Countdown bin Laden

The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice

Chris Wallace, Mitch Weiss

• Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781982176532
• eBook ISBN: 9781982176549
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Following Chris Wallace’s “riveting” (The New York Times) and “propulsive” (Time) first book Countdown 1945 comes a deeply reported, revelatory, and thrillingly told account of the final months of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

On August 27, 2010, three CIA officers ask for a private meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta. During that secret session, they tell Panetta that agents have tracked a courier with deep Al Qaeda ties to a three-story house at the end of a dead-end street in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But they say it’s more than a house—it’s a heavily protected fortress. No one in the meeting says the name bin Laden. They don’t have to. Everyone understands that finally, after nearly a decade, maybe, just maybe, they’ve found the world’s most wanted man.

In Countdown bin Laden, celebrated journalist and CNN anchor and Max host Chris Wallace delivers a vivid account of the final eight months of intelligence gathering, national security strategizing, and meticulous military planning that leads to the climactic mission when SEAL Team Six closes in on its target.

The book delivers new information collected from Wallace’s in-depth interviews with more than a dozen central figures, including Admiral William H. McRaven—leader of the operation in Pakistan—as well as CIA Director Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and the SEAL Team Six special operator who kills Osama bin Laden. Wallace also brings to life the human elements of this story, talking to families who lost loved ones on 9/11, sharing what relatives of SEAL Team Six went through, and bringing us inside the tense Situation Room during the raid.

Countdown bin Laden is a historical thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting about the race to apprehend and bring to justice the mastermind of the most consequential terrorist attack in American history.

COUNTDOWN: 1 DAY

April 30, 2011

Jalalabad, Afghanistan

Word quickly spread across the base: A briefing! O’Neill, Chesney, and other members of their team hurried to the squadron building. This was it. Either the mission had gotten the green light, or they were packing up to go home.

Captain Van Hooser, the top SEAL Team 6 commander, didn’t waste any time.

“The president authorized you guys to launch,” he said. “It’s either today or tomorrow.”

O’Neill was excited. They were going! They were really going to do it! Logistically, this was the best time for a raid. Conditions would be perfect—the moon was in its first phase, a new moon, meaning the skies would be dark. Perfect cover.

Within the hour, McRaven decided to postpone the raid until Sunday. Meteorologists predicted low-lying fog along the route. Fog probably wouldn’t cause major problems for the Black Hawks, but the temperature was getting close to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. If it went higher, they’d have to take men off the helicopters to save fuel—and they barely had enough soldiers to begin with.

And McRaven took something else into consideration: the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He wondered what would happen if they launched the operation on Saturday and they ran into trouble? If the president was at the event and had to be pulled out, the entire press corps would start asking questions. Why take any unnecessary risk, especially when conditions were supposed to be better on Sunday? So McRaven decided to delay for a day.

He called Panetta and told him. Panetta, in turn, contacted everyone on his team. Word spread among the SEALs.

With the delay, O’Neill decided to do something he’d been putting off. He headed back to barracks, but veered into the admin offices for a pen and paper. On the way out he ran into Maya, the CIA liaison.

“Hey, what’s going on?” O’Neill asked.

“I’m nervous. Aren’t you?”

O’Neill shook his head no. “I do this every night. I fly somewhere. I fuck with some people. This is just a longer flight,” he said. “But you? Now I see. You need to be right, since we’re about to invade a country to take out someone we’re only guessing is there. Based on years of your work. So, yeah, I understand why you’re nervous,” he said.

He didn’t stay around to talk. He went to his cubicle and sat down in the chair at the small desk by his bed. He spread out the paper and drew squiggly lines to bring the pen to life. It was time to write letters to his children.

Even with all the military planning and firepower behind him, O’Neill felt this was the end. There were just too many risks. If The Pacer was bin Laden, the house had to be booby-trapped to kill invaders. There had to be escape tunnels and Al Qaeda fighters ready to give their lives to protect their leader. The Pakistani military had all sorts of monitoring equipment to protect their airspace.

He was on a team that would land on the roof of the main house. For weeks, they’d been jokingly calling themselves the Martyrs’ Brigade, because they knew the building was going to blow as soon as their feet hit the roof. O’Neill had no regrets about the mission. This was his job. And if there was even a slight chance of getting bin Laden, he’d sign up for that anytime. And he had. So had the other guys on his team.

He had to say goodbye, in letters to his children and family members—letters that would only be delivered if he was killed in the raid.

