The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden Read online

  “No, I think I’m going to go ahead and watch,” said Obama. In Chicago, nine and a half years earlier he had watched 9/11 unfold in a crowded basement room, now he would watch the final act of that drama from another.

  Biden was typically restless, moving in and out of the room, and when he noticed that the live feed of McRaven and the Sentinel were up in the side room, he went in and sat down to watch there. Webb was hunched over his laptop at the head of the table.

  In Jalalabad, McRaven’s sergeant major was sitting alongside the admiral, communicating on a chat line with Webb and others in the command loop. He looked up.

  “Hey, sir,” he said. “General says the vice president just walked in.”

  Secretary of Defense Gates was not far behind.

  McRaven knew that the drumming chop of the approaching Black Hawks would be faintly audible about two minutes before they reached the target. The helicopters were stealthy, designed to avoid being spotted by radar, and quieter than standard models, but they still created racket when they were directly overhead. Approaching the compound from the northwest, the Black Hawks were now visible in the grainy overhead feed from the Sentinel.

  After that, things happened very fast.

  Everyone watched with shock as the first chopper, instead of hovering over the compound to drop the SEAL team from ropes and then moving off, as planned, abruptly wheeled, clipping the compound wall with its tail and hitting the ground. This clearly wasn’t good.

  The Night Stalker pilot had tried to bring his Black Hawk to a hover, but the chopper wouldn’t perform the maneuver. It “mushed,” or began to skid uncontrollably. An after-action analysis would conclude that because the compound was encircled by stone walls, whereas the mock target in Nevada had only had a chain-link fence, the air beneath the hardworking Black Hawk warmed more rapidly than anticipated. That meant the air density was insufficient for the precisely calculated weight of the aircraft. The chopper could stay airborne only if it kept moving, so when the pilot halted its forward progress it fell.

  The pilots of the 160th train for frantic moments like these. The pilot of the faltering Black Hawk moved with practiced speed. He found a plot of flat ground to execute a hard, controlled crash. It was in the compound’s western corner near an animal pen. He swung the craft’s tail in that direction and deliberately used it to clip the top of the western wall. This pitched the chopper forward and into the ground. The landing was hard, but upright, which was key. In those seconds the pilot’s maneuver had prevented the Black Hawk from pitching over on its side, which is a disastrous way for a helicopter to crash. If its still-spinning rotors strike the ground, the body of the chopper could be thrown or violently rolled. Instead, the nose was in the dirt. The SEALs were strapped in and were on seats designed to absorb a hard landing like this. One second the craft was skidding, and the next it was still, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, its tail rotor hung up on the top of the wall.

  No one watching the small screen in the White House, viewing the scene from far overhead, could see exactly what had happened, or even tell that the chopper was pitched forward with its tail hung up on the wall. They could see only that it was down inside the compound. They knew that was not the plan.

  Excruciating moments passed as McRaven sought word from the scene. Every discussion of what could go wrong on this mission had referenced the helicopter that clipped the plane and exploded in the Iranian desert in 1980, and the helicopters that had crashed in crowded Mogadishu in 1993. Here in the first seconds of the mission, they had a Black Hawk down.

  Obama had been following Donilon’s advice up to this point, receiving mission updates secondhand, talking with Panetta via the video hookup in the Situation Room, and letting others monitor the video feed and chat lines in the side room, but when the chopper went down he abruptly got up and crossed the hall.

  Clinton, standing over the food tray in the adjacent room with Ben Rhodes, watched him go.

  “Ben, do you think it’s a good idea for the president to watch this?” she asked.

  “He’s not going to be directing anything,” Rhodes said. “It’s just a feed.”

  Sitting at the head of the small conference table, Webb stood up to surrender his seat when he noticed Obama enter. The president waved him back down.

  “I’ll just take this chair here,” he said, sliding into the corner. “I need to watch this.”

  The president’s entrance was noted by Webb on the chat line.

