(Seal #4)
They gave us a weekend off,

and I'm in my neighborhood.

There's like, kids running
around collecting Easter eggs.

I'm talking to my neighbor,
he knows I'm a SEAL

but clearly has no idea
what's going on.

And as the kids
are running around,

he's sitting there kind of
complaining to me

about how stressed
he is at work.

"I got this going on next week,
and this going on next week.

I'm so stressed,"
and I remember kind of chuckling

in the back of my mind thinking

you have no idea what
I got going on next week.

And a day later, we got
the green light and we left.

(narrator)
With the SEALs now deployed

in Afghanistan waiting
for a green light,

President Obama faces
a momentous decision.

Will he send them into
Pakistan without knowing

whether Osama bin Laden
is really there?

On Thursday, April 28, 2011,
the president meets with

his National Security Council.

‐ We had pretty much
gone through

all the options,
all the data.

We had gone...

at our basic premises
and examined them

and turned them over and did
our best to break them down.

(Panetta) The president
then basically opened it up

and said, what do you think?

What do you think?

I remember a lot of differences.

I'd have to say just...

thinking about this, I think
a majority of the people there

were concerned that
it was too risky.

‐ There is no assurance
that if we wait,

we will get more positive
information that he's there.

And the longer it goes on,
the more likely it is to leak.

And so that kind of brought it
to a head in terms of

we're not gonna get
any better information.

So this is what we have,

make your decision
based on that.

‐ We thought it would be
important to so‐called

"red team" the issue,

which meant having a group
go in and ask nothing

but the questions about what
are other possibilities.

And they did that,
the red team did that.

They basically said, look,
you know, we've looked

at the possibility, you know,
that it's not bin Laden,

but somebody else.

But the question then becomes,

why are bin Laden's
couriers there?

‐ I think that
all of us would say that

it was maybe a 55‐45 call.

Effectively,
there was no way for us

to absolutely confirm that
it was bin Laden,

at least not within
a meaningful timeframe.

So it was a judgment call.

It's only after examining
every single option militarily

that finally I'm presented
with the decision.

And so I left the Situation Room
saying, thank you very much.

I'll be making a decision
over the next 24 hours.

‐ I worked for President Obama
for four years.

And let me just tell you,

I would never play poker
with that guy.

Impossible to read.

‐ I said to myself that if
I have an opportunity

to get bin Laden
and we pass it up,

then that is a huge blow
to the cause of justice,

to the families of 9/11 victims
that I had met,

and it was worth the risk.

‐ And the word came back in
the morning through Tom Donnelly

that it was a go
for Saturday night,

Sunday morning, Pakistan time.

But it was pretty clear,
I think, by noon

that Admiral McRaven
was not comfortable

with the environmental
conditions that night.

And so he decided
to delay 24 hours.

‐ It was a little bit foggy,
and I was a little concerned

about the helicopters going
through there.

Not tremendously concerned,
but I wanted it to be,

you know, the best conditions
I could get,

we knew Sunday
would be better.

‐ We're literally sitting
in a brief.

Our master chief walks in the
back door of the briefing room,

says, hey, guys, green light,
we're going tomorrow.

‐ So once that happens,
you know, it is what it is.

And, you know,
you're just making sure

all your gear's ready,
making sure your guns are ready.

Just everything, you know,

your shoelaces don't have a tear
in it or anything like that.

You got 24 hours to kind of
prepare for what, I mean,

in essence, is probably
the rest of your life.

And that's kind of how I felt.

‐ Oh yeah, it was very clear

that we probably would
be making it back.

It was‐‐ every guy that was
chosen for the mission,

made sure their million dollar
life insurance policy

was fulfilled.

I told my parents,
or at least I told my father,

I probably would be
making it back.

‐ It was the first time I wrote
a letter to, you know,

my kid and my wife.

I hadn't done that before.