O’Neill didn’t write to his four-year-old and seven-year-old daughters. He wrote to their adult selves, his girls as twenty-four- and twenty-seven-year-old women. They were pages filled with apologies—for not being there for their graduations and weddings, for missing out on their celebrations and heartbreaks. He thanked them for being there for each other, and for standing strong by their mother. He knew they’d grow up to be wonderful women.

As he wrote, tears fell on the paper. He had to stop at times to compose himself. This was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

When he finished, he wrote to his wife, brother, sisters, his mom and dad. When he finished those, he put all the letters in a manila envelope then walked back to headquarters. He had to find someone who would drop the letters in the mail if he didn’t come back alive.

He couldn’t give them to his companions to mail. If something happened to him, they probably wouldn’t be coming back, either.

Washington, D.C.

President Obama stabbed a tiny Old Glory pin into the lapel of his tuxedo jacket and chuckled at one of the funny lines he’d rehearsed. He was less than thrilled about going to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It had already been a long day.

Earlier in the afternoon, he’d met with Panetta and the national security team to go over the final details—where everyone would be when the raid happened. Some would watch events unfold in the Situation Room. Panetta, Morell, and their staff would watch from CIA headquarters in Langley. But no one was fooling themselves. Once the helicopters took off, it was McRaven’s show.

After the meeting, Obama started going over his material for the dinner. Every president since Calvin Coolidge had attended the event at least once since it began in 1921. Back then, it was a small gathering, an event where politicians and the journalists who covered them for newspapers set aside their differences for one night and poked fun at each other.

Over the years it had morphed into a big Hollywood-like production, a black-tie event broadcast to the nation, where hundreds of journalists, politicians, business leaders, and stars mingled in a hotel ballroom. Usually featuring a comedian, the dinner had turned into a celebrity roast of sorts. And for one night, the president was expected to become a stand-up comic.

It was the last thing Obama needed. The following day he’d oversee one of the greatest military gambles attempted by the United States in decades. What he needed right now was a good night’s sleep. But Obama had attended the last two Correspondents’ Dinners. If he blew this one off with such little notice, it would raise red flags—in a roomful of nosy reporters. He had to attend. But no one said he had to like it.

A few days earlier, Hawaii had released Obama’s long form birth certificate to the press, proving the president truly was born in the United States, and not Kenya. That seemed to have silenced Donald Trump and his fellow “birther” conspiracy theorists—at least for the time being. The birth certificate was still on his speechwriters’ minds when they gathered in the White House to help Obama with his monologue. None of them knew anything about the planned operation.

He did ask them to change a line that made fun of the birthers. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was considering a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. So they wrote that Pawlenty had been hiding the fact that his full name was “Tim bin Laden Pawlenty.” Obama suggested they change “bin Laden” to Hosni, the name of the embattled former Egyptian president. The writers didn’t like the “improvement.”

After the writers left, the president called McRaven. The admiral assumed Obama wanted to talk about the mission. “We’re all set, Mr. President, but the weather in Pakistan was a bit foggy so I decided to wait until tomorrow. We’ll be good to go on Sunday.”

“Well, don’t push it until you’re ready,” Obama said, adding that he wanted to wish McRaven and his men good luck.

“Tell them that I am proud of them. Make sure you tell them that, Bill,” the president said.

“I will, sir.”

Then Obama asked McRaven one more question: “Well, Bill, what do you think?”

“I don’t know, sir,” McRaven said simply. “If he is there, we will get him. And if he’s not, we’ll come home.”

The admiral paused for a moment. He wanted to let the president know that he appreciated his leadership. “Thank you for making this tough decision.”

The call was over. Now all McRaven had to do was live up to his promise.

That evening, the motorcade pulled up to the Washington Hilton. When the doors of the presidential limousine, known as “The Beast,” opened, Obama and his wife, Michelle, stepped out, looking glamorous.

In a few minutes, they would be hobnobbing with the Washington press corps, celebrities, and billionaires. Inside, they posed for pictures with some of the guests, and made small talk with media magnate Rupert Murdoch, actor Sean Penn, and actress Scarlett Johansson.

The president smiled as he “quietly balanced on a mental high wire.” His thoughts were on Jalalabad, McRaven, the two dozen Navy SEALs, and the compound.

As he sat on the dais, he scanned the glittering crowd. There at a nearby table sat Donald J. Trump. Perfect. Half of the president’s material was aimed at “The Donald.”

Leon Panetta was in the crowd, too, sitting at the Time magazine table. He was tense in his tuxedo, but trying hard not to show it. It was surreal, he thought. Actor George Clooney and director Steven Spielberg were seated at his table, and everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves. If these people only knew what the hell is about to happen, what kind of mission we’re trying to conduct…, he thought to himself.

