President Obama rolled the dice with a blind — and ultimately spot-on — shot at killing terror kingpin Osama bin Laden, according to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The one-time CIA head said Obama and his national security team had virtually no concrete proof bin Laden was holed up in a Pakistani compound, where Navy SEALs blew his brains out during their glorious May 2 raid last year.
“I had no doubts that the SEALs could perform the mission,” Gates told CBS’s “This Morning” today.
“My concern was whether or not he [bin Laden] was there. People don’t realize [what] made the decision tough for the president was we didn’t have one single piece of hard data that he was actually in that compound. Not one.”
Gates has previously said he had serious doubts about the raid. But in this interview, hyping an upcoming book, Gates amplified his worries that weekend last year when Obama made the call to get bin Laden.
“The whole thing was a circumstantial case built by analysts at CIA,” Gates said.
CBS’s Charlie Rose asked Gates point blank: “There was no single person who could tell you he was in that building. No single person had seen him in that building?”
“Right,” said Gates, now chancellor at The College of William and Mary.
“The crux of the decision revolved less about the efficacy of the military piece of it, than the consequences for us if he wasn’t there — in terms of the relationship with Pakistan, in terms of the war in Afghanistan.”
Gates had urged Obama to take down bin Laden from above, with an air attack that wouldn’t require US forces on the ground.
“My view was let’s kill him but let’s use a missile of some kind,” said Gates.
“The objection to that was ‘Well we couldn’t collect any information to exploit and we won’t know for sure whether we got him.’ My view was you’ll know. It may take a few months and it’s not as dramatic and you won’t get the headline that you will on a SEAL raid. But if you think he’s there that’s probably the least risky way to take him out.”
Even though President Obama opted for the more aggressive plan,Gates said the Commander-in-Chief appreciated his two cents.
“President asked for my view and I told him, I said ‘You know, maybe Mr. President, I’ve been in this job too long and I’ve become too cautious,’ ” according to Gates, CIA director for President George H.W. Bush and defense secretary for the next President Bush.
“And he said … ‘No you’ve raised a lot of questions that I have to think about.’ But I’ve always thought it was a very courageous call.”
In the year since bin Laden was killed, members of Obama’s team have revealed, in remarkable detail, the wide-ranging views expressed to the president, leading up to the raid.
A chuckling Gates revealed that everyone in the situation room vowed to keep their mouths shut: “We pledged each other we would never go public with operational details.”
“And how long did that last?” Rose asked.
“Five hours,” Gates said.