‐ We had a day, actually,
to look over the plan, you know,

one final time,
spent some time talking

to the ground force commander
and the weather guys,

and we kind of went through
our normal day on Saturday.

On Sunday, I actually had
a congressional delegation in.

I didn't want to change any of
my routine because most of

the people from my command,
we were in Bagram,

had no idea we were doing this.

Went through
the congressional delegation,

and then very quickly
after that,

moved down to our small command
center there in Jalalabad.

‐ And the force is ready,

now you're waiting for
the green light.

(narrator)
On May 1st, 2011,

Operation Neptune Spear sets off
on a moonless night

for a residential compound
in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Two Black Hawk helicopters,
specially adapted to

avoid radar detection,
carry 24 SEALS,

an interpreter,
and a combat dog.

The helicopters
are so tight on weight

that their standard
weapons systems

are taken off and left behind.

‐ We're all mingling, you know,
saying hi to your friends

in the other helicopter,
just saying, hey,

we'll see you in 90 minutes.

‐ We had all of
our stuff stripped.

No jewelry, nothing,
no name tags.

‐ There was a sense that
this was historic.

What they were about to do was,
to the best of their ability,

bring distinction on themselves,
their unit and their country.

and they certainly felt that.

‐ I was doing
a video teleconference

back with Director Panetta
and then the Situation Room.

At the appropriate
point in time,

I turned to the SEAL commander,
commanding officer,

and I told him,
launch the assault force.

(helicopters powering up)

♪

(narrator) The Black Hawks
have 169 miles to cover

in a flight of about 90 minutes.

(Aviation Planner)
The routing was not direct

by design,
the routing for

the Black Hawks was to take
the least risked route,

and that's by terrain,
population,

wires, cultural,
whatever it may be.

It was for them to loop around
to reduce the amount of risk

to gain the element of surprise
on the objective.

‐ The risk on
the helicopter ride, I mean,

that's the one thing that
we couldn't control.

I think that was
definitely the one thing

I was more worried about.

‐ And we just kinda reflect on
everything's gonna happen.

And eventually at some point,
it does sink in, though.

It's like, holy crap,
we're here, this is us,

and we're doing this for‐‐

we're doing this
for Lower Manhattan.

We're doing this for 9/11.

We're doing this for the people
who fought on Flight 93,

the first people to
actually fight al‐Qaeda

in the War on Terror.

Doing this for the people
in the Pentagon.

Stuff like that's
kind of sinking in.

And it's‐‐ the fear
is not there,

it's more of a,
"This is it,

this is what I was born for."

(narrator)
Two Chinook helicopters

carrying fuel for
the Black Hawks

and a backup force of SEALs
leave 45 minutes later.

Capable of flying faster speeds
and a more direct route,

the Chinooks will be
in position nearby

as the Black Hawks
approach Abbottabad.

‐ All of our checkpoints
are on time,

we're just completely silent
flying through the night.

No illumination,
completely dark at 100 feet.

Flying the route to a T.

‐ So in Afghanistan because
of the lack of electricity,

it's a very dark country.

Pakistan is very well lit.

People are out and about.

The deeper you get
into Pakistan,

it's more structured,
much more advanced.

And that's power lines,

antennas, the lights,
the densely populated areas.

(narrator)
The Blackhawks approached

the compound from the east,
using the starker terrain

to muffle the sound
of their arrival.

In planning, they had figured
that they would be identifiable

for no more than the last
two minutes of the flight.

(SEAL #5)
The ten minute call is really

when everything starts kind of
getting alive in the cabin.

You're double checking
your optics,

you're double checking
your night vision,

making sure your helmet
gets tightened up.

‐ Two minutes,
you open the doors.

One minute, you swing
your feet out

and let them hang in the breeze.

Um, you're getting your rope
ready to go, right?

You're 30 seconds out,
now you're in, you know?

At 30 seconds out,
I can look out the door,

I can look up, I can see
the compound coming.