When it was Obama’s turn, he opened with a video segment called, “I Am a Real American,” which poked fun at the controversy about his birth certificate. When it was over, he stood up. He faced the audience, flashing his big wide smile.

“My fellow Americans,” Obama began, emphasizing “fellow.”

He rattled off joke after joke. About halfway in, he focused on Trump. After weeks of attacks, the president got his revenge.

“I know he’s taken some flak lately,” Obama said, “but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate issue to rest than Donald. That’s because he can get back to the issues that matter, like, Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

Obama also took a jab at Trump’s plans to run for presidency in 2012.

“We all know about your credentials,” he snarked.

Trump didn’t laugh. He sat there with a sour face.

But Obama wasn’t done. He said the billionaire businessman could bring change to the White House, transforming it from a stately mansion into a tacky casino with a whirlpool in the garden.

“Donald Trump owns the Miss USA pageant, which is great for Republicans. It will streamline their search for vice president,” he joked.

The audience howled. Donald Trump seethed.

Obama couldn’t imagine what was going through Trump’s mind during the few minutes he laid into him. And he didn’t care.

But the same reporters who laughed at Obama’s jokes that night would continue to give Trump plenty of airtime. And what the president could not have envisioned was that—as preposterous as it sounded—Trump would one day sit in Obama’s chair in the Oval Office. In fact, the beating he took at the dinner may have been part of his motivation.

COUNTDOWN: 10 HOURS

May 1, 2011

Jalalabad, Afghanistan

At dawn, the little plane landed at the sprawling base in Jalalabad. McRaven grabbed his gear and bounded down the ramp to the runway. A young petty officer saluted crisply and drove him to the SEAL compound.

They rolled up to the Joint Operations Center, a glorified name for a squat, rambling plywood barn. One end of the building was set up as the Tactical Operations Center for this mission, with banks of computers, telephones, and flat-screen monitors on the walls. Van Hooser greeted McRaven at the door and gave him a quick rundown.

They’d have a final briefing later in the day, he said. After that, the boys would get some rest until it was time to suit up.

McRaven smiled. He knew he could count on Van Hooser to keep things running smoothly. He’d be in direct contact with the SEAL ground commander and provide McRaven with updates as the raid unfolded. Colonel JT Thompson, the man in charge of the helicopters, would report directly to Van Hooser.

Others in the building had their defined roles to play. McRaven had assembled fifteen people from the CIA, air force, and his own staffers who would provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—“ISR” in military-speak.

The room was about thirty feet from one end to the other, and perhaps fifteen feet wide. With everybody packed inside, the command center would be tight and noisy. His staff had built McRaven a tiny office just inside the front door—a space no bigger than a closet. This gave the admiral some privacy if he needed to talk to Panetta and the team in Virginia. From inside his alcove, McRaven could still see the action unfolding on the monitors and hear the radio communications. For the most part, he expected to keep the door open. But if the big room got too loud, he could shut himself away with his telephone and computer screen.

McRaven was impressed at the setup. They were up and running. It looked like the weather was going to cooperate. Meteorology had just sent an update: The valleys were clear of fog; the temperature would be 18 degrees Celsius, or 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Perfect. Those were the final pieces of the puzzle. The mission was a go. That’s what h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Countdown: 247 Days
• Countdown: 236 Days
• Countdown: 233 Days
• Countdown: 232 Days
• Countdown: 205 Days
• Countdown: 198 Days
• Countdown: 192 Days
• Countdown: 182 Days
• Countdown: 181 Days
• Countdown: 179 Days
• Countdown: 177 Days
• Countdown: 138 Days
• Countdown: 133 Days
• Countdown: 121 Days
• Countdown: 120 Days
• Countdown: 107 Days
• Countdown: 93 Days
• Countdown: 75 Days
• Countdown: 70 Days
• Countdown: 65 Days
• Countdown: 58 Days
• Countdown: 48 Days
• Countdown: 35 Days
• Countdown: 33 Days
• Countdown: 26 Days
• Countdown: 25 Days
• Countdown: 24 Days
• Countdown: 20 Days
• Countdown: 18 Days
• Countdown: 16 Days
• Countdown: 13 Days
• Countdown: 12 Days
• Countdown: 7 Days
• Countdown: 6 Days
• Countdown: 4 Days
• Countdown: 3 Days
• Countdown: 2 Days
• Countdown: 1 Day
• Countdown: 10 Hours
• Countdown: Geronimo
• Countdown: Aftermath
• Epilogue
• Postscript
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Image Credits
• Copyright