  In Jalalabad, McRaven’s sergeant major said, “Sir, the president just walked into the room.”

  Clinton followed and took one of the remaining chairs at the table. Other staffers began crowding into the small room to see what would happen next.

  In Jalalabad, McRaven was understandably preoccupied. He didn’t have time to worry or watch the screen, or to explain things to Washington. He quickly ascertained that no one on the chopper had been hurt. They were already preparing to assault the target house from their downed position. All of these men had long ago proved their talent for adapting quickly to setbacks. This is why they had been picked. Setbacks were commonplace. It was the rare plan that survived even the first minutes of an assault. McRaven had lost helicopters before, and he had options at his fingertips.

  Watching on the screen at Langley with Panetta and the other top CIA officials and bin Laden team members, Michael Morell felt a moment of panic when the chopper went down but was immediately reassured, as was everyone watching, by McRaven’s manner. The admiral did not seem ruffled or even particularly surprised.

  “Mr. Director, as you can see, we have a helicopter down in the courtyard,” he said to Panetta. “My men are prepared for this contingency and will deal with it.”

  At the White House there was still no explanation of what was going on. Obama’s face was etched with worry. A White House photographer snapped a picture of the now-crowded side room that would become famous: Webb at the center in his blue uniform, head down, intently monitoring the video feed and chat line on his laptop screen, trying to figure out what had happened; Obama seated in the corner with furrowed brow; Donilon standing behind Webb with his arms crossed, flanked by Admiral Mullen and Bill Daley; Clinton with her hand to her mouth; Gates and Biden looking glum; staffers lining the walls—all fixated on the screen off-camera.

  Obama was as nervous as he had ever been. He knew the stakes were huge, mostly for the men in that chopper, but also for the country, for his administration . . . for him. He had persuaded himself that he was willing to accept failure, but to be staring at it in real time on the screen . . . he would later say that these were the longest minutes of his life, with the possible exception of waiting for word from doctors when his youngest daughter was hospitalized with meningitis.

  When the first chopper went down, the second Black Hawk diverted from its planned course and landed outside the compound walls in a newly planted field. The mission had called for it to hover briefly outside to drop the translator, the dog, and four SEALs, and then move directly over the three-story house to drop the rest of the team on its roof. It seemed to the viewers that the entire assault plan had gone awry.

  Then, abruptly, SEALs began streaming out of both choppers, inside the compound and out. The assault was on. The downed chopper had caused only a momentary delay. To their relief, those watching in Washington concluded that whatever had happened the mission was proceeding. In his flat Texas twang, McRaven ordered one of the two Chinooks waiting on the riverbed at Kala Dhaka to move up.

  The team from the crashed chopper moved quickly along the inside wall of the compound, pausing only to blow open a metal door that led to the house. The team from the chopper outside the wall blasted in through another entrance. There were flashes of light on the screen. The men were moving on the house itself now, and then were inside.

  Upstairs in that house, according to accounts given by bin Laden’s family, the household had been startled awake by a loud crash. One of bin Laden’s
adult daughters ran up from the second floor to the third and was told to go back down. Bin Laden instructed his wife Amal to leave the lights off. They would not have been able to turn them on anyway, because CIA operatives had cut off electricity to the entire neighborhood in advance of the assault—darkness favored the SEALs. The Sheik waited upstairs with Amal in the dark.

  One group of SEALs entered the garage area of the guesthouse. Teams like this had hit houses that were wired to explode, and had encountered people wearing explosives. When they encountered men, they were inclined to shoot on sight. There was a single brief spray of gunfire as they approached, but it was wild and ineffective. It had most likely come from the courier Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed—Ahmed the Kuwaiti. The SEALs returned fire, killing Ahmed and wounding his wife in the shoulder.

  Another part of the team moved on the main house, clearing it methodically. Abrar Ahmed, the courier’s brother, was in a first-floor bedroom with his wife Bushra. Both were shot dead.

