What Did Seal Team 6 Find In Bin Laden's Compound? SHOCKING Future Plots Revealed...
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 37 minutes
Words per Minute
181.28145
Summary
In this episode, we cover the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 1st, 2011. What was found in the compound? Was it enough to capture the world's most wanted man?
Transcript
00:00:00.720
And we are live. What's up, guys? Welcome to Fed It, man. Today we're going to be talking about Osama bin Laden and him getting raided by SEAL TM6.
00:00:07.620
This is part three of the 9-11 series, guys. Let's get into it. We've got a lot to cover on this one.
00:00:14.220
I was a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, okay, guys? HSI.
00:00:17.520
The cases that I did mostly were human smuggling and drug trafficking.
00:00:26.040
And Dr. Lafredo confirmed lacerations due to stepping on glass.
00:00:33.880
You see him reaching in his jacket. You don't know.
00:00:38.500
We were facing two pounds of two meditative murder.
00:00:43.400
Young Slime Life here and after referred to as YSL.
00:00:46.020
This is 6ix9ine. And then this is Billy Seiko right here.
00:00:49.500
Now, when they first started, guys, 6ix9ine ran with me.
00:00:53.600
You know, I'm bobbing my head like, hey, this shit lit.
00:01:06.700
Trapper Bush Icy arrested after shooting at King of Diamonds.
00:01:10.720
This is the one that's going to fuck him up because this gun is not tracing.
00:01:15.400
Here's your boy 42 Doug right here on the left.
00:01:19.400
They can effectively link him to paying an underage girl.
00:01:27.180
Suspect to set down a back path on the site of the second explosion.
00:01:32.260
Two terrorist brothers, the Zokar Sarnab and Tamerlan Sarnab.
00:01:36.780
When the cartels shipped drugs into the country.
00:01:41.580
Trading secrets with the Russians for monetary compensation.
00:01:45.260
The largest corrupt police bust in New Orleans history.
00:01:52.980
We're going to go over his past, the gang guys, so that this all makes sense.
00:02:06.320
Today, like I said, we're going to cover part three of the 9-11 series, guys.
00:02:09.660
Today's episode is going to be on the Bin Laden raid.
00:02:12.820
And what the SEAL Team 6 was able to recover from his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when
00:02:24.140
So let me just hit share screen with y'all real fast.
00:02:28.260
We're going to go ahead and cover a 60-minute interview with a guy named, it goes by Mark
00:02:33.800
Owen, but his real name, I think, is Matt Reset or something like that.
00:02:37.640
He actually ended up writing a book about this raid, which ended up costing him a lot of money,
00:02:44.180
which we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail.
00:02:46.080
But let's go ahead and cover this 60-minute interview because it's really interesting to see
00:02:54.540
So without further ado, let's get right into this bad boy.
00:03:01.060
He says it's a No Easy Day is the name of the book.
00:03:03.900
A tribute to the hundreds of Americans who gathered intelligence, planned and trained in
00:03:09.580
the 10-year pursuit of the world's most wanted man.
00:03:13.520
SEAL Team 6, he told us, just took care of the last 40 minutes.
00:03:17.720
Was this a mission, was the plan to kill Osama bin Laden or capture him before you went in?
00:03:35.420
I think their biggest thing was obviously to capture him, right, if they can, so they can gain
00:03:41.780
If they got a chance to kill him, you know, it is what it is.
00:03:45.380
I mean, this is the most wanted terrorist of all time, but I could see why it was capture
00:03:49.400
first, kill if you must, because obviously debriefing him would yield a whole bunch of
00:03:54.860
It was made very clear to us throughout our training for this that, hey, if given the
00:04:02.580
opportunity, this is not an assassination, you will capture him alive if feasible.
00:04:10.020
So that was the preferred thing to take him alive, if you could.
00:04:15.080
I mean, we're not, we're not there to assassinate somebody.
00:04:20.960
And also just want to let you guys know, also just to give you guys a quick little reminder,
00:04:25.140
keep in mind at this point, the CIA had identified where he was.
00:04:27.940
They tracked him using a courier because that was his only correspondence with the outside world.
00:04:32.640
And they had been watching the compound for a few months.
00:04:35.480
So this is leading up to the assault on the compound, because at this point, they identified
00:04:40.160
They pretty much were 99% sure that he was there.
