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 ten years after
president obama
authorized the raid by special
operations forces that killed osama bin
laden
he sat down with admiral william mcrae
former commander of the united states
special operations command
who oversaw operation neptune's spear to
reflect on that mission
and its impact ten years ago this week
you were obviously in that final period
of of deciding what to do
of evaluating risk is there a moment or
two that stands out in your head
from that period when i look back you
know
with the benefit of 10 years what
strikes me
maybe is not a particular moment the
number of people
who operated at the very highest levels
for a sustained period of time that is
something that
i appreciate even more a decade later
it makes me appreciate how unfortunately
rare that is
and it makes me wonder sometimes how we
can duplicate that kind of
uh mission orientation and focus
uh in so many of the other challenges
that
our country has to meet admiral mcraven
in this same period of time
leading up to the the operation itself
president obama has to make a decision
but things are shifting on to the
shoulders of you and
obviously the operators who are going to
carry out the actual
raid how did you feel that transfer of
of responsibility
as a part of this broader whole when i
came in
the first meeting i think was in march
and the process allowed us to go from
the macro here are the the options we're
looking at
down to the micro which was okay we're
going to go with the raid
and then you asked all the right
questions the hard questions
but to me it didn't end there the
process was
mission completion bin laden captured or
dead
and the boys back home safely and so i
didn't feel that all of a sudden there
was this
this historic shift and the
responsibility now came to
uh to the military aspect of this this
was an entire process that everybody was
part of
i've said it before but watching your
leadership at the head of the table
i remember walking away going man you to
think this guy
had been in the military for 35 years
the way you commanded
the room we ran a tight process
because the stakes were so high but
after all the work we did
all the process that we went through the
one thing i've always emphasized was
that there remained enormous uncertainty
absolutely there was uncertainty about
whether it was actually bin laden and
abadabad about what was the nature of
the compound
how would the pakistanis react if they
found out
what gave me ultimately confidence to be
able to make the decision
once you cut through all the other
analysis was
here were a group of
military personnel who
operated at the highest levels doing
things that
no other organization or group of
individuals really could carry out
so you make the decision mr president
and then the day before
the raid you uh on a saturday afternoon
from the oval office you called
admiral mcraven for one last
conversation in which you wished him
well but also
asked him to convey your appreciation to
the the members of the team
why did you want to make that call and
and what did you convey to
admiral mcraven in the team two reasons
i did that one
is that no matter how
highly trained those
warriors were there was still enormous
risk
uh to a mission like that but the the
second reason i think it was important
for me
is that uh as commander-in-chief
and and certainly here in washington a
lot of times
these issues of war
are treated as abstractions
and we forget that these are
folks who have families and loved ones
and that they are carrying a burden on
behalf of
hundreds of millions of americans and
when you are commander-in-chief and you
make a decision about
a particular mission like that it was
one of those rare opportunities where
i had a chance to say
not in after the fact not in retrospect
not when
folks are coming home but before they go
uh that we don't take this for granted
this phone call
uh meant a lot to me and
and to the guys getting ready to go on
the mission and this was a
uh you know the commander-in-chief yes
but a man who understood that the seals
and the night stalkers the helicopter
pilots were getting ready
to go on a mission that was you know
potentially could cost them their lives
and and you wanted to convey that to me
and mr president you went up to new york
you know shortly after
the operation and went back obviously on
the anniversary of september 11th so
what was the the takeaway from those
experiences in new york
you know i had stayed in touch with many
of the family members
of the 9 11 victims i heard from them
both
how those wounds in their hearts hadn't
fully healed
their concern and their worry that
their loved ones and what had happened
might be forgotten
in in the flood of other events that had
happened
there was a young woman uh
at this point 14 uh who
had lost her father the age of four and
had actually talked to her father in the
building it was the last conversation
that she remembered with her father and
she
she was there at that ceremony and
gave me a big hug and um and and we had
a chance to talk uh
meeting with the firefighters of the
station that had lost almost all of its
members because they were some of the
first responders
it brought home the fact that so so many
of the issues we deal with
they are big historic issues but they
are also
issues that are very personal for people
right
i had a chance to go to new york i think
in november
of 2011. and i have not been to new york
in 50 years
and when i got to new york the new
yorkers
were so thankful for you know what the
decisions you had made
and what the the team had done and i
could really
begin to internalize it and of course it
was about
bringing justice to bin laden but it was
about something else as well
it was about this idea that our