  They cleared the first floor room by room, encountering no further gunfire. They passed through two large storage rooms and a kitchen. No one knew the layout of the interior. When they encountered a locked metal door in the rear sealing off a stairway to the upper floors, they slapped on a small C-4 charge, blew it off its hinges, and moved up the stairs. Bin Laden’s twenty-three-year-old son, Khalid, a slender bearded man wearing a white T-shirt, was shot dead at the top. There were wailing women and children on this floor, none of whom posed a threat. The team didn’t know it yet, but there was only one adult male left in the compound, and he was in the third-floor bedroom.

  Originally, half the assaulting SEALs were to have come down through the balcony into the third floor, in which case bin Laden would have been encountered immediately, at about the same time the Ahmed brothers were being shot downstairs. Instead, the Sheik had about fifteen long minutes to wait in the darkness as the SEALs methodically approached. Their rifles had silencers, and if none of the victims had fired he would not have heard the blast of gunfire by Ahmed and then shouting and crying and the sound of the metal doors being blown open. He might also have heard the muted pop of the SEALs’ silenced weapons. The only windows on his secure third floor looked north, out over the compound walls. The downed chopper was in the western corner of the compound and the other had landed to the south, so he could only have surmised who was coming for him. He might have thought it was a Pakistani force. The assaulters blew off the door barring the third floor and he would have heard men ascending, coming for him.

  Three SEALs came up those stairs, scanning different angles, searching while protecting each other. According to one of the SEALs,* the first man up spotted a tall, bearded, swarthy man in a prayer cap wearing traditional flowing Pakistani clothes, the knee-length shirt worn over pajama-like bottoms. One or more of the SEALs fired at him. The man retreated quickly into a bedroom, and the SEALs followed. In the bedroom they found two women leaning over a fatally wounded bin Laden, who had been shot in the head. The first SEAL violently moved the women out of the way and the other two stood over him and fired several more shots into his chest.

  * An account of this killing scene by one of the three SEALs, calling himself “Mark Owen” was published after the first edition of The Finish went to press. He was the first of the raiding party to offer his version of the shooting, and as of this writing is the only member of the team to have done so. It differed in several details from the one I had pieced together in interviews with sources at JSOC. My original account had bin Laden being chased from the top of the stairs into a bedroom, where he was first shot in the chest, and then, once his wife Amal was pushed aside, shot in the head by a SEAL standing over him. The version in the above text is based on the “Owen” account, which, given the source, I assume to be more correct. I had been in discussions with “Mark Owen” early in the reporting of this book, but he opted not to tell me his story and instead pursued a contract to coauthor his own account, called No Easy Day.

  The engagement was over in seconds. Amal had been shot in the leg. Bin Laden had weapons on a shelf in his bedroom but had not picked them up. His identity was unmistakable, even with the grotesque hole through his right forehead. The architect of 9/11 had become the most infamous face in the world.

  McRaven heard “for God and Country, pass Geronimo. Geronimo. Geronimo.” The word “Geronimo” was part of a coded “mission execution checklist.” It meant the critical milestone of the raid had been passed successfully, securing bin Laden. McRaven conveyed the report immediately to Panetta, and it began to spread waves of excitement through the CIA and White House, and in Kabul where Petraeus and Ostlund were listening in. Petraeus pumped his fist with satisfaction.

  In the White House, in the corner of the small crowded conference room, Obama heard “Geronimo ID’d.”

  The president knew the ID was still tentative, so he didn’t let himself fully believe it. To whatever extent he felt relief or excitement or satisfaction . . . he fought those feelings down. To him it meant the SEALs could now start extricating themselves, which meant they might soon be fighting their way out. There had been a chopper crash and explosions at the compound. If the United States was going to have to defend the raiders on their way out—and there were fighters ready—it meant the worst part might still be ahead. Hearing the report, the president thought, Get the hell out of there now!

  But after McRaven had passed that along, it occurred to him that he had not asked specifically whether bin Laden had been killed or captured.

  So he asked, “Find out whether it’s Geronimo EKIA [Enemy Killed In Action].”

