New Yorker Looks Into Bin Laden Capture By Team Seal Six: Plan Was Always To Take His Life

by Alex Alvarez | 9:55 am, August 1st, 2011

» 45 comments

On May 1st, a Sunday night here in the U.S., the world learned from President Barack Obama that terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden had tracked, found and ultimately killed by an elite force known as “Team Six.” In the months following that announcement, more details about the mission to locate bin Laden have slowly, gradually trickled out into the public.

Now, a fascinating piece published in the New Yorker provides further insight into the planning — and steel nerves — required to capture a terrorist mastermind.

That evening, the culmination of years of meticulous planning, two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters carried twenty-three Team Six Navy SEALs, a translator and a dog named Cairo from eastern Afghanistan to the quiet Pakistani suburb of Abbottabad. The flight was made in silence, the air crafts’ lights off as they slipped undetected into Pakistan’s airspace. There is some debate as to how the helicopters were able to slip by border security without a problem (The Pakistanis’ focus is on India… radar was pointed elsewhere… the Black Hawks’ special modifications made then virtually undetectable). The team, it turns out, had been circling the globe in its search for bin Laden for the better part of a decade:

Since the autumn of 2001, they had rotated through Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa, at a brutal pace. At least three of the SEALs had participated in the sniper operation off the coast of Somalia, in April, 2009, that freed Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, and left three pirates dead. In October, 2010, a DEVGRU team attempted to rescue Linda Norgrove, a Scottish aid worker who had been kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan by the Taliban. During a raid of a Taliban hideout, a SEAL tossed a grenade at an insurgent, not realizing that Norgrove was nearby. She died from the blast. The mistake haunted the SEALs who had been involved; three of them were subsequently expelled from DEVGRU.

And, according to the article, the plan was always to take bin Laden’s life:

If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.

Indeed, the article notes that, in 2008, even before his presidency, Obama answered a Nashville woman’s question about whether he would be willing to pursue bin Laden within our ally, Pakistan. He answered in the affirmative, noting that “if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable, or unwilling, to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda.”

While the rest of the article is most definitely worth a read, here are some further highlights to drive home just now tense the night of May 1st was for Team Six and those with knowledge of their mission, and how much planning went into finding the man who masterminded various horrific and bloody acts of terrorism across the globe, including the attacks of 9/11:

Obama decided against informing or working with Pakistan. “There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond,” a senior adviser to the President told me.

They spent the next two and a half weeks considering ways to get inside bin Laden’s house. One option entailed flying helicopters to a spot outside Abbottabad and letting the team sneak into the city on foot. The risk of detection was high, however, and the SEALs would be tired by a long run to the compound. The planners had contemplated tunnelling in—or, at least, the possibility that bin Laden might tunnel out.

The prospect of flattening a Pakistani city made Obama pause. He shelved the B-2 option and directed McRaven to start rehearsing the raid.

replica of the compound had been built at the site, with walls and chain-link fencing marking the layout of the compound. The team spent the next five days practicing maneuvers.

Then, if bin Laden was proving difficult to find, Cairo [the dog] could be sent into the house to search for false walls or hidden doors.

It was too late for a Friday attack, and on Saturday there was excessive cloud cover. On Saturday afternoon, McRaven and Obama spoke on the phone, and McRaven said that the raid would occur on Sunday night. “Godspeed to you and your forces,” Obama told him. “Please pass on to them my personal thanks for their service and the message that I personally will be following this mission very closely.”

h/t New Yorker, Photo via Navy Times

Abbottabad, DevGru, Navy SEALS, New Yorker, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Team Six

Anonymous

i give the president thumbs up on the pirates and bin laden take downs
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ECYBIXNKAG5E46BC3GCJQPA7CQ well_its_no_cannibal_holocaust

Dead men tell no tales.
Anonymous

The plan was always to kill him? Hopefully Obama will be tried one day by an international tribunal for murder.
Carl Emmoth

No shit? What if he was captured and people all around the world commited terror to get him released _and_ he could still send a political message. Norway have this problem with Anders Brievik who is still alive and probably will have a political agenda.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1431811538 Josh Kim

