Dirty Wars (82 page)

According to Bissonnette, “
speculation was rampant
.” Some of the men predicted they would be sent to Libya. Others wagered Syria or Iran. When the SEALs arrived at the North Carolina training base, they were briefed. The target of the mysterious mission was, in fact, Osama bin Laden. “
No fucking way
,” Bissonnette declared.

Twenty-eight of DEVGRU's most senior operators were
chosen for the operation
, including an explosives expert. Also on the team were a combat dog named Cairo and an interpreter. There were four alternates attached to the mission in the event one of the SEALs was injured in training. In Afghanistan, the all-star troop would be joined by a SEAL Bissonnette called “Will,” a self-taught Arabic speaker who would be able to conduct interrogations on the mission.

Together with the help of CIA analysts, the men committed to memory the intricately detailed mock-up of the compound that sat outside the main doors to the briefing room. The foam model stood on a five-foot by five-foot plywood base. It was locked up in a wooden box when not in use. The model showed the “
house in amazing detail
, right down to the small trees in the courtyard and cars in the driveway and on the road that ran along the north side of the compound,” Bissonnette later wrote. “It also had the location of the compound's gates and doors, water tanks on the roof, and even concertina wire running along the top wall. Grass covered the main courtyard. Even the neighbors' houses and fields were rendered in almost exact detail.”

The SEALs were introduced to the Pacer. They were given a
“
Road to Abbottabad
” briefing from the CIA in which they were brought up to speed on the multiyear intelligence effort to track down the al Qaeda leader. A few days after the men arrived in North Carolina, they caught their first glimpse of the Pacer via a black-and-white video feed. They watched him walk in circles under a “makeshift awning” in the compound's courtyard. On one occasion, a Pakistani military helicopter passed over the compound while the Pacer was outside. “We didn't see the Pacer sprint to a car and run. Instantly, we all thought the same thing,” Bissonnette recalled. “This meant he was
accustomed to hearing helicopters
.”

The CIA assessment informed the men that bin Laden was believed to be living on the third floor of the compound, and his son Khalid on the second. Aside from educated guesses placing the occupants of the compound on certain floors, the DEVGRU operators had no idea what the layout of the buildings would look like once they were inside. The team would use a number of “pro” words to report on the progress of the mission via radio, the idea being that short, single words would reduce radio traffic and confusion. According to Bissonnette, “
On this mission
, we chose pro words with a Native American theme.” Bin Laden would be designated with the word “Geronimo.”

As his SEALs readied for their mission, McRaven briefed the president and his national security team. “
In terms of difficulty
, compared to what we're doing on a nightly basis in Afghanistan, what we're doing in Iraq, this is not among the most difficult missions technically. The difficult part was the sovereignty issue with Pakistan and flying for a long stretch of time over Pakistani airspace,” McRaven said. Biden's national security adviser, Tony Blinken, described the impact of McRaven's analysis. “First of all,
it helps that he's from central casting
,” he told Bergen. “He looks and sounds the part, so he inspires confidence, but you also got the very strong impression that this was not a guy who was going to be blustering or bragging. This was a guy who was going to give his very honest assessment, and so when he did, he had a lot of credibility, and it also created a tremendous amount of reassurance. And basically what McRaven told us was after they modeled this, and gamed it, and rehearsed it, he said, ‘We can do this.'”

As the SEALs war-gamed for the operation in North Carolina and the Nevada desert, a string of VIPs from the administration, the military and CIA attended some of the drills. According to Bissonnette, during one session, someone asked if the raid was a kill mission. “
A lawyer from either
the Department of Defense or the White House made it clear this wasn't an assassination,” he recalled. “If he is naked with his hands up, you're not going to engage him,” the attorney said. “I am not going to tell you how to do your job.”

