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Forget “Dead or Alive.”
The Navy SEALs who raided Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound never intended to capture the 9/11 mastermind, according to a new report.
The New Yorker magazine’s dramatic blow-by-blow account of the mission to kill bin Laden tells how a member of SEAL Team Six stepped into the world’s most-wanted terrorist’s room and “trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest” in the dead of night on May 1 in the town of Abbottabad.
“The al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed,” a special-operations officer told the magazine.
The SEAL shot bin Laden once in the chest, and then above his left eye.
“There was never any question of detaining or capturing him — it wasn’t a split-second decision,” the special-ops officer said, contradicting the Obama administration’s claims after the raid. “No one wanted detainees.”
The SEAL then triumphantly announced the completion of the decade-long hunt for the 9/11 mastermind over his radio.
“For God and country — Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo,” said the SEAL, using the code-word for killing bin Laden. “Geronimo EKIA [enemy killed in action].”
Hearing that transmission at the White House — where he was avidly monitoring the raid on a live feed — President Obama said only, “We got him.”
The article also reveals that seconds before that SEAL killed bin Laden in an upstairs room, another SEAL entered the room and was confronted by two of bin Laden’s wives.
One woman screamed and appeared ready to charge him.
The SEAL shot her in the calf, and then, “fearing that one or both women were wearing suicide jackets, he stepped forward, wrapped them in a bear hug and drove them aside,” The New Yorker reported.
“He would almost certainly have been killed had they blown themselves up, but by blanketing them he would have absorbed some of the blast and potentially saved the two SEALs behind him. In the end, neither woman was wearing an explosive vest.”
After killing bin Laden, bagging his body and loading it onto a Black Hawk helicopter, the team headed back toward Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
“We should all go to Mass tonight,” Vice President Joe Biden, his hands holding a rosary, told Joint Chief of Staffs Chairman Michael Mullen in the White House Situation Room as they watched the chopper’s trip.
In Jalalabad, bin Laden’s corpse was displayed to US military officials, photographed, and then checked to see if he was — as reported — 6-foot-4.
Because they didn’t have a tape measure, a 6-foot-tall SEAL actually lay down next to bin Laden’s body, which “measured roughly four inches longer than the American,” the magazine reported.
Days later, when he met him at the White House, Obama gave Vice-Adm. Bill McRaven, the SEAL who heads Joint Special Operations Command, a tape measure.
Although officials planned to dump bin Laden’s body at sea, the CIA’s former bureau chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, called his former counterpart in that country, and described that plan, before asking if officials there wanted their notorious countryman’s corpse.
“Your plan sounds like a good one,” the Saudi said, according to The New Yorker.
Five days later, Obama met with the SEALs and the pilots involved in the raid in Kentucky. Obama “was in awe of these guys,” his deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told the magazine. “They knew he had staked his presidency on this. He knew they staked their lives on it.”
The SEALs’ squadron commander, identified by The New Yorker only as “James,” told Obama, “Everything we have done for the last 10 years prepared us for this.”
When he was told about the sole canine member of the operation, a dog named Cairo, Obama said, “There was a dog? I want to meet that dog.”
The SEALs and other members of the mission team then were presented a Presidential Unit Citation by Obama. He, in turn, was given a framed American flag that had been on board a rescue helicopter during the raid.
On the front was an inscription: “From the Joint Task Force Operation Neptune’s Spear, 01 May 2011: For God and country. Geronimo.” On the back were the signatures of the SEALs and the pilots.
“Before the president returned to Washington, he left one thing unsaid,” The New Yorker concluded.
“He never asked who fired the kill shot, and the SEALs never volunteered to tell him.”