As soon as the Situation Room meeting ended in May 2009, President Obama took some of his advisers to the Oval Office of the White House and closed the door from within. They included White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and Deputy National Security Advisor Tom Donilon.
Obama told those people that he wanted the search for Osama bin Laden to be given the highest priority and that the progress report of this campaign should be brought to his desk every thirty days.
Barack Obama writes in his autobiography 'A Promised Land', "One day before the ninth anniversary of 9/11, CIA Director Leon Panetta and his number two Mike Morrell asked for time to meet me. Leon said" Mr. President Osama We have just got very early clues about bin Laden. "
"Our spies have found a man named Abu Ahmed Al Kuwaiti who serves as a messenger for al Qaeda and has close ties to Osama bin Laden. Our spies have monitored his phone and daily activities and They took us to a large enclosure on the outskirts of the city of Abbottabad, 35 km from Islamabad in Pakistan. Mike said that the area and size of that enclosure indicate that a large al-Qaeda-linked man is living there. "
'The Pacer' walking inside the yard
Two months later, on 14 December 2009, the pair of Leon and Mike arrived once again to meet Barack Obama. This time he was accompanied by a CIA officer and an analyst. These officers were the head of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center and America's Bin Laden campaign. These two people informed Obama of all the facts through which they reached that compound of Abbottabad.
Former CIA director Leon Panetta, referring to it in his autobiography 'Verdi Fights', wrote, "This yard was the largest of the surrounding plots. Nearly eight times larger than the adjacent plot. It was owned by Ibrahim and his brother. The gardener was not in such a condition that he could own this property worth one crore rupees. The amazing thing was that despite being the owner, Ibrahim was not staying in the main part of the building but staying in the guest house inside the compound. "
"This building had three floors. The top floor had a balcony, but this balcony was covered by a wall. Who stands the wall in front of the balcony? The house neither had any internet connection nor any Landline phone. Our surveillance had revealed that sometimes a person would go out of the house and walk fast inside the yard. "
"We named him 'The Passer'. Outside this house people who used to pick up the garbage used to come, but the people of the house used to burn their garbage inside the yard by not giving it to the garbageman." CIA spies believed that 'The Pacer' could be Osama bin Laden.
The option of destroying the yard by air attack
Obama was of the opinion that although the government of Pakistan was cooperating with the US and helping its operations in Afghanistan, it was not hidden from anyone that some elements in Pakistan's military and intelligence agency were Taliban and perhaps al-Qaeda Was sympathetic to him.
Obama believed that because of the proximity of the Abbottabad compound to the Pakistan Military Academy, the possibility of the fact that if Pakistanis were told anything about it, this information could reach the person in a hurry Will go, which he wanted to target.
Obama writes, "We had two options. The first option was to destroy the enclosure by airstrikes. The first advantage was that there was absolutely no risk of an American being killed on Pakistani soil. Publicly we They could deny that we had any hand in this attack. "
"But its disadvantage was that even if we were successful in destroying the enclosure, how would it ensure that bin Laden was present inside it? And if al-Qaeda denied it, how would we prove that Laden was killed? Secondly, there was no denying the danger that apart from the courtyard, people living around it could be killed. I told the Joint Chief of Staff, Vice-Chairman, Hoss Cartwright, that I am in this campaign Can not allow where there is a possibility of killing thirty-forty people even if it is not hundred percent decided that Osama is living inside that yard. "
Plan to enter Pakistan from Afghanistan
Obama further writes, "We had a second option to allow a special-ops mission in which the chosen soldiers would enter Pakistan by helicopter and attack the compound so fast that the Pakistani police or military would not have a chance to react. So I called Vice Admiral William McRaven to tell us what the attack would be like. "
Based on the pictures taken above, the CIA created a three-dimensional model of the Abbottabad compound and Vice-Admiral McRaven briefed President Obama about the attack. It was decided that Seals' selected troops would fly from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to one or two helicopters in the dark of night in the target yard in Pakistan.
In a meeting convened on March 29, Obama asked McRaven the question, what would be our stand if Pakistan's fighter jets intercepted our helicopters while entering or leaving?