WASHINGTON, May 2, 2011 – A senior national security
official today provided insight into the decision process
leading to the raid by U.S. special operations forces that
killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan
yesterday.
John Brennan, assistant to the president
for homeland security, called the attack a defining moment
in the war against the terror group that killed 3,000
Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Americans from the Defense
Department and the CIA worked together to cut off “the head
of the snake known as al-Qaida,” he said during a White
House news conference today.
“It is going to have, I
think, very important reverberations throughout the area, on
the al-Qaida network in that area,” he said. “This is
something that we've been after for 15 years. It goes back
before 9/11.”
Soon after taking office, President
Barack Obama ordered the CIA and DOD to find and kill or
capture bin Laden. Last year, intelligence indicated the
terrorist was holed up in a million dollar compound in
Abbottabad, Pakistan, –- a well-off suburb of the capital
city of Islamabad.
Months of relentless examination
strengthened that conclusion. The president polled all
members of his national security team on whether they felt
the intelligence on bin Laden was valid, Brennan said.
“That's what he does,” Brennan said of Obama's
decision-making process. “He goes around the room, and he
wants to hear people's views.”
Intelligence seldom is
a sure thing, Brennan said. Often, he explained, evidence is
circumstantial and analysts build a case for one action or
another. In this case -- a unilateral attack well inside a
friendly nation -- a risk of making the wrong decision
exists.
“That's what the president wanted to know -–
as well as the different ... courses of action,” Brennan said.
“So this was debated across the board, and the president
wanted to make sure at the end that he had the views of all
the principals.”
On April 29, the president made the
decision to go after the al-Qaida leader. The CIA analysts
were confident bin Laden was in the compound, Brennan said,
and there were many supporters of launching the raid.
“But the president had to look at all the different
scenarios, all the different contingencies that are out
there,” he said. “What would have been the downside if, in
fact, it wasn't bin Laden? What would have happened if a
helicopter went down? So he decided that this is so
important to the security of the American people that he was
going to go forward with this.”
Brennan said
questions remain about how bin Laden could have stayed at
the compound as long as he did.
“People have been
referring to this as ‘hiding in plain sight,'” he said.
“Clearly, this was something that was considered as a
possibility. Pakistan is a large country. We are looking
right now at how he was able to hold out there for so long,
and whether or not there was any type of support system
within Pakistan that allowed him to stay there.”
U.S.
officials are talking with the Pakistanis and will pursue
all leads on what type of support system and benefactors
that bin Laden might have had in the nation.
“I think
it's inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support
system in the country that allowed him to remain there for
an extended period of time,” Brennan said. “I am not going
to speculate about what type of support he might have had on
an official basis inside of Pakistan.” |
