President Barack Obama's May 8, 2011 '60 Minutes' Interview: A Synopsis

CBS, May 8, 2011, 7 PM (ET) "Sixty Minutes" aired an interview with President Barack Obama on May 8, 2011, Mother's Day, produced by Michael Radutzky and L. Franklin Devine. "Killing Bin Laden: The President's Story," an interview conducted by Scott Pelley (who will soon replace Katie Couric as evening news anchor), is synopsized below. The interview was actually conducted on Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at the White House.

What follows are the highlights of President Obama's answers, for those who may have missed the "Sixty Minutes" program. At one point, the clip from Obama's address to the nation at 11:38 PM (ET) on May 1, 2011 announcing the success of the mission was replayed: "Tonight, I can report to the United States and to the world that the U.S. has conducted an operation that has taken out Osama bin Laden."

When asked about the achievement of assassinating the world's most famous terrorist, Obama said, "Osama bin Laden was not only a symbol of terrorism, but a mass murderer who had eluded justice for so long. So many families that had been affected had given up hope. For us to definitively say we got the man who caused so many deaths here in the U.S. was something all of us were profoundly grateful to be a part of."

Asked if this was the most difficult decision he had ever faced as president, Obama called it "one of the most difficult decisions. Sending young men into conflict is always difficult. Writing a letter to someone who has lost a loved one (is difficult)." Obama continued, "This operation entailed enormous risk to the guys I sent in there. Ultimately I had so much confidence in the guys I sent in there to carry out our mission that I thought the benefits outweighed the risks."

Asked about his gut instinct to green light the raid, Obama said, "If gut instinct works, you are going to be good. If it doesn't, you are going to be re-running the things that are not definite.

Q: When did the CIA first bring this to you?

A: It did look promising from the beginning. Keep in mind that when I was still campaigning for president I said that if we ever got a shot at bin Laden we were going to take it. I had said that, if it is in Pakistan, and we have no other way, we are going to go ahead and take it. We had a strategic imperative to go after him."

Obama said that upon taking office he told Leon Panetta: "We need to redouble our efforts in hunting bin Laden down. We need to put more efforts and urgency into that mission. By the time they (intelligence authorities) came to me they had the image, the location, and the factors that led them to conclude that this was the best evidence we had of bin Laden's whereabouts since Tora Bora. We had no photograph. We had no direct evidence of his presence. What I told them when they first came to me was: Even if you are dealing with a stronger intelligence case, let's also build an intelligence plan so that, if we do get him, how are we going to deal with him?

They first came to me in August of last year with evidence of a compound. At that point, they (the CIA) had enough that they felt that it was appropriate for us to start doing some planning. From that point on we started doing some planning. Vigorous planning did not begin until early this year. Not only did an action plan get developed, but our guys got started practicing." (Reports say a scale model was built at an Air Force base in Afghanistan.)

When asked how active his involvement in the project was, President Obama responded: "About as active as any project that I have been involved with since I've been President."

The president continued: "We have extraordinary guys: the best of the best. I was not involved in designing the original plan. They'd bring them back to me. Each iteration, we'd discuss how this operation might proceed because there was more than one way that we might go about this. In some ways, sending in choppers and actually putting our guys on the ground entailed some greater risks than some other options, but it was important for us to be able to say we got the guy and to be able to exploit the information on the ground. It was important not only to protect the lives of our guys but also to minimize casualties in the neighborhood." (A residential neighborhood).

Q: Were you surprised (that the fugitive was, indeed, Osama bin Laden)?

A: There had been some discussion that this guy might have been hiding in plain sight, blending into the crowd. I think we were surprised when we learned that this compound had been there for 5 or 6 years and it was in an area that you would think would have attracted some attention. How could he maintain a compound like this for this long without some sort of tip off? The elements of the compound were designed so that nobody could see in. It was clearly designed to make sure that bin Laden was protected from public view. We know he was there for 5 years.

Q: Did he move out?

A: "That we don't know yet." The president added, "Our belief is that he was there during that time."

Q: This was your decision. What was the most difficult part?

A: The most difficult part is that you are sending guys into harm's way. If I'm sending those guys in and Murphy's Law applies, can we still get our guys out? That's Point #1. These guys are going in the darkest of night, and they don't know what they're going to find there. They don't know if the building is rigged, if there are explosives that are triggered if a particular door is opened. My number 1 concern: If I send them in, can I get them out? Point Number 2: ( I cannot praise our intelligence agencies enough; they did the best job with the slenderest bits of info). At the end of the day, this was still a 55/45% situation. Had he not been there, there would have been significant consequences. We're going into the sovereign land of another country. If it turns out that it's a wealthy prince from Dubai, we've got problems. There were risks geo-politically, but my Number One concern is can our guys get in and get out safely? The fact that our Special Forces have become so good -- these guys perform at a level that, 20 or 30 years ago would not have been possible -- gave me the confidence to say, "Let's go ahead."