(narrator)
Above the compound,

a drone feeds video back to
the command center in Jalalabad,

the US embassy in Pakistan,

CIA headquarters,
and the White House.

(Obama) We were able
to monitor it in real time.

The iconic picture that
Pete Souza's taken

records, essentially,
what the atmosphere was like.

We're stuffed into
a pretty small room.

‐ We're watching
the helicopters come in,

and there is a point at which

I see one of these helicopters
begin to shake.

And clearly, there's been
a loss of control.

(SEAL #4)
Immediately you can tell

something was was off,
something was wrong.

We were not hovering like
we did in training.

In my mind, it felt
like about an hour,

in reality was probably
about five seconds.

I'm sitting in the door
waiting to push the rope out,

grab the rope, slide down
and go to work.

Couldn't get stable,
couldn't get stable.

(SEAL #5) Right then we kind
of sunk just a little bit,

is what I felt,
and then we kind of

turned the tail,
kicked out to the left.

Once that happened, then we just
started sideswiping left

and losing altitude.

(SEAL #4)
Helicopters don't crash

like planes, come skidding in.

They're usually pretty ugly,
and we're crashing to the side

at about 40 feet,
and I'm in this door.

Now we're crashing,
and everybody's wanting

back in and away from
the open door.

Instinctually,
that's when I started grabbing

the guys in front of me to make
sure that they didn't fall out.

‐ Here you are in probably
the highest profile mission

in special operations history,
maybe the military.

We might lose a whole helo full
of tier one operators.

We're a sovereign nation.

The military academy's
right across the way.

We're kind of screwed here
if this is what we think it is.

(narrator)
Just before 1:00 am,

as the first of the two
American Black Hawks moves

into position above
the compound,

it starts losing lift.

‐ During training, the mock
compound had been surrounded by

a chain link fence,

but the actual compound is set
inside tall, solid walls.

‐ Chain link allows
the wind to push through.

And so it gave a false sensation

of what the lift capability
was for those air crews.

(narrator)
But another factor may also

have figured in
the Black Hawk's problem.

Temperatures are
substantially higher

than they had anticipated.

(Aviation Planner)
Every degree centigrade

does reduce
a significant amount

of lift just based on
their density.

And the Hawk crews were
believing it was going to be

eight to ten degrees cooler.

‐ They planned against
nicer conditions

or lower temperatures,
and they got out there

and the aircraft did
what would naturally happen

when it doesn't have
the ability to perform

under those conditions.

(narrator)
As the helicopter falters,

long hours of training kick in.

‐ One of the contingencies
we rehearsed numerous times was

if anything happened
to that first helicopter,

if the pilot was able to,
he would bump over

the enclosed driveway and into
what we called the animal pen.

‐ We impacted,
there's a large wall

that circles the compound.

Our tail section hung up
on the wall,

and we kind of look like
a lawn dart stuck over the wall.

The tail section of
the helicopter has a wheel

for the load‐bearing section
of the Black Hawk.

That wheel landed
on top of the wall.

Had that wheel bent eight inches
this way or this way,

it would have broken
the tail section.

We wouldn't be talking today.

I kind of waited for
what I assumed would be next,

was some sort of explosion or
something, but that never came.

And now the guys who were
sitting behind me,

who were holding me in
are now yelling at me,

telling me to hurry up
and get out.

(chuckling)
God, give me a second.

I gotta take a couple
deep breaths here.

(Adm. McRaven) People are moving
around the outside.

That says to me that
at least some are uninjured

and the helo seems to be upright
'cause I saw people come out

from both sides
of the helicopter.

So it hadn't rolled over
because I could still

see the rotor blades.

‐ That ground force and crew
is living today because

of the expertise and the ability
for that pilot to maneuver

that aircraft where it did.

‐ When the helicopter
went down at Abbottabad,

I thought I was gonna
have a heart attack.

Oh no, not again,
not 30 years later.

But the difference in
the equipment,

the difference in the training,
the difference in the caliber

of the people involved turned
what could have been a disaster

into an inconvenience.