Killing the enemy in war is not murder.
Anonymous

id expect a dumb fuckin hobbit like you to side with terrorists…its what asswipes like you do…cheerlead for saddams death and cry at bin ladens furneral…stay your punk ass away from fertilizer stores and gas stations…you comments just landed you on the official DHS Watch List
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1431811538 Josh Kim

Calm down for God’s sake.
Anonymous

nice piece, its trying to give credit to the bush administration for what Obama did….heheheheheh..im sure Bush left the capture and kill bin laden plan in the oval office desk drawer for president obama….dayummmm….you morons never stop trying to steal credit away from Obama and heaping it on yourselves
Anonymous

Who cares? Bin Laden dead is what we wanted and we got it.
Anonymous

like president obama sided with terrorist to close Gitmo?
Irish189

I’m not sure why people are so shocked that Bin Ladin may have been executed.

He could have put his hands in the air and i guarantee he still would have been shot. This was not find and capture, this was find and kill.

Morally and legally questionable? Probably

A shocker that the US would use potentially questionable tactics? not really
Anonymous

I am still curious as to why the WH confirmed it was SEAL TEAM SIX- when they were disbanded back in 1987?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1431811538 Josh Kim

They weren’t disbanded. They were just renamed to DEVGRU – Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1431811538 Josh Kim

They weren’t disbanded. They were just renamed to DEVGRU – Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
Anonymous

File this under “Shit you just don’t talk about.” But I guess we do now.
Jerry Baustian

The Onion is more credible than The New Yorker. Or is that New York Magazine? Or is that the New York Times Magazine? Or is that everything in the New York Times?

Yes.
Anonymous

Like grandma says, chit happens. So in honor of seal team six I’ll have another Bin Laden barkeeper for the uninitiated that is two shots and a splash of water.
Anonymous

Yes they were officially disbanded, and yes they were renamed DEVGRU. However, their missions and jurisdiction falls under a different command than that of the Navy SEALS. I am curious why the WH would use their former name.
Anonymous

I am sorry I must have read a different article that you – because no where does it mention giving credit to Bush.
Anonymous

I know. But since left wing swine always blather about charging George Bush….
Anonymous

Are you always this ignorant…or just on Mondays?
Anonymous

Then be better than them. I’m no Obama supporter, but what the president did was just.
Jerry Baustian

I am equally brilliant most days of the week, even on Mondays.

Perhaps you assume I have no basis for attacking the credibility of the publications mentioned. I will merely point out that I was not born yesterday.
Anonymous

Because Obozo is a moron and JB has loose lips that sink ships. You think BO had a hand in the decisions of this operation? Allow me to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn. They had to pull the Golfer-in-Chief off the links in the middle of his ‘game’ to watch the realtime video. Notice, he was sitting ring side, not the head of the table in the situation room.
Anonymous

WH is full of ignorant idealogues. What do they know about military operations, let alone what the name of operations group is?

….and it’s SEALs.
Anonymous

All’s fair in love and war….
Anonymous

Nope…just give credit where credit is due. The only plan BO has is for the destruction of our country and our economy. He couldn’t plan a military operation to escort him from the room. However, they did have to escort him off the golf course to come see what was going on.
Anonymous

How about we just impeach his butt?
Anonymous

And yours just earned you a gold star on your FBI file.
Jerry Baustian

The only reason to take him prisoner would be to interrogate him for useful information. Given that he was unlikely to reveal anything of value, and that his quarters had many computers and computer disks, there was no reason to let him live.
Anonymous

I question whether this was such a good idea to publish this report at this time. Seems as insensitive as the initial media leaks within hours/days/weeks of the operation. Afterall, look how long it took to release the official story on JFK’s assassination…Watergate…9/11 Commission…. Seems a little premature to me.
‘just sayin’

Can’t help wondering why this article at this time, nothing new in it- must be something you want our attention diverted from?????
BeggarBoy