Q: Did you have dissenters?

A: One of the things that we've done here (at the White House) is to build a team that is collegial and there's not a lot of sniping and backbiting after the fact. Every time I go into the situation room, I expect every one of them to give their best assessment. It meant that the plan was sharper and we had thought through all of our doubts. It's not as though people voicing doubts had voiced anything I had not already thought of. You think about Black Hawk Down. You think about what happened with the Iranian rescue, and I am very sympathetic to the decision that other presidents have made and that something might go wrong, because these are tough, complicated operations. Absolutely. The day before I was thinking about this quite a bit.

Q: It sounded like you had thought about the 55/45% and you had, at some point, concluded that the advantages outweighed the risks?

A: The reason is, we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against Al Qaeda ever since 2001, and I said to myself, if we have a chance of not completely defeating but badly injuring Al Qaeda, it was worth not only the political risks but the risks to our men.Q: How did the weekend's disastrous tornadoes in Alabama and the South affect this?

Q: You had the tornadoes in the South going on at the same time?

A; I made the decision Thursday night and then we flew off to view the tornado damage (in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and elsewhere) and to give a speech. And then there was the White House Press Corps dinner. This was in the back of my mind all weekend.

Q: Was it hard to keep focus?

A; Yes.

Q: Did you want to tell someone?

A: One of the great successes is that we were able to keep this secret. The understanding that ANY leak could end up not only compromising the mission but killing some of the men we sent in there. The vast majority of my most senior aides did not know that we were doing this. There were times that you wanted to go talk this through with some more folks, and that just wasn't an option."

At this point, the clip from Obama's address to the nation was replayed: "Tonight, I can report to the United States and to the world that the U.S. has conducted an operation that has taken out Osama Bin laden." This excerpt from the national address at 11:38 PM (ET) on May 1, 2011 summed up the press conference message that set off the current news cycle and told the world that Osama bin Laden had been successfully assassinated.

When asked about the achievement by Pelley, Obama said, "Osama bin Laden was not only a symbol of terrorism, but a mass murderer who had eluded justice for so long. So many families that had been affected, had given up hope. For us to definitively say we got the man who caused so many deaths here in the U.S. was something all of us were profoundly grateful to be a part of."

Asked if this was the most difficult decision he had ever faced as president, Obama called it "one of the most difficult decisions. Sending young men into conflict is always difficult. Writing a letter to someone who has lost a loved one (is difficult)." Obama continued, "This operation entailed enormous risk to the guys I sent in there. Ultimately I had so much confidence in the guys I sent in there to carry out our mission that I thought the benefits outweighed the risks."

Asked about his gut instinct to green light the raid, Obama said, "If gut instinct works, you are going to be good. If it doesn't, you are going to be re-running the things that are not definite over and over."

Q: When did the CIA first bring this to you?

A: It did look promising from the beginning. (July) Keep in mind that when I was still campaigning for president I said that if we ever got a shot at Bin laden we were going to take it. I had said that, if it is in Pakistan, and we have no other way, we are going to go ahead and take it. We had a strategic imperative to go after him.

Obama said that, upon taking office, he told Leon Panetta: "We need to redouble our efforts in hunting bin Laden down. We need to put more efforts and urgency into that mission. By the time they (intelligence authorities) came to me they had the image, the location, and the factors that led them to conclude that this was the best evidence we had of bin Laden's whereabouts since Tora Bora. We had no photograph. We had no direct evidence of his presence. What I told them when they first came to me was: Even if you are dealing a stronger intelligence case, let's also build an intelligence plan so that, if we do get him, how are we going to deal with him?

"They first came to me in August of last year with evidence of a compound. At that point, they (the CIA) had enough that they felt that it was appropriate for us to start doing some planning. From that point on we started doing some planning. Vigorous planning did not begin until early this year. Not only did an action plan get developed, but our guys got started practicing." (Reports say a scale model was built at an Air Force base in Afghanistan.)

When asked how active his involvement in the project was, President Obama responded: "About as active as any project that I have been involved with since I've been President." Reports say he attended 5 secret top-secret meetings with his security people, being briefed on all aspects of the operation and the various contingencies available to the team.