The SEAL team was dispatched to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, ahead of the mission. Bissonnette strung up a hammock in the plane in preparation for the lengthy trip. Some of the men popped Ambien pills for the long flight across the Atlantic. A number of analysts from the NSA and CIA joined the SEALs. As the plane took off, Bissonnette took an open seat next to one of the CIA analysts. He asked her, “
What are the odds
” the man in the compound was bin Laden? “One hundred percent,” she told him. Bissonnette pushed back, reminding her that he had heard such proclamations from intelligence analysts before and they had fallen apart. The CIA analyst doubled down on her assessment, telling Bissonnette that she did not support the idea of the raid and would have preferred an air strike. “Sometimes JSOC can be the big gorilla in the room,” she said. “I'd rather just push the easy button and bomb it.” Bissonnette told her, “You guys did all the hard work to get us here,” adding, “We're happy to have our thirty minutes of fun and be done.”

On Friday morning, April 29, at
8:20 a.m.
, Obama met with National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, his deputy Dennis McDonough, John Brennan and Chief of Staff William Daley in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. As they stood in a half circle, Obama told the men, “I've considered the decision: It's a go. And the only thing that makes it not a go is if Bill McRaven and his folks believe that either weather or conditions on the ground increase the risk to our forces.”

The mission would be called Operation Neptune Spear, a tip of the hat to the trident favored by the Roman god of the sea. It is also a common insignia on Navy SEAL paraphernalia and unit crests.

On their second night in Jalalabad, Bissonnette and a number of other SEALs sat around a fire pit discussing where they should shoot bin Laden. “
Try not to shoot
this motherfucker in the face,” said a SEAL he called “Walt.” “Everybody is going to want to see this picture.” The men speculated about how the raid would advance the careers of their superior officers. Bissonnette predicted McRaven would be
promoted to SOCOM commander
. “
And we'll get Obama reelected
for sure,” Walt added. “I can see him now, talking about how he killed bin Laden.”

The raid, planned for the evening of Saturday, April 30, coincided with the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which would have meant that the president and virtually every senior member of his national security team would be rubbing elbows with the media elite and Hollywood celebrities while the raid was taking place. Some of the president's advisers wanted the operation held back until after the dinner, concerned that if something went wrong, forcing the president and other officials to leave the event, the raid's cover could be blown. The raid was specifically
planned to take place on a
moonless night
in order to allow the approaching helicopters to have the best cover possible. By chance, excessive cloud cover ultimately compelled McRaven to
delay the raid
until the next night.

Obama called McRaven for a final check-in. It was late in the evening in Jalalabad when McRaven picked up the phone. He told the president his men were ready to go. “
I couldn't have any more confidence
in you than the confidence I have in you and your force,” the president said. “Godspeed to you and your forces. Please pass on to them my personal thanks for their service and the message that I personally will be following this mission very closely.”

The president and the first lady arrived at the Washington Hilton at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday night for the
Correspondents' Dinner
. Panetta, Gates, Vickers and several other core members of the team planning the bin Laden raid were there as well. Obama's demeanor revealed nothing about the high-stakes preparations that were taking place on the other side of the globe. Instead, the president appeared calm and jovial, cracking a number of jokes, including one targeting billionaire Donald Trump, who was in the audience. Trump had been on a media rampage, promoting his inane theory that the president was not a US citizen.
Saturday Night Live
star Seth Meyers, who hosted the dinner, actually made a joke about bin Laden, obviously unaware that a number of people in the room were intimately involved in planning his imminent demise. “People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush,” Meyers said. “But did you know that every day from 4 to 5 p.m. he hosts a show on C-SPAN?” The camera panned to the president laughing heartily.

IN AFGHANISTAN,
the final briefing before the launch of Operation Neptune Spear was “
standing room only
,” Bissonnette wrote, with SEALs from the other squadron on the base packing in. The president had authorized the SEALs to fight off any Pakistani units that confronted them on the mission. An officer briefing the teams informed them of their cover story, should they find themselves in Pakistani custody: you were recovering a drone that had crashed. The proposal drew laughter. “
The story was preposterous
. We were allies with Pakistan on paper, so if we did lose a drone, the State Department would negotiate directly with the Pakistani government to get it back,” an incredulous Bissonnette asserted. “The story didn't wash and would be very difficult to stick to during hours of questioning,” he wrote. “The truth is, if we got to that point, no story we could come up with was going to cover up twenty-two SEALs packing sixty-pounds of high-tech gear on their backs, an EOD tech, and interpreter
for a total of twenty-four men, plus a dog, raiding a suburban neighborhood a few miles from the Pakistani military academy.” The briefing was closed by the commanding officer of DEVGRU. McRaven, he said, had
given them the green light
. In twenty-four hours, the SEALs would be on their way to Abbottabad.