Oh, come on, your blind hatred of President Obama keeps you from seeing how things work. Ever since Bin Laden was identified as the one responsible for 9/11 the Military and Intelligence Agencies got busy devising plans to find him, didn’t matter who was in the White House, and this has gone on continuously. So finally they find him and then they come up with the options and plans. It’s not the President’s job to think up the plan, it is his job to determine what the goal would be and to choose the best plan to implement it. Do you inform Pakistan or not? Do you bomb or send in a team? Do you drop the team in the compound or outside of town? Do they go in intending to kill or do they try to capture? Do you keep the body, hide it, or bury it at sea? Do you release the death photos or not? And so on. And whether or not you think or like that the goal was to kill not capture, you have to look at the results: the mission was accomplished, no innocents were killed, we lost none of the incredibly brave people who carried out the plan and they did it so well our enemies weren’t able to bring about a huge uprising against us. Looks like all the right choices were made, so yeah, credit where credit is due, yours and my President made the right call and everyone did the job they needed to do and they did it brilliantly.
Texan

O flip-flopper wanted ALL terrorists to get a fair trial…before he was president. Now, not so much.
Jerry Baustian

Impeachment would be the constitutionally acceptable procedure, if you think the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

But many on the Left do not acknowledge the authority of the Constitution; they think the International Criminal Court is the only tribunal where US presidents, vice-presidents, and secretaries of defense should be judged.

IMO Mr Obama has not committed any crimes, high or not. He will be judged by the voters in 15 months, and that day cannot come soon enough.
Anonymous

I was thinking along the same lines… an attempt to make the president appear strong, and “presidential” following weeks of embarrassing debt debates.
The report itself, as you pointed out, has nothing new in it.
Anonymous

I think it’s because the rhetoric from Obama regarding Gitmo, rendition, etc. has been totally the opposite of giving a “kill order” for Osama bin Laden and the WH wouldn’t admit that it WAS a “kill order.”

Obama could NOT have captured him and taken him into custody for questioning and for trial and execution at Gitmo because of the statements and policies that he and Eric Holder espoused earlier in the administration.

It’s sort of like the hypocrisy shown by using drones to kill anyone and everyone in a house in Pakistan, but taking an enemy combatant captive and jailing him at Gitmo is “against our principles as a nation”- or some such other bafflegab.

Obama’s policies are positively schizophrenic.
Anonymous

A double “thumbs up” to you, Texan!
Anonymous

I enjoyed reading your commentary on how things are done and praise you for a well structured assessment… intelligent and well thought out.

Call it hatred if you will, but I doubt that BO has the capability to make those decisions. The answers to the questions you raised were decisions more likely than not made by the military chiefs of staff, State Department and CIA. Yes, it was the right call to ‘take him out’, but details such that you suggest are far beyond the reasoning power of an idealogue.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1431811538 Josh Kim

Well said, Hanniballa
Anonymous

Yes, the hypocrisy today is horrific and overt. See the article (and accompanying cartoon at Newsbusters)

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2011/08/01/tucson-newspaper-political-cartoonist-fantasized-about-obama-sending-sTucson Newspaper Political Cartoonist Fantasized About Obama Sending SEALs to Assassinate Tea Party Republicans
Today Tucson congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) cast her first vote since she was critically injured in a January shooting.You’ll recall that in the weeks that followed, the media bemoaned the incivility — supposedly predominantly conservative in nature — of the political debate which had allegedly created a climate of hate.But there appears to to be no firestorm over how, just last week, Arizona Daily Star cartoonist David Fitzsimmons fantasized about President Obama sending a SEAL team to assassinate Tea Party-friendly House Republicans.
Morgan_Said

It’s likely the team would have needed Obama’s permission to kill him, if they had the option on mission rules.

On the other hand, I would love to know what the Seal Team’s recommendation was on the capture option. Somehow, I think, killing him was Obama’s decision.
Anonymous

LMAO! Has this article reminded anyone else of that silly ultimatum issued by the Bin Laden kids? I forgot all about it lol.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Botero/100000218372675 Alex Botero

I say good riddance to OBL . If anyone deserved to die , then it was him . Over 3000 people died on 9-11 alone . And we shouldn’t forget about the sailors from the USS Cole in 2000. Or the twin attacks on the embassies in Africa back in “98 . But I still have a hard time believing that it took us over 9 years to find him . Escobar was nowhere as difficult to shoot at .
Anonymous

You’re so cool! I don’t suppose I’ve read anything like this before. So nice to find somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. Really thank you for starting this up. This website is something that is needed on the web, someone with a little originality. Useful job for bringing something new to the internet!
kia soul