nation could do something hard and do it
well i think people also looked at the
sacrifices that had been made
for a decade in afghanistan and iraq and
so
this was the closest approximation maybe
to a
to a victory day that we might have
but what i'll always remember is is the
the look on that
uh young woman's face uh and the story
she told about her father
and that as i think captures as well as
anything
also the the the sense that
each individual in america matters and
that
part of being a nation is that we depend
on each other
and we remember each other and we see
each other and that we
defend each other admiral mcraven you
know the other visit
president obama made in the days after
uh was to fort campbell
where he was able to to meet with the
team i think you at the time if i
remember were very clear about
there's a sealed team there's the
aviation detachment the night stalkers
but then there were other troops at that
base we talked to troops deploying
afghanistan and it seemed like you
wanted to convey that
this this was an achievement of
everybody who served in uniform
uh after 9 11. but what are your
recollections of that date for campbell
there was a recognition that yes it was
great
for the seals and the night stalkers to
be the final piece of the puzzle but
make no mistake about it this was the
hundreds of thousands of soldiers and
sailors airmen marines
you know intelligence professionals
foreign service officers that had all
contributed to this fight
and the best way to have done that
certainly from the department of defense
side was to meet with one of the
the uh the larger uh elements which was
the 101st airborne division
the part that i remember most about that
visit
was after we got through talking to the
seals and and the night stalkers
we went over to the 101st and the plan
at least as i recall was you were going
to get up we were in a giant hangar of
course there were hundreds of soldiers
out front
you were going to you know say some
remarks and then kind of shake a few
hands
almost a ceremonial shake a few hands
right
well you came off the platform you went
down
that's how i felt
you went down to start shaking hands and
of course
the soldiers started lining up and you
kept shaking hands and finally i kind of
saddled up beside you and i said mr
president you know you don't need to
shake everybody's hand and you turn to
me and you said hey bill
this is important to me and
hopefully it's important to them what
you didn't see which is what i saw
was there was a line outside that hangar
you know i i
i will tell you bill uh because because
i get emotional about this too
every one of those kids
they had said we are here we are ready
and we are willing to sacrifice
everything to defend this country and
some of them saw action and some of them
didn't some of them had friends who came
back
and some of them had friends who didn't
come back
some came back and were grievously
wounded
all of them came back with scars
that maybe weren't always visible here's
what i remember though about
meeting with the the team that had
actually executed the mission
it wasn't just that they were highly
skilled and it wasn't just
that they were extraordinary warriors
but it was also
cool under pressure
experience gained from years
of other operations and frankly lessons
learned from
some previous members of special forces
who didn't come back from a mission
uh and and all you you could i think
explicitly a number of them mentioned
that that
listen we're we're here and we
appreciate you thanking us but
understand
they're a bunch of guys who aren't here
anymore
that we learned from and that allowed us
to function at the highest level
uh and and that's the strongest memory i
always have because it it reminds me of
all of this is part of a chain
you know but we we build on the the
sacrifices
and lessons that uh the hard-won lessons
uh of all of thousands tens of thousands
hundreds of thousands of people
who've come before and to your point sir
it wasn't just the ten years from nine
eleven
uh it was the you know 30 40 50
60 70 years all the way to world war ii
for the special operations guys i mean
we tried to learn from every mission
that went well in every mission that
didn't go well
um so they were they were poised to do
that
that's exactly right i'd be remiss if i
didn't point this out and ask uh mr
president
uh you're not the most sentimental guy
but um
you clearly made a choice there in
having that flag that's on the wall
behind you
um what's what what is the story of how
you got that flag
and why did you choose to put it you
know in such a point of
probably the most prominent space in
your post-presidency office
there was an american flag that had been
taken on the mission
it had been on the helicopter and
it had come back intact
and all of the members of the team who
had participated
had signed it on the back
and they wanted to present it to me as a
gift that meant the world to me
because it signified
that in in some small measure
they felt as if i had been
true to the mission
and their sacrifices that
i had taken it seriously and
soberly and
that that i had
had been part of this broader process in
a way that uh
elicited trust from them i know they
appreciated in the tough decisions
and they were just honored that you took
the time to come down and once again
thank them
well and i would be remiss if i didn't
take this opportunity to say thank you
bill i i i've said
uh i've said this publicly many times
i've written in my book but i want to
say
to you personally i could not have had a
better leader
and a a a better representative of all
that's good
in our military uh than you and
uh have having you in charge of this
mission
is what gave me the confidence to make
this decision i did so i thank you and
your family for that
my pleasure thank you appreciate it