00:04:43.440
So, so, you know, through the work of the CIA and the FBI working together, they were
00:04:48.100
able to go ahead and identify the courier, which we broke down in the last episode as to
00:04:53.040
how the CIA tracked Bin Laden down on and about about Pakistan.
00:04:57.680
So remember, guys, you know, if you want to really understand this entire series here,
00:05:02.660
part one covers the FBI's investigation into 9-11 attacks, how they were able to identify
00:05:08.520
Part two is the CIA's hunt for Bin Laden and how they were able to identify him and track
00:05:13.700
And now part three is this episode that we're covering right now, where we're going to actually
00:05:17.380
go into, excuse me, we're actually going to go into how the SEAL Team 6 raided the
00:05:23.500
compound, killed Bin Laden, and what they found when they raided the compound, right?
00:05:29.180
This is a firsthand account from someone who was there.
00:05:34.280
The raid, May 1st, 2011, had been years in the making.
00:05:38.220
But in the moment, the best laid plans failed, leaving a small team of Americans to improvise
00:05:47.120
Yeah, and I want to let y'all know that this was a very difficult mission, man.
00:05:51.040
Everything that could go wrong went wrong on this.
00:05:53.300
Unless you saw the movie Zero Dark Thirty, or you've read extensively about this raid,
00:05:59.440
And the fact that these guys were able to pull it off smoothly after really goes to show
00:06:03.300
that's why they're the military's elite unit, man.
00:06:08.020
This operation was one of the most significant operations in U.S. history.
00:06:13.040
And it's something that I believe deserves to be told right and deserves to go on.
00:06:18.660
And that's the name of the book, No Easy Day, the autobiography of a Navy SEAL, Mark Owen,
00:06:23.940
the firsthand account of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.
00:06:29.400
You're in disguise as we do this interview today, and I wonder why.
00:06:35.160
I'm not trying to be special or a hero or anything.
00:06:40.740
But you're in disguise also for your own security.
00:06:47.380
So just so y'all know, this is what concerns him right here.
00:06:52.780
And, you know, ended up doing really well with sales.
00:06:56.000
But the issue here is that he actually got sued by the U.S. government, guys.
00:07:01.400
They actually pursued criminal charges against him as well.
00:07:03.460
So he ended up getting sued and having to pay out something like $1.8 million in a lawsuit on top of another $160,000 or $180,000 in consulting and other fees that he had earned from all the speeches and stuff that he gave for the book.
00:07:22.600
Let's see here if I can find the exact figure for you guys.
00:07:26.620
Yeah, because he didn't get it clear through the Pentagon before he published it, which was obviously an issue because he had he they signed.
00:07:37.200
According to DOD, Owen had signed a classified information nondisclosure and a 2007 sensitive compartmentalized information SCI nondisclosure statement that requires pre-publication security review under certain circumstances.
00:07:47.880
So, you know, that was a big L for him on that one.
00:07:59.960
It was revealed recruited Owens in this video game company.
00:08:07.820
OK, in August 2016, Owen said a lawsuit and agreed to pay back his royalties of U.S.
00:08:23.460
The reason why this is extremely relevant is because the fact that the U.S.
00:08:29.840
OK, and the fact that he got sued into the ground proves that what he's about to tell you guys is extremely factual and accurate.
00:08:37.820
So typically, Garmin ain't going to sue you like that unless what you're saying is 1000% true.
00:08:51.940
So he's more, you know, he's saying you scared of the enemy.
00:08:54.500
But the reality is he was more scared about being sued.
00:08:59.360
Why was your squadron chosen for this particular mission?
00:09:06.920
Nothing special about the 24 guys that were chosen.
00:09:16.280
Well, they also happen to be one of the most elite units in military in the U.S. military, which is the strongest military in the world.
00:09:27.060
In April 2011, they had just returned from Afghanistan when they were told to report to North Carolina for an exercise.
00:09:38.400
Owen walked into a top secret briefing room, saw a model of a compound and heard this from his buddies.
00:09:45.480
And when you deal with stuff like this, guys, anything that SEAL Team 6 is going to deal with, 9 out of 10 times, it's going to be classified.
00:09:53.900
It's going to be SCI level, which is why he got in so much trouble, because he signed nondisclosure agreements when he was in the military.
00:10:02.620
So, yeah, already it's going to be a classified briefing room.
00:10:07.140
No one else is going to really know what the hell is going on.