‐ That doesn't mean that you
didn't get a little knot inside

when we heard that there had
been a problem with the tail

of the helicopter
hitting the wall.

And we recognized it was
going to make extraction

more complicated than
originally planned.

(SEAL #4)
Chalk two, he's coming in.

He has no idea if
we'd been shot down,

a mechanical issue,
has no idea what's happened.

In a second after witnessing
our helo was down,

he didn't make a radio call,

he didn't try to push
the envelope in the wrong way.

He simply hovered his helicopter
out outside the compound,

landed him on the ground.

We jumped out, ran around
the other side,

underside of the helo,
linked up with the guys

on the other side of the bird,

explosively breached one gate,
and within about a minute,

we were back into the location

where we would have
fast roped into initially.

(SEAL #5) As soon as we
funneled into the compound,

we knew exactly where
we needed to go

and guys started breaking off
and took their responsibilities.

‐ The guy in the south
guesthouse was one of theirs.

Go up to the guest house,
check the door, right?

It's locked. When you're
a bad guy's house

and you've just beat
on his front door for about

a minute and a half,
what you don't want to do

is stand in front of the door.

And so I was I was on my knee

as low as I could
to the side of the door,

put a little explosive
charge on it.

‐ Immediately,
as they began to move,

we got the call that
shots were fired.

(SEAL #4) AK‐47 starts shooting
right through the door.

Thankfully, I was on my knee.

My partner and I at the door
returned fire through the door.

Everything goes quiet,
okay, now what do we do?

Right, we still gotta
get in the room,

still gotta figure out
what's going on.

Did he take his gun
and go into the back room

or did we kill him
and is he laying

the other side of the door,
I don't know.

This happened
very, very quickly.

Door opens up, it was a female
holding the little kid.

Like, two or three kids
behind her holding her hand.

Her husband was laying there
dead inside the door.

(SEAL #1)
On the northeast corner,

there's a door we can get into.

One of the breachers went up
with a big bomb

and put it on the door,
and that one you heard.

The door did open but there's
a brick wall behind it.

It was a fake door
to fake out people

that might be looking
at the compound.

That was the first indicator
this is a high value target.

‐ One of our team inside ran to
the main gate, opened it up,

and let them in.

They came in and then
everybody starts flooding

the main three‐story compound.

‐ Once the SEALs went
into the compound,

we no longer saw anything
on our screens.

And so we were waiting.

‐ We didn't have helmet cams,

so I wasn't seeing
the action unfold.

(gunfire)

‐ There was the other
Kuwaiti brother and his wife

killed on the first floor.

He was going for a gun
and the female

was trying to protect him.

‐ I was able to see the guys
in front of me already

working problems,
different breaching problems.

Nobody hesitated.

The entire thing could be
rigged to blow up.

If anyone's gonna martyr
himself and his whole family

it's Osama bin Laden, but we
just continue to move forward.

‐ To go up the stairs,
there was a heavy metal door

built into the stairwell

that blocked the upstairs
from downstairs.

That was a sign,
hey, who has a metal door

at the bottom of their stairs?

We explosively
breached that,

and then made our way up
to the second floor.

House is pitch black, right?

No electricity, no lights on,

they had coverings on
all the windows.

There's a set of
stairs that go up,

there's a landing, and then it
goes up to the third floor.

‐ Guys were moving upstairs
the way we always had

in every shoot house
that we'd work through.

‐ By the time I got there,
there was a SEAL in front of me

who'd just taken a couple shots.

He's calm enough in this
situation to say, okay, well,

I just saw a head peek
around the corner.

I'm betting it's Khalid,
bin Laden's son.

I'm gonna whisper his name.

Nobody told him to do this,
he just dreamed this all up

in the moment,
in the middle of the raid,

three minutes after crashing
the helicopter and almost dying.

Literally whispers his name.

Khalid pops around
the corner and gets shot.

