Osama Bin Laden was
killed within 90 seconds of the US Navy Seals landing in his compound and not
after a protracted gun battle, according to the first account by the men who
carried out the raid.
The operation was so
clinical that only 12 bullets were fired.
The Seals have spoken
out because they were angered at the version given by politicians, which they
see as portraying them as cold-blooded murderers on a kill mission. They were
also shocked that President Barack 0bama announced Bin Laden’s death on
television the same evening, rendering useless much of the intelligence they had
seized.
Chuck Pfarrer, a former
commander of Seal Team 6, which conducted the operation, has interviewed many of
those who took part for a book, Seal Target Geronimo, to be published in the US
this week.
The Seals own accounts
differ from the White House version, which gave the impression that Bin Laden
was killed at the end of the operation rather than in its opening seconds.
Pfarrer insists Bin Laden would have been captured had he
surrendered.
There isn’t a politician
in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting Bin Laden but it
devalued the intelligence and gave time for every other Al-Qaeda leader to
scurry to another bolthole, said Pfarrer. The men who did this and their
valorous act deserve better.
It’s a pretty shabby way
to treat these guys. The first hint of the mission came in January last year
when the team’s commanding officer was called to a meeting at the headquarters
of joint special operations command. The meeting was held in a soundproof bunker
three stories below ground with his boss, Admiral William McRaven, and a CIA
officer.
They told him a walled
compound in Pakistan had been under surveillance for a couple of weeks. They
were certain a high-value individual was inside and needed a plan to present to
the president. It had to be someone important. So is this Bert or Ernie? he
asked.
The Seals nicknames for
Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are a reference to two Muppets in
Sesame Street, one tall and thin and the other short and fat. We have a voice
print, said the CIA officer, and were 60% or 70% certain it’s our guy. McRaven
added that a reconnaissance satellite had measured the targets shadow. Over 6ft
tall.
When McRaven added they
would use Ghost Hawk helicopters, the team leader had no doubt. These are the
most classified, sophisticated stealth helicopters ever developed, said Pfarrer.
They are kept in locked hangars and fly so quiet we call it whisper
mode.
Over the next couple of
months a plan was hatched. A mock-up of the compound was built at Tall Pines, an
army facility in a national forest somewhere in the eastern
US.
Four reconnaissance
satellites were placed in orbit over the compound, sending back video and
communications intercepts. A tall figure seen walking up and down was named the
Pacer.
Obama gave the go-ahead
and Seal Team 6, known as the Jedi, was deployed to Afghanistan. The White House
cancelled plans to provide air cover using jet fighters, fearing this might
endanger relations with Pakistan.
Sending in the Ghost
Hawks without air cover was considered too risky so the Seals had to use older
Stealth Hawks. A Prowler electronic warfare aircraft from the carrier USS Carl
Vinson was used to jam Pakistan’s radar and create decoy
targets.
Operation Neptune’s
Spear was initially planned for April 30 but bad weather delayed it until May 1,
a moonless night. The commandos flew on two Stealth Hawks, codenamed Razor 1 and
2, followed by two Chinooks five minutes behind, known as Command Bird and the
gun platform. On board, each Seal was clad in body amour and night vision
goggles and equipped with laser targets, radios and sawn-off M4 rifles. They
were expecting up to 30 people in the main house, including Bin Laden and three
of his wives, two sons, Khalid and Hamza, his courier, Abu Ahmed al- Kuwaiti,
four bodyguards and a number of children. At 56 minutes past midnight the
compound came into sight and the code Palm Beach signaled three minutes to
landing. Razor 1 hovered above the main house, a three-story building where Bin
Laden lived on the top floor. Twelve Seals roped the 5ft-6ft down onto the roof
and then jumped to a third-floor patio, where they kicked in the windows and
entered.
The first person the
Seals encountered was a terrified woman, Bin Laden’s third wife, Khaira, who ran
into the hall. Blinded by a searing white strobe light they shone at her, she
stumbled back. A Seal grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the floor. Bin
Laden’s bedroom was along a short hall. The door opened; he popped out and then
slammed the door shut. Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo, radioed one Seal, meaning
eyes on target.