Obama's national security staffers began arriving at the White House
around 8:00 a.m.
on Sunday, May 1. Sandwich platters were purchased from
Costco
.
Multiple pizzerias
were called upon to avoid making one large conspicuous order.

At around 1:00 p.m.
, Obama's national security team began to assemble in the Situation Room. Obama was finishing up a
round of golf
at Andrews Air Force Base—part of the attempt to send the signal publicly that business was as usual. Over at the CIA, Panetta and his deputy, Mike Morell, huddled with SOCOM's commander, Eric Olson, in a secure room. On paper, Panetta was in charge of the operation. In reality, Admiral McRaven was running Neptune Spear.

Obama returned to the White House at approximately 2:00 p.m. and, still wearing his golf shoes and a windbreaker, went downstairs to the Situation Room, where Panetta's final overview of the operation was relayed. But Obama and his team would not monitor the most sensitive mission in US history from the Situation Room, which was built for such operations. Instead, the most powerful decision makers in the United States wound up confining themselves to a much smaller room next door.

The room had the same secure video and phone communications as the Situation Room but
could only seat seven people
. Two modest-sized flat-screen televisions were installed side by side on one wall of the room. On the day of the bin Laden raid, the conference room was initially occupied by Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb, JSOC's assistant commanding general. Webb and another JSOC officer were monitoring the operation in real time through a laptop. The feed was provided by an
RQ-170 stealth drone
hovering over Abbottabad. They also had secure communications with McRaven in Jalalabad, Panetta at CIA headquarters and General Cartwright at the Pentagon's Ops Center. When the men proposed moving their command center to the Situation Room, they were
told to stay put
.

Next door in the Situation Room, Obama's
inner circle was arguing
about whether the president should monitor the mission live. As that debate dragged on, various senior officials, including Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Biden, began streaming into General Webb's small room. A short time later, the president walked into the room. “
I need to watch this
,” he said. The commander in chief seated himself in a folding chair to the right of Webb. Obama later discussed the seating arrangement, saying, “[Webb] started to get up and people were starting to go through
the protocol and figuring out how to rearrange things. I said, ‘You don't worry about it. You just focus on what you're doing. I'm sure we can find a chair and I'll sit right next to him.' And that's how I
ended up [on a] folding chair
.”

IT WAS
11:00
P.M. IN ABBOTTABAD
, and the families at the bin Laden compound were already in bed. Many miles to the west, across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in the city of Jalalabad, twenty-three members of SEAL Team 6 were at an airbase preparing to embark on their mission. Half an hour later, the
Black Hawks took off
. By 2:30 p.m., the White House had received the first word that the choppers were off the ground. “
It was nail-biting time
and we were holding our breath,” recalled Brennan.

For the mission, the SEALs would utilize two specialized MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, flown by JSOC's “Night Stalkers.” The helicopters were a stealth version of the Black Hawk that the United States had long been
rumored to be developing
. The unique aircraft had never been discussed publicly. The Black Hawks had been specially modified with advanced technology that would allow it to fly silently and to avoid radar detection. To further mask their presence, the pilots would fly at high speeds as close to the ground as possible, using a tactic known as “
nap of the earth
.” General Hugh Shelton, the former commander of SOCOM, whose son is a JSOC pilot, said the Night Stalkers are the best in the US military. “They can literally—the pilots can fly a helicopter upside-down if they want to, they can land on a moving train—at night,” he told me. “
Any time that you've got a mission
that you don't want to fail, those are the guys that you want to have doing it.”