As we moved up the stairs
and stepped over Khalid's body,

he had an AK‐47 there,
locked and loaded,

round in the chamber,
off safe and ready to go.

‐ One guy goes this way,
the other guy goes that way.

A handful of guys went over
the top of Khalid,

moved to the second floor
of the house.

Once the second floor
was cleared,

the team moved up the stairs.

Shots fired.

‐ They started going
into that room.

‐ You go to the door,
you look through the door,

there's an adult male
basically twitching

at the bottom of his bed,
laying on the ground, done.

There are several females
in the room.

Again, part of
the Intel brief was, hey,

these women could wear
suicide vests.

We'd seen aggressive
females downstairs.

So the point man who had
whispered Khalid's name

literally rushed into the room,
pushed the two women up against

the back far wall
in case they had a suicide vest.

He would have taken the blast
and protected us.

Like, okay, wow, tha‐‐
that might be him, right?

His hair was‐‐ I remember
the bridge of his nose.

I don't know, we all carried
photos of him, right?

The photo I had,
he had a very gray beard.

Looking down at him, his beard
was pitch black.

When I searched his bathroom,
guess what I found.

Just for Men hair dye

literally on his little shelf
above his sink.

‐ We're listening and a certain
amount of time goes by,

and then the next call sign
we got was

"Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo,"

and that was from
the ground force commander.

Geronimo had been the call sign
for bin Laden.

‐ They said it three times.

All he needed to do
was say it once.

I could just tell when
he called that he understood

what he was about to say was
going to be momentous

and heard by a lot of people
inside the US government.

‐ I had to call back out
and said, is Geronimo EKIA?

Of course,
they came back quickly

and said EKIA,
enemy killed in action.

Everybody in the command post
just let out a shout,

and a jump and raised
their fist in the air,

and then again, in a quarter
of a second, they were back down

in their seats and it was
silent and people were just

doing their jobs.

‐ I remember looking at my
co‐pilots like, they got him.

They called Geronimo,
they got him.

‐ In our particular vault,
because there were no

senior policymakers,
this was a much more

from the trenches‐‐
immediately celebratory,

but also a lot of just tears
and overwhelmed people.

‐ I had the sense,
that everybody

was just taking a moment

to savor the fact that

all those people who
had been killed on 9/11

had finally been avenged.

‐ There was...

some sense of vindication,
although, at that point,

these guys are
in a dark building.

They can't be absolutely certain
that it's bin Laden,

but there seems to be
some confidence that it is.

At that point, immediately,
my mind went to, all right,

get these guys out of here
as fast as possible.

(narrator)
With one Black Hawk disabled,

the Chinook helicopters
are no longer flying backup.

They now must lead
the way home.

(Aviation Planner)
When we first heard

of the aircraft crashing,

it takes a few seconds for it
to set in that this is reality.

That was the most
rehearsed contingency

that we had planned for.

So it was no longer
an unscripted plan.

It was now just the alternate
ending to a story

that had already
been scripted out.

‐ Once I was told to execute.
I mean, my you know, my call.

And we proceeded ourselves
kind of back to the northwest

and went up this
very large river valley.

It was about 30 miles or so
to the northwest.

(narrator) Though one of their
helicopters has crashed,

it takes the SEALs only
about ten minutes

to secure the compound,
killing four men and one woman.

Next, they gather as much
intelligence as possible.

Even with bin Laden dead,

the fight against al‐Qaeda
will continue.

‐ We're on the clock, right?

We know helos are
running out of fuel,

we've got X amount of time

to wrap things up
and get out of there.

People running around with bags
just stuffing anything you can.

Computers, hard drives,
paperwork,

anything you can find,
you're stuff in bags.

‐ I just fell into
the forensic aspect of it.

Kind of wiped off the face
a little bit,

get as much blood off it
so we could get some pictures,

you know, get
a really good look at

the positive identification
of him.