00:10:10.420
And, I mean, hell, guys, even people at the White House didn't know about this mission.
00:10:14.320
I mean, even Michelle Obama didn't know at the time.
00:10:16.380
And this happened on 11 when President Obama was in office.
00:10:19.520
So that just goes to show how few people actually knew about this operation.
00:10:27.380
And they want us to come up, you know, rehearse and come up with a plan.
00:10:32.600
If there's going to be a ground option approved, they want us to rehearse for one.
00:10:40.160
The mission was Operation Neptune Spear under the authority of the CIA.
00:10:45.220
The agency had tracked a bin Laden courier to a curious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
00:10:54.060
If you guys want more detail on that, watch the past episode, part two of the 9-11 series where I broke down how the CIA was able to, through a lot of waterboarding, go ahead and identify this courier and how this courier tracked them back to – they tracked the courier back to bin Laden.
00:11:24.060
There was a wall 12 feet high and a walled-in balcony.
00:11:31.720
They briefed us on the individual they were calling the Pacer.
00:11:35.860
So he would come out of the house and kind of walk around the yard to what was assessed to just be getting exercise.
00:11:47.300
Mind you, the CIA was watching him pretty much on drones and satellite, guys.
00:11:54.720
And a lot of the vegetation out here was probably purposely planted.
00:12:01.440
And he would just go round and round and round?
00:12:05.420
Sometimes he'd walk with the SS to be a female.
00:12:11.360
If there was other people in the yard working, he never seemed to do any of that.
00:12:15.500
Which, by the way, guys, his name was his real.
00:12:22.640
That's his real name, obviously, because when they sued him, they had to get his real name.
00:12:33.840
The PACER had been in Abbottabad about five years.
00:12:41.820
The compound was about a mile from the Pakistani military academy.
00:12:47.300
In terms of the inside of the house, how much did you know?
00:12:53.560
So once you went through the door, you didn't know what you were going to be facing.
00:12:57.780
But again, it goes back to that years of experience.
00:13:02.120
Raids like this were common many nights in Afghanistan and Iraq.
00:13:07.480
And looking at the model, the SEALs didn't think of this as particularly challenging.
00:13:15.220
The U.S. wasn't telling Pakistan so the helicopters could be shot down by Pakistan's modern air defenses.
00:13:22.180
So, guys, just to let you guys know how crazy this is, the fact that Pakistan didn't know, which I'm a little skeptical of that.
00:13:33.000
I have an idea that I think Pakistan did know to a degree, but they had to keep a certain image so that they don't mess with geopolitical affiliations and everything else like that.
00:13:42.320
But the fact that, you know, allegedly they didn't have to they didn't notify them.
00:13:49.600
And they can easily get shot down by anti-air defense, which because, you know, Pakistan, if I'm not mistaken, has nuclear weapons, guys.
00:13:58.080
So it's not like they're like a military weak power.
00:14:01.340
You know, this isn't like Afghanistan or some shit.
00:14:04.300
So totally different countries, totally different militaries, totally different cultures, et cetera.
00:14:10.460
So so that's a fly in a low to the ground, guys.
00:14:15.680
The pilots were from the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
00:14:20.580
Two modified Blackhawks, call signs Chalk 1 and Chalk 2, would drop 24 SEALs and a Belgian Malinois combat dog named Cairo.
00:14:32.540
Chalk 1, which is the one I was on, was going to hover over the compound here.
00:14:37.480
We would drop the two fast ropes, slide down the ropes into the courtyard here and then go about our business.
00:14:42.740
Well, Chalk 2 would land out here, just over here by the road, drop the external containment team off.
00:14:53.640
We'd have two men and our combat assault dog would do a quick patrol the perimeter down to the south and around to make sure that there was no tunnels underneath the walls.
00:15:05.180
If somebody did hear us coming and had time to escape.
00:15:07.440
So you guys can see here, man, they're really planning and making sure that they have their ducks in a row.
00:15:11.300
So, because this is a pretty dangerous mission, man.
00:15:13.320
So they got to really, you know, make sure that the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted.
00:15:17.800
And on top of that, you guys got to remember, this is probably, you know, TSSCI level type information.
00:15:23.840
White House, damn near Yankee White clearance, right?
00:15:27.080
Which is typically only White House officials and people that really got to need to know, know this type of information.
