Special Forces had full authority to kill bin Laden: Panetta

Lalit K Jha
Washington, May 4 (PTI) The US Special Forces team
that hunted down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan were given the
full authority to kill the al Qaeda leader unless he
surrendered, CIA chief Leon Panetta who helmed the entire
operation has said.
Panetta said the forces were prepared to take Osama
alive but had been authorised to kill him if he held out a
threat.
"The authority here was to kill bin Laden. And
obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact
thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be
representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture
him. But they had full authority to kill him," Panetta told
the PBS news in an interview.
Panetta said there were 25 people that went on the
ground and they were carried in two Black Hawk helicopters
with one of them intended to go over a courtyard in the
compound and the other over the roof of the building.
While one group of men was supposed to have stepped
down on the ground and move into the compound, the other was
scheduled to step on the roof.
"What happened was that as the first helicopter had
those problems and had to set down on the ground, the other
helicopter made the decision not to go over the roof but to
set down so that both helicopters sat on the ground and both
teams immediately went into the compound itself," he said.
The men, he said, had to breach three or four walls to
get in there.
"And they immediately then went into the compound
itself and fought their way up to the third floor," he said.
Panetta conceded that he was not 100 per cent sure
that bin Laden was inside the compound, but he knew that this
was the best chance for them to get hold of the al Qaeda
leader after the Tora Bora failure.
"Well, the problem was, we were never really certain
about whether or not bin Laden was there. We had gathered an
awful lot of intelligence.
"And, obviously, when we found this compound --
because of the unique features of the compound -- and then
began to really take a look at it and continue surveillance
over that compound, we were able to look at the -- where the
families were located, the fact that the families resembled
the family of bin Laden," he said.
"We noticed an individual who was pacing in the
courtyard who at least had some of the appearances of it. But
we were never able to verify that in fact it was him," he
said.
Putting all the pieces together -- the security
precautions, the nature of the compound, and some of
additional information -- "we had the best intelligence case
that we ever had on bin Laden since Tora Bora", Panetta
believed.
"And I think it was that information that required
that we had an obligation to act. And that's why the president
took the steps that he did," Panetta said.
The CIA Director said the US had all the intelligence
that indicated that there was a good chance, the fact that
there were couriers who lived there who had a relationship
with bin Laden, and all of these other details that seemed to
-- when they came together, created a confidence level that
there was a pretty good chance he was there.
"But it was all circumstantial. We never had direct
evidence that he in fact had ever been there or was located
there.
"And that's why, in the end, it became even a more
courageous decision by the president to take this action,
because the reality was -- and we red-teamed this and talked
about other possibilities -- but the reality was that we could
have gone in there and -- and not found bin Laden at all," he
said.
He said interestingly one of the two brothers lived in
the guesthouse, while another lived on the first floor.
"So we had determined that this family, this hidden
family that was also there, was living on the second and third
floor of the compound itself," he said.
"The third floor of the compound on the balcony had a
seven-foot wall on that balcony which told us that they had
implemented some very heavy security measures on that. But we
could see clothes, and we could see some of the members of the
family on that third floor.
"So our assumption to those that were going in to
conduct the assault was that we assumed that if bin Laden was
there, he was probably on the second or third floor of that
compound," he said.