turned into CIA operatives.
So as President Obama made the final decisions about the bin Laden operation, a decade of evolution in the way America wages war gave him more options than had existed for previous American presidents. It would be an American military mission, carried out by teams of Navy SEALs. But the entire team was “sheep-dipped” for the mission, put under the CIA’s Title 50 authority for launching covert actions. President Obama put CIA director Leon Panetta in charge of the operation.
From the moment that the Blackhawk helicopters took off from the base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, through the tense minutes when the SEALs moved up the dark staircase in the house on Pathan Street, to the final moments when the helicopters rose into the sky carrying bin Laden’s dead body, Panetta relayed updates from the mission to rapt Obama administration officials jammed into the White House Situation Room. The liberal Democratic congressman from California, a man who learned only shortly before arriving at Langley that much of his job would require delivering death sentences to America’s enemies around the world, had the controls of the killing machine. As the operation unfolded, Panetta kept one hand in his pocket , fingering a string of rosary beads.
The suffocating tension inside the White House Situation Room lifted only after all the SEALs had piled into the helicopters and escaped Pakistani airspace without forcing a confrontation with the Pakistani air force. But back in Abbottabad, the wreckage from one of the Blackhawks was still burning and several dead bodies lay on the floor of the house where the SEALs had done their violent work.
Somebody was going to have to tell the Pakistanis what had just happened.
The task fell to Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been something of a troubleshooter as the United States and Pakistan lurched from one crisis to the next. The son of a Hollywood press agent and a man who from an early age saw the value of cultivating personal relationships, Mullen had developed a close rapport with General Kayani—the former head of the ISI who had become army chief—during endless dinners at Kayani’s house in Islamabad. The two men would talk late into the night about Pakistan’s precarious security in a region dominated by India, China, and Russia, with Kayani chain-smoking through each dinner course. Mullen had spent the flights to Islamabad reading Freedom at Midnight, the 1975 classic about India’s independence from the British Empire and the India–Pakistan partition. One member of Mullen’s traveling entourage noticed that, from behind, the two men even looked alike—roughly the same height, same hair color, same slightly rumpled khaki uniform, similar lumbering gait—distinguished only by the cigarette smoke that rose from the Pakistani general.
Speaking from a phone outside the Situation Room, Mullen called Kayani and informed him of what had just happened.
Kayani already knew the basics. Hours earlier, he had taken a call from one of his aides, who told him about vague reports that a helicopter had crashed in Abbottabad. Kayani’s first thought was that Pakistan was under attack from India, and he immediately ordered his air-force commanders to scramble F-16 jets to repel the invasion. But the concerns about an Indian attack soon receded, and by the time Mullen called Kayani, the Pakistani general knew that Americans had been in his country.
During a tense phone call, Mullen said that American troops had been in the compound in Abbottabad and had killed bin Laden. There was a downed American helicopter at the scene. Then Mullen raised a subject that Obama officials had been debating since bin Laden’s death had been confirmed: Should President Obama make a public announcement that night or wait until the following day? Dawn had already broken in Islamabad, and Kayani told Mullen that President Obama should make an
So as President Obama made the final decisions about the bin Laden operation, a decade of evolution in the way America wages war gave him more options than had existed for previous American presidents. It would be an American military mission, carried out by teams of Navy SEALs. But the entire team was “sheep-dipped” for the mission, put under the CIA’s Title 50 authority for launching covert actions. President Obama put CIA director Leon Panetta in charge of the operation.
From the moment that the Blackhawk helicopters took off from the base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, through the tense minutes when the SEALs moved up the dark staircase in the house on Pathan Street, to the final moments when the helicopters rose into the sky carrying bin Laden’s dead body, Panetta relayed updates from the mission to rapt Obama administration officials jammed into the White House Situation Room. The liberal Democratic congressman from California, a man who learned only shortly before arriving at Langley that much of his job would require delivering death sentences to America’s enemies around the world, had the controls of the killing machine. As the operation unfolded, Panetta kept one hand in his pocket , fingering a string of rosary beads.
The suffocating tension inside the White House Situation Room lifted only after all the SEALs had piled into the helicopters and escaped Pakistani airspace without forcing a confrontation with the Pakistani air force. But back in Abbottabad, the wreckage from one of the Blackhawks was still burning and several dead bodies lay on the floor of the house where the SEALs had done their violent work.
Somebody was going to have to tell the Pakistanis what had just happened.
The task fell to Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been something of a troubleshooter as the United States and Pakistan lurched from one crisis to the next. The son of a Hollywood press agent and a man who from an early age saw the value of cultivating personal relationships, Mullen had developed a close rapport with General Kayani—the former head of the ISI who had become army chief—during endless dinners at Kayani’s house in Islamabad. The two men would talk late into the night about Pakistan’s precarious security in a region dominated by India, China, and Russia, with Kayani chain-smoking through each dinner course. Mullen had spent the flights to Islamabad reading Freedom at Midnight, the 1975 classic about India’s independence from the British Empire and the India–Pakistan partition. One member of Mullen’s traveling entourage noticed that, from behind, the two men even looked alike—roughly the same height, same hair color, same slightly rumpled khaki uniform, similar lumbering gait—distinguished only by the cigarette smoke that rose from the Pakistani general.
Speaking from a phone outside the Situation Room, Mullen called Kayani and informed him of what had just happened.
Kayani already knew the basics. Hours earlier, he had taken a call from one of his aides, who told him about vague reports that a helicopter had crashed in Abbottabad. Kayani’s first thought was that Pakistan was under attack from India, and he immediately ordered his air-force commanders to scramble F-16 jets to repel the invasion. But the concerns about an Indian attack soon receded, and by the time Mullen called Kayani, the Pakistani general knew that Americans had been in his country.
During a tense phone call, Mullen said that American troops had been in the compound in Abbottabad and had killed bin Laden. There was a downed American helicopter at the scene. Then Mullen raised a subject that Obama officials had been debating since bin Laden’s death had been confirmed: Should President Obama make a public announcement that night or wait until the following day? Dawn had already broken in Islamabad, and Kayani told Mullen that President Obama should make an
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