At the same time lights
came on from the floor below and Bin Laden’s son Khalid came running up the
stairs towards the Seals. He was shot dead.
Two Seals kicked in Bin
Laden’s door. The room, they later recalled, smelt like old clothing, like a
guest bedroom in a grandmother’s house. Inside was the Al-Qaeda leader and his
youngest wife, Amal, who was screaming as he pushed her in front of him. No, no,
don’t do this! she shouted as her husband reached across the king-size bed for
his AK-47 assault rifle. The Seals reacted instantly, firing in the same second.
One round thudded into the mattress. The other, aimed at Bin Laden’s head,
grazed Amal in the calf. As his hand reached for the gun, they each fired again:
one shot hit his breastbone, the other his skull, killing him instantly and
blowing out the back of his head.
Meanwhile Razor 2 was
heading for the guesthouse, a low, shoebox-like building, where Bin Laden’s
courier, Kuwaiti, and his brother lived. As the helicopter neared, a door opened
and two figures appeared, one waving an AK-47. This was Kuwaiti. In the moonless
night he could see nothing and lifted his rifle, spraying bullets
wildly.
He did not see the
Stealth Hawk. On board someone shouted, Bust him!, and a sniper fired two shots.
Kuwaiti was killed, as was the person behind him, who turned out to be his wife.
Also on board were a CIA agent, a Pakistani-American who would act as
interpreter, and a sniffer dog called Karo, wearing dog body armor and
goggles.
Within two minutes the
Seals from Razor 2 had cleared the guesthouse and removed the women and
children.
They then ran to the
main house and entered from the ground floor, checking the rooms. One of Bin
Laden’s bodyguards was waiting with his AK-47. The Seals shot him twice and he
toppled over.
Five minutes into the
operation the command Chinook landed outside the compound, disgorging the
commanding officer and more men. They blasted through the compound wall and
rushed in.
The commander made his
way to the third floor, where Bin Laden’s body lay on the floor face up.
Photographs were taken, and the commander called on his satellite phone to
headquarters with the words: Geronimo Echo KIA Bin Laden enemy killed in
action.
This was the first time
the White House knew he was dead and it was probably 20 minutes into the raid,
said Pfarrer. A sample of Bin Laden’s DNA was taken and the body was bagged.
They kept his rifle. It is now mounted on the wall of their team room at their
headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia, alongside photographs of a dozen
colleagues killed in action in the past 20
years.
At this point things
started to go wrong. Razor 1 took off but the top secret green unit that
controls the electronics failed. The aircraft went into a spin and crashed
tail-first into the compound… The Seals were alarmed, thinking it had been shot
down, and several rushed to the wreckage. The crew climbed out, shaken but
unharmed.
The commanding officer
ordered them to destroy Razor 2, to remove the green unit, and to smash the
avionics. They then laid explosive charges.
They loaded Bin Laden’s
body onto the Chinook along with the cache of intelligence in plastic bin bags
and headed toward the USS Carl Vinson. As they flew off they blew up Razor 2.
The whole operation had taken 38 minutes.
The following morning
White House officials announced that the helicopter had crashed as it arrived,
forcing the Seals to abandon plans to enter from the roof. A photograph of the
situation room showed a shocked Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, with
her hand to her mouth.
Why did they get it so
wrong? What they were watching was live video but it was shot from 20,000 feet
by a drone circling overhead and relayed in real time to the White House and
Leon Panetta, the CIA director, in Langley.
The Seals were not
wearing helmet cameras, and those watching in Washington had no idea what was
happening inside the buildings.
They don’t understand
our terminology, so when someone said the insertion helicopter has crashed, they
assumed it meant on entry, said Pfarrer.
What infuriated the
Seals, according to Pfarrer, was the description of the raid as a kill mission.
I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words kill mission, he
said.
It’s a Beltway
[Washington insiders] fantasy world. If it was a kill mission you don’t need
Seal Team 6; you need a box of grenades. Hooyah!
As Paul Harvey would
say: You now know the rest of the story!
Please pass this on to
everybody in your e-mail address book.
In God we trust! If you
can read this…thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English…thank a
Veteran.