00:15:34.780
After dropping those guys off, the second heel was going to come up, hover over the third floor,
00:15:42.280
They would then hop right down into the balcony, assaulting from the top down.
00:15:48.760
A few days after getting the mission, they had their plan.
00:15:52.100
And so began weeks of rehearsals on a full-size version of the compound built in North Carolina.
00:16:04.220
Between when we got the mission and when we left for Afghanistan, we probably, you know, good, probably good 100 times.
00:16:11.060
So, and guys, let me, because I had similar training to this, right, when I was at FLETC, right, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
00:16:17.800
So what they'll do is, right, they'll have raid houses, right?
00:16:20.900
And when they have the raid houses, the inside, they can push certain walls down, push certain walls up.
00:16:25.360
And what that does is it gives you a different training stimuli, and they put different role players, as they would say, in that raid house so that they can go ahead and attack you in different ways.
00:16:34.980
And pretty much what they're doing when they're hitting the house 100 plus times is they're coming up with different scenarios.
00:16:40.480
Maybe there's a guy in a doorway shooting at them immediately.
00:16:42.460
Maybe there's a guy with a roof on shooting down on them immediately.
00:16:45.280
Maybe there's a situation where a door is locked.
00:16:47.860
How can they breach into the compound if a door is messed up?
00:16:51.120
So they're literally training, guys, for hundreds, if not thousands, of different scenarios that could occur during the raid.
00:16:59.220
So they're training that muscle to be ready to go, you know, no matter what happens or whatever pops up, which this training ended up serving them very well, guys, because you guys are going to see.
00:17:08.820
They get hit with a crazy situation when they go ahead and embark on the compound.
00:17:22.820
I've never rehearsed for something for three weeks.
00:17:28.200
The nation's highest ranking officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the head of special operations, Admiral Eric Olson.
00:17:37.460
Yeah, that's you got the top dog watching you train.
00:17:41.380
Yeah, that's going to put a little bit of motivation on you.
00:17:46.660
One of the things that I liked after the fact was I remember Admiral Mullen coming by and talking to each one of us and then Admiral Olson as well.
00:17:54.180
And I thought that was that was cool that, you know, they they walked by, shook each of our hands and said, hey, are you guys ready?
00:18:05.900
Imagine, guys, like you trained your whole life for this.
00:18:09.360
You're in the most elite unit and you got the top brass, damn near people at the presidential level coming up to you, shaking your hand and saying, are you ready for this?
00:18:18.620
Yo, that's got to hype you up to another level.
00:18:20.820
You're about to go after the most wanted man in the world, the most wanted terrorist in the world, you know, behind the 9-11 attacks.
00:18:29.980
We're going to cover the conspiracy episode on the next pod, guys.
00:18:35.660
But, yeah, you're thinking like, holy shit, I am fucking psyched.
00:18:42.220
The team got several days off at home around Easter.
00:18:45.500
Then in late April, about a month after they got the mission, they loaded on a plane bound for a U.S. base in Afghanistan.
00:19:01.200
One of the passengers on their plane was a CIA analyst who had spent five years on bin Laden's trail.
00:19:11.640
I mean, she, in my opinion, she kind of teed up this whole thing and is just, you know, wicked smart, kind of feisty.
00:19:20.600
And she was, you know, we'd always talk back and forth.
00:19:25.520
Hey, you know, what do you think the odds of this are?
00:19:37.560
Three days later, on April 30th, the president was telling jokes at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.
00:19:45.540
CIA Director Leon Panetta's belly laugh was heard all across the room.
00:19:50.400
Reporters in ballgowns and tuxedos had no idea that just a few hours before, President Obama had ordered Panetta to launch the raid.
00:19:59.620
Mr. Obama kept to his schedule, thinking that on this night, it was better to have reporters drinking and laughing than asking questions.
00:20:12.280
And just so you guys know, the woman that they're more than likely referring to is this woman right here.
00:20:16.220
And we covered her, guys, in the last podcast for the CIA, Neda Bakos.
00:20:24.900
2013 HBO documentary, Manhunt, The Search for Bin Laden.
00:20:30.360
So go ahead, if you guys want to go ahead and get some more information on her and the entire CIA team that actually was responsible for tracking down bin Laden.
00:20:40.780
And, you know, I will say this on behalf of the CIA.
00:20:43.880
They had been warning President Clinton back in the fucking 90s about bin Laden, guys, and they didn't take action.