‐ At this point, you know,
somebody on the radio

had asked for more time,
our master chief was like,

nope, you don't have it,
leave right now.

If we don't leave right now,
we're gonna miss our ride.

So I remember we come
running out,

everybody's carrying bags
and bags of intel.

‐ Black Hawk came back in,
picked up 12 of the SEALs

without any extra equipment,
and they departed

and headed straight up
to receive fuel

before I came in to pick up
the remaining SEALs

plus all the extra equipment
they found on the compound.

‐ As we kind of got finished
with our duties

and our responsibilities

upstairs with
the DNA collection,

we drug the body downstairs,

got him in a body bag
in the courtyard.

‐ We had planned for
30 minutes time on target.

Then we'd given ourselves

an extra ten‐minute window
to spare.

‐ Because of the commotion,
the gunshots, the helicopter,

it's drawing a lot of attention
from the community

regardless of the fact that it's
the middle of the night there.

And so, there's also a lot
of concern due to the proximity

of the compound to other
military installations there.

And so we're monitoring those
very, very closely.

‐ I look, people coming out of
the houses like they were

running towards us,
all of them.

That was the time
that I realized

that I have to do something.

So then I called them
and I said,

this is a government business.

If you want to stay alive,
don't come.

Go back to your house.
Please go back to your house.

I was just talking,
of course, in Pashto.

There are two guys, they tried
to run towards us.

One of the SEALs
who were very close to me

and he put dots on them.

So I tapped on the shoulder.

I said, wait, and then
I curse them.

And I said, go back,
why you are coming here?

And they went back.

They listened.
That was the greatest thing.

‐ You could see a lot of people
moving in the courtyard.

There were a lot more women
and children on the target

than we had estimated.

We have loaded the downed
helicopter with demolition.

we were gonna blow it in place.

Any time we lose
a helicopter,

we're prepared to destroy the,
uh, the crypto gear on board

and the radios and some
of the sensitive technology.

‐ The word goes out,
blow the helo.

They put it on a timer,

not a remote control detonate,
but a timer.

Set the timer, let it click.

Helos, they'll land
in one minute.

‐ I was inbound from
the southwest,

and that's when one of
the soldiers got on the radio

and told me to break away.

The helicopter pilot
banks a right.

Boom.

‐ Not but 100 yards away
from landing

to pick up the ground force,
that aircraft blew up.

And it was a 150 foot,
200 foot mushroom cloud.

And so immediate 360 degree
right turn to get up

underneath that cloud and debris

and then come in and land
to pick them up.

‐ We were so close that
you could feel

the heat from inside the 47.

‐ We were within ten seconds

of blowing our own helicopter
out of the sky.

‐ When they blew the helicopter,

then obviously
all hell broke loose

and most of the villagers
woke up.

The Pakistanis realized that
something had happened.

They weren't quite sure
what had happened,

but we knew that they had
been put on alert.

‐ And we were scared to death
the Pakistanis would mobilize

their Air Force and shoot down
our helicopters,

which is one reason why we put
all that DNA from bin Laden

and the intelligence
in one helicopter

and his remains
in another helicopter.

So if one of them got shot down,

we still had the evidence
that we've got.

‐ The valley was now
full of blue lights,

police lights
all over the place.

And they were coming
closer to the compound.

It was time to get them
out of there.

I have a fuel tank,
contingency assaulters,

primary SEALs,
and I have the air crew

all crammed into an MH‐47.

We put that airframe to
its max potential because of

the amount of weight and amount
of people had on board,

we were just barely
over rooftops.

Above the Pakistani
military academy,

the original plan is that
we were all going to link up

to refuel and then
return home as a flight.

Now that we are in
two separate locations

at two separate points in time,

there was no sense in us
trying to focus on

consolidating and the return.

(narrator)
The first Chinook takes

a direct route
back towards Afghanistan.

The surviving Black Hawk
heads north

to get fuel from
the second Chinook.

‐ I remember all the lights
in the helicopter blinking,

and knowing we were low on fuel.