The president continued: "We have extraordinary guys: the best of the best. I was not involved in designing the original plan. They'd bring them back to me. Each iteration, we'd discuss how this operation might proceed because there was more than one way that we might go about this. In some ways, sending in choppers and actually putting our guys on the ground entailed some greater risks than some other options, but it was important for us to be able to say we got the guy and to be able to exploit the information on the ground. It was important not only to protect the lives of our guys but also to minimize casualties in the neighborhood." (A residential neighborhood of Islamabad, Abbottabad).

Q: Were you surprised (that the fugitive was, indeed, Osama bin Laden)?

A: There had been some discussion that this guy might have been hiding in plain sight, blending into the crowd. I think we were surprised when we learned that this compound had been there for 5 or 6 years and it was in an area that you would think would have attracted some attention. (The Pakistani version of West Point was only a thousand or so yards away). How could he maintain a compound like this for this long without some sort of tip off ? The elements of the compound were designed so that nobody could see in. It was clearly designed to make sure that bin Laden. was protected from public view. We know he was there for 5 years.

Q: Did he move out?

A: "That we don't know yet." The president added, "Our belief is that he was there during that time."

Q: This was your decision. What was the most difficult part?

A: The most difficult part is that you are sending guys into harm's way. If I'm sending those guys in and Murphy's Law applies, can we still get our guys out? That's Point #1. These guys are going in in the darkest of night, and they don't know what they're going to find there. They don't know if the building is rigged, if there are explosives that are triggered if a particular door is opened. My number one concern: If I send them in, can I get them out? Point Number 2: ( I cannot praise our intelligence services enough; they did the best job with the slenderest bits of info). At the end of the day, this was still a 55/45% situation. Had he (bin Laden) not been there, there would have been significant consequences. We're going into the sovereign land of another country. If it turns out that it's a wealthy prince from Dubai, we've got problems. There were risks geo-politically, but my Number One concern is can our guys get in and get out safely? The fact that our Special Forces have become so good -- these guys perform at a level that, 20 or 30 years ago would not have been possible -- gave me the confidence to say, "Let's go ahead."

Q: Did you have dissenters?

A: One of the things that we've done here (at the White House) is to build a team that is collegial and there's not a lot of sniping and backbiting after the fact. Every time I go into the situation room, I expect every one of them to give their best assessment. It meant that the plan was sharper and we had thought through all of our doubts. It's not as though people voicing doubts had voiced anything I had not already thought of. You think about Black Hawk Down. You think about what happened with the Iranian rescue, and I am very sympathetic to the decision that other presidents have made and that something might go wrong, because these are tough, complicated operations. Absolutely. The day before I was thinking about this quite a bit.

Q: It sounded like you had thought about the 55/45% and you had, at some point, concluded that the advantages outweighed the risks?

A: The reason is, we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against Al Qaeda ever since 2001, and I said to myself, if we have a chance of not completely defeating but badly injuring Al Qaeda, it was worth not only the political risks but also the risks to our men.

Q: How did the weekend's disastrous tornadoes in Alabama and the South affect this?

A; I made the decision Thursday night and then we flew off to view the tornado damage and to give a speech. And then there was the White House Press Corps dinner. This was in the back of my mind all weekend.

Q: Was it hard to keep focus?
A; Yes.

Q: Did you want to tell someone?

A: One of the great successes is that we were able to keep this secret. The understanding that ANY leak could end up not only compromising the mission but killing some of the men we sent in there. The vast majority of my most senior aides did not know that we were doing this. There were times that you wanted to go talk this through with some

Q: What was the mood as you watched the raid live?

A: Tense.

Q: People talking?

A: Yeah, but doing a lot of listening as well, because we were able to monitor the situation in real time, getting reports back from the head of the operation in real time There were big chunks of time when we didn't know what was happening.

Those were the longest 40 minutes of my life with the possible exception of when Sasha got meningitis when she was 3 months old and I was waiting for the Dr. to tell me that she was all right.

We were monitoring the situation and we knew as events unfolded. We could not get information about what was happening inside the compound immediately. There were flashes of gunfire and explosions. We also knew when one of the helicopters went down in a way that wasn't according to plan.

Q: It (the mission) got off to a bad start?

A: It did not go exactly according to plan, but that is exactly where all the work that had gone into anticipating things that could go wrong paid off.

Q: You had to blow up some walls?

A: We had to blow up some walls. There was a point where they (the guys) said, "Geronimo has been killed." (Geronimo E-KIA) Geronimo was the code name for bin Laden. At that point, these guys were operating in the dark with all kinds of stuff going on, but at that point, we were cautiously optimistic.