00:20:50.280
And they even warned about imminent attacks in 2001 and that they still didn't take action.
00:20:56.640
And so the CIA definitely had bin Laden on their radar and they were warning, you know, the higher ups over at the White House.
00:21:03.640
But they just didn't take it serious until it was too late.
00:21:08.120
The commanding officer of our command walked in and said, hey, just got off the phone.
00:21:18.700
The raid was supposed to be April 30th, but the weather was bad.
00:21:24.120
The next night, Vice Admiral William McRaven saw the men off.
00:21:28.680
He was a SEAL and he had planned the mission as head of the Joint Special Operations Command.
00:21:34.340
Just before midnight, the Blackhawks started the sprint from the U.S. base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to Abbottabad, about 150 miles away.
00:21:43.740
The helicopters were blacked out against a clear, moonless night.
00:21:48.360
The Army pilots, guided by night vision goggles, flew high speed, treetop level, under Pakistani radar.
00:21:55.620
So just so you guys know, flying damn near tree level, that's dangerous.
00:22:01.980
Like if one little error and they're hitting the trees and they're crashing, OK, and there could be some serious injuries and or death in that situation.
00:22:08.980
So obviously they had some of the top pilots manning those helicopters.
00:22:14.900
And then also I want to show you guys this real quick, too.
00:22:16.920
So right here, OK, it says here that so Steve Cole confirms that as of 2019, no direct evidence showing Pakistani knowledge of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad has been found and that captured documents from the Abbottabad compound suggests bin Laden was wary of contact with Pakistani intelligence and police,
00:22:35.500
especially in light of Pakistan's role in the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a.k.a. KSM, which, again, if you guys have been watching.
00:22:43.220
Oh, my bad. Let me let me show you guys this real fast.
00:22:48.580
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was pretty much the number two guy.
00:22:56.440
And his nephew was Ramzi Yousef, guys, who did what?
00:23:00.980
He was the one that went ahead and planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
00:23:05.780
And again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but, guys, it's really important that you go ahead and go over to Fed it.
00:23:12.400
And I want you guys Ted Bunny episode, by the way, posted that earlier.
00:23:16.980
I want you guys to go ahead and watch this episode.
00:23:20.340
Most want Osama bin Laden and then also cover this one.
00:23:26.300
And then if you guys want a bonus, watch this right here.
00:23:32.400
And this covers the failed World Trade Center bombing, pretty much the Recuriter 93 that was orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef.
00:23:39.500
And then here is his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, KSM.
00:23:46.480
But I cover KSM extensively in the last episode and in the FBI episode with the first 9-11 thing.
00:23:57.760
But, yes, that is why bin Laden didn't trust the Pakistani government because the Pakistani government was critical to the U.S. capturing KSM,
00:24:10.220
who ended up giving up information that led to other members of al-Qaeda getting killed and or captured.
00:24:18.840
I remember, you know, we took off, shut the doors, and the radio call I heard was, you know, hey, we're over the border.
00:24:32.420
And I swear, I glanced around the helicopter, and half the guys were sitting there asleep on the right end.
00:24:43.080
Your team is flying in to Osama bin Laden's compound, and they're asleep?
00:24:51.140
It's your time to just kind of shut your eyes, relax, you know, mentally walk through whatever you need to walk through.
00:24:57.400
It was about 1 o'clock in the morning, 66 degrees, 65.
00:25:02.480
That goes to show you guys how well-trained these guys are.
00:25:04.420
They could go ahead and take a nap right before probably embarking on one of the most important missions of their military careers.
00:25:15.260
At one minute, we opened the door, and I just kind of swung my legs out, and I'm sitting there looking down.
00:25:20.160
I'm thinking, wow, you know, this is a beautiful spot.
00:25:23.880
A lot of houses with pools in the backyard, well-lit, manicured yards.
00:25:29.720
Like, well, this is definitely not, you know, the mud huts of Afghanistan.
00:25:33.440
Somehow, there was a blackout in the neighborhood.
00:25:37.060
No one will say whether that was luck or design, but it meant ideal darkness for the Seals.
00:25:43.340
Probably by design, but it's probably still classified, so they can't say anything.
00:25:54.260
You had the door to the Blackhawk open, and your legs were swung outside.
00:26:00.280
Make a little more room, be faster, you know, quicker for everybody to get out and fast rope out of the helicopter,
00:26:07.