  The answer came back, “Roger, Geronimo EKIA.” So McRaven passed that on to Panetta and the White House.

  “Looks like we got him,” said Obama, only half believing it.

  The delay between these two reports would cause some confusion in later accounts, which suggested that the SEALs had first found bin Laden, chased him, and then, a few minutes later, killed him. The finding and the shooting had happened in the time it took the three SEALs to crash into his room. Eighteen minutes had elapsed since the choppers had arrived.

  McRaven told Panetta: “Look, I’ve got a Geronimo call, but I need to tell you it’s a first call. This is not a confirmation. Please keep your expectations managed a little here.” He explained that the adrenaline of operators was sky high on these raids. They were looking at everything through night-vision goggles. They were professionals, but . . . “Let’s not count on anything until they get back and we have some evidence.” Echoing the president’s thoughts, McRaven reminded Panetta, and everyone else watching, “We’ve still got SEALs on the ground without a ride.”

  The video on the screen now showed SEALs emerging from the house, herding the uninjured women and children to one corner of the compound, away from the downed chopper. Some of the men came out carrying a body bag—bin Laden’s body had been dragged feet-first down the stairs, leaving a bloody trail. One of his daughters would later say that she remembered her father’s head banging each step on the way down. The SEALs eventually zipped it into a nylon bag. The assaulters moved deliberately, and Obama felt they were taking too long. Everyone was waiting for the Pakistani response at this point. The president just wanted them in the air.

  But the commotion at the compound had, in fact, attracted little interest in the neighborhood, or the country. The translator, wearing a Kevlar vest under his traditional long Pakistani shirt, shooed away the few residents who came out for a look. His training to fast rope was for naught, since his helicopter had instead landed outside the compound. The dog Cairo was enough to convince most to back off. The translator told them sternly in Pashto to go back to their houses, that a “security operation” was under way. People obliged. Monitoring the Pakistani defense forces carefully, McRaven saw no sign that the country’s defenses had been aroused.

  There was much to do yet at the compound, inside and out. Upstairs, SEALs were hastily bagging bin Laden’s papers a
nd computer, discs, flash drives, anything that might contain useful intelligence—the site’s pocket litter. Bin Laden’s youngest wife, Amal, wounded, was helped down the stairs and outside, haranguing the Americans in Arabic. All four of the men who had lived in the compound, along with one woman, were dead. The surviving women and children were flex-cuffed. The women assumed they were going to be taken away. Questioned by an Arabic-speaking SEAL, the women confirmed that they had killed “The Sheik.” One of the children confirmed that it was Osama bin Laden.

  The Chinook summoned by McRaven now landed noisily outside the compound walls. Men were working on planting explosives on the downed Black Hawk and destroying its secret avionics with a hammer. A medic from the Chinook unzipped bin Laden’s body bag, took swabs of blood, and inserted needles to extract bone marrow for DNA testing. Twenty more minutes elapsed before the body bag was carried out to the Black Hawk. One of the bone marrow samples was placed on the Chinook. The intelligence haul was likewise distributed between the two choppers.

  Finally, the White House audience saw the downed Black Hawk explode with the set charges. The demolition team scurried to the Chinook and the choppers lifted off, leaving behind a huge blaze, a stunned collection of cuffed women and children, and four bodies. A photo purporting to be the bloody corpse of Khalid bin Laden would turn up on the Internet in the coming days.

  Even with the choppers airborne, the tension didn’t lift. They first flew north to Kala Dhaka to rendezvous with the second Chinook and to refuel the Black Hawk. Twenty-five minutes later they took off for the flight back to Jalalabad. All of it without any Pakistani response. When that country’s air force did scramble two F-16s into action, the raiding party was safely across the border.

  The choppers landed back in Jalalabad at three a.m. local time. None of the men who went on the raid had been hurt. They had lost a helicopter but they had avoided Pakistan’s defenses completely. And they had killed Osama bin Laden.