Q: What was your reaction?

A: I was relieved and I wanted to make sure those guys got over the Pakistani. Border and landed safely. And I think I was deeply proud and deeply satisfied with my team.

When they landed, we had very strong confirmation that it was him. Photographs had been taken. Facial analysis indicated that it was him. We had not yet done DNA testing, but at that pint we were 95% sure. (Another report says a Navy SEAL had to lie down next to the 6'4" bin Laden to get an idea of his height, since they had forgotten a simple tape measure.)

Q: What was your reaction to the photos?

A: It was him. We discussed this internally. We were absolutely certain this was him. There is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden It is important to make sure that very graphic photos of someone who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, as a propaganda tool that is not who we are. We don't trot out this stuff. He was deserving of what he received, and Americans are glad that he's gone but we don't need to spike the football and given the graphic nature of the photos I think this would create some retaliation. Certainly there is no doubt among Al Qaeda members that he is dead. The fact of the matter is that you will not see B.L walking on this Earth again.

Q: Why the burial at sea?

A: It was a joint decision. I think that what we tried to do was consult with experts in Islamic law and ritual to find something that was appropriate and respectful of the body. Frankly, we took more care of him than bin Laden did when he killed 3,000 people. He didn't have much care of how he treated us when he killed 3,000 people.

Q: What was the first thing you did?

A: I think I walked up with my team and I just said, "We got him."

Video is shown with the president saying:
"Good job, National Security Team. I'm proud of you. You guys did a great job."
It was a moment of great pride for me to see our capacity as a nation to execute something this difficult this well.

Q: You didn't tell anyone because you didn't trust them?

A: It was that important for us to carry out our operation in secrecy. If I'm not revealing it to my closest aides, I'm certainly not going to reveal it to people I don't know.

We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden. inside of Pakistan, but we don't know who or what that was. Inside? Outside? We have to investigate and the Pakistani government has to investigate. They have indicated they have a profound interest in knowing. These are questions we are not going to be able to answer 3 or 4 days after the event.

Most of the supplies for U.S. troops in Afghanistan must move through Pakistan and it remains a valuable source of information.

Q: How much did Pakistan help?

A: What I can say is that Pakistan since 9/11 has been a strong counter-terrorism partner with us. There have been times that we have had disagreements. There have been times that they might have hesitated. Those difficulties are real and they will continue, but the fact is that we have been able to kill more terrorists on Pakistani soil than almost anywhere else. I think this will be an important moment in which Pakistan and the US get together and say, "OK. We've gotten bin Laden. Are there ways for us to work more effectively?' That is going to be important in our national security.

The U.S. had had the compound under surveillance for months. Information confiscated from his lair (10 cell phones, is going to take some time to exploit the information we were able to gather on site. These guys have the presence of mind to gather up a whole bunch of bin Laden's information. It's just an indication of the extraordinary work that they do.

Q: Any indication of what they've found?

A: We are now analyzing that information. It leads to other high value targets. We have a better sense of existing plots (one against U.S. railways). And we now have the opportunity to really finally defeat at least Al Qaeda in that border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. That doesn't mean Al Qaeda hasn't metastasized to other parts of the world, but it does mean we've got a chance to really deliver a fatal blow if we follow through aggressively in the months to come

The president then humanized the story by recounting the story of a child orphaned by 9/11 and went on to say, in answer to the question, "In some ways, this is the end of a chapter, where do we go from here?

A question was asked about leaving Afghanistan now:

A: When I came in, I said, we are gonna' end the war in Iraq and focus on Afghanistan. 100,000 troops have been removed from Iraq. We did increase our troop levels in Afghanistan so we could go after them. We had denigrated Al Qaeda even before we got bin Laden. The work we've done in Afghanistan helped in taking out bin Laden. We are going to begin drawing down our troops in Afghanistan but we have got to make sure we leave an Afghanistan that can support itself and does not again become a haven for terrorist activity. Keep in mind that what has happened on Sunday (May 1, 2011) that we can focus on Al Qaeda. We must train Afghans, focus on the threats to our country, but we don't need to have a perpetual footprint of the size that we have now. This sends a signal to those who might have been affiliated with terrorist organizations that they're going to be on the losing side of this proposition. It might make them have second thoughts. It makes more sense for them to figure out how we (they) are going to be involved in a political process against folks that they know don't give up.

Q: Any kind of special celebration planned for the Navy SEAL Team 6 that conducted the raid?
A: They'll pretty much get whatever they want. These guys are so low-key; they focus on getting the job done. Job well done.