‐ Before the Black Hawk
got there,

I don't think we're on the
ground more than 15 minutes,

he had to transfer most
of his ground force to me

because he took on the fuel
he needed to get back.

He absolutely needed the gas
to get back to Afghanistan.

But because of the weight
that the ground force,

he couldn't climb out
of the valley.

‐ Took us about 19 minutes
on the ground.

That was probably the longest
19 months of that mission.

(narrator)
Refueling complete,

the two helicopters fly back
in tandem

with the Chinook in the lead.

‐ When we fly as fast as
he can fly, I can leave him,

so he's following me
and electronic warfare displays

are very active at this point.

And I'm like, okay, well,
we've got stuff out there

looking for us now.

‐ They flew fairly
a northern route

outside the populous area,
the route we took was

a direct route through
low land, populated areas.

If anybody was going to be seen,
it was going to be us.

‐ One of the team leaders
comes in across radios says,

hey, Pakistan scrambled
fighters after us.

‐ So we were getting indications
whether it be on the radio

or on board systems
that radar systems were up

and we were seen and
we're being tracked.

And then lo and behold, before
you know it, we had an F‐16 that

was at a nearby base in Pakistan
that was searching for us.

And three times, the F‐16
was searching for us,

and then through acquisition,

and the next step
was target track.

‐ Honestly, at that point,
I started thinking about

my funeral because
there's no way that this

ginormous flying bus
was going to out‐speed,

outmaneuver a jet

that we probably sold them
30‐some years ago.

‐ We just watched
the clock and the maps,

just praying that they would get
out of Pakistan airspace in time

before some type
of clash ensued.

(narrator)
The returning helicopters

face one last hurdle.

Operation Neptune Spear
has been kept secret

from American commanders
in Afghanistan.

That night, some US forces
noticed the approach

of unknown aircraft
from Pakistan.

‐ There was an operation
near the border,

which we did all the time.

Part of that element picked up

our guys coming across
that border.

‐ They were actually escalating
just one step shy of them

releasing weapons
to shoot us down.

We were trying
everything we could.

They finally just had to
break radio silence

and tell them to stand down.

‐ I never thought I'd enjoy
hearing those words,

"Welcome to Afghanistan,"
but that was music to my ears.

(narrator)
Four hours after setting out,

all of the operators
and air crews

who carried out
Operation Neptune Spear

are back in Afghanistan.

The first order of business
is confirming whose remains

they have brought back
with them.

‐ We had touched down in Jabat,

got off the helos,
there was guys there

to grab the body, pulled them
right into a hangar.

I remember McRaven showing up
immediately after.

He's like, all right.
let me see him.

‐ I unzip the body bag,

and I pulled the remains
out of the body bag.

And of course, we knew that
bin Laden was about 6'4.

I saw a young SEAL
standing by and I said,

hey, son, how tall are you?

And he looked at me
kind of funny, he said,

"Well, sir, I'm 6'2."

Yeah, come here for a minute.

I want you to lie down
right here.

And he said,
"I'm sorry, sir, what?"

I said, I want you to lie down
next to the remains.

So he lay down next the remains.

And sure enough, the remains
were a couple of inches.

They put bin Laden's
body back in,

and I went five months back‐‐

back to my video teleconference
with the president.

And the president asked,
"Well, Bill, is it him?"

I said, well, sir,
you know, without DNA,

I can't tell you 100%,
but certainly looks like him.

You know, all the features
are the same.

I said I even had somebody
lie down next to him

and the remains were
a little bit longer.

And there's a pause on
the other end of the screen.

And of course, by this time,
the boys are back safely.

The tension of the moment
is down.

And the president says, "Okay
Bill, let me get this straight."

"We had $60 million
for a helicopter,

but you didn't have $10
for a tape measure?"

(narrator)
Back in The Situation Room,

President Obama awaits

DNA confirmation of
the identity of the remains.

But will the news leak before
the president is ready

to announce
Osama bin Laden's death?

‐ First reaction was
we're gonna hold

We will not announce tonight.

I'm not going in front of
300 million Americans

with a one in 20 chance
of being completely wrong.

This is too important.

People were saying this story
is not going to hold.

If you wait till morning,
it will come out somewhere else.

And the downside of that is
bigger than this one.

And so he started to weigh,

do I go with this,
do I go with that?

They were passing around
photos at the table.

But when he looked
at the photo,

I thought I saw a change
in his demeanor

that he‐‐ I think he felt
when he saw it himself

and he saw the similarities,

that the 95% became higher.

He said we'll go at 10:30
or something like that.

So the speechwriters
get cranking,

everybody gets cranking and
then we're all waiting

for the president's speech.

‐ Good evening.

Tonight, I can report
to the American people

and to the world
that the United States

has conducted an operation
that killed Osama bin Laden,

the leader of al‐Qaeda,

and a terrorist who's
responsible for the murder

of thousands of innocent men,
women and children.

It was nearly ten years ago

that a bright September day was
darkened by the worst attack

on the American people
in our history.

The images of 9/11 are seared
into our national memory.

‐ So we had left the White House
and we were walking down

the open portico,
and we heard this noise

before we went outside and
none of us knew what it was.

(all chanting)
USA, USA, USA, USA!

USA! USA! USA! USA!

‐ "USA, USA, CIA, CIA."

I never thought I would ever
hear a crowd yelling "CIA"

and I think everyone
at the CIA

just felt a tremendous
amount of pride

that we had been able
to work on the operation

and do it successfully.

(Clinton)
And it was thrilling.

And it was just the kind
of response one would hope for,

particularly from young
Americans who might not have

been born or were toddlers
at the time of 9/11.

(chanting indistinctly)

(Clapper) It was closure for
the country, for the families,

certainly closure for the
intelligence community.

I also think it had
a profound impact

on al‐Qaeda as a movement,

just the symbolism of this
almost semi‐mythical figure,

Osama bin Laden,

and his demise,
hugely important message.

‐ It was important for us
to get bin Laden,

but not because we thought it
would dramatically change

the nature of the war
at the time.

I think what was important was
this was about justice.

It wasn't revenge,
it was about justice.

‐ We had discussed this before
the raid ever took place,

if we got him and he got his
remains, what do we do with him?

We don't wanna...

have him some place that
will become a shrine

for terrorists, there's an
obligation to offer the remains

to his family back
in Saudi Arabia.

And my recollection,
I'm a little vague on this,

but my recollection is

they didn't want anything
to do with it.

And so the decision was made
that his remains would be taken

to a ship and buried at sea.

‐ One of the clear discoveries
from all of the information that

was gathered at the compound was
that bin Laden was still very

active and trying to continue
the planning effort on future

attacks in this country,
that he continued to try

to exert leadership
over al‐Qaeda.

‐ I think that
the bin Laden operation

is a good example of

government at its best, not just
a military action at its best.

You've got all these different
agencies who set egos aside.

You have people who are
staying focused on mission,

a reminder that we're able
to work together

for the common good
when we put our minds to it.

And it's something we should try
more often.

‐ We jumped on a plane,
19 hours later,

you land back in the States.

I can remember turning on
my phone for the first time

and I probably had
a hundred text messages

from family and friends and
everybody who'd seen the news.

And literally the next morning
was trash day,

and I'm taking my trash out

and my neighbor lady
across the street,

she knew I was a SEAL,

she didn't know what I did
or what I was involved in,

but she had put
two and two together

that I was out of town
and now I'm back.

And I don't know if she knew
I was involved or not.

I'm taking my trash out.
I see her come out of her house,

no trash cans,
but she's crying.

She walks all the way
down her driveway,

walks across the street,
gives him a bear hug,

looks at me in the eyes
and says, "You never know

what your neighbors do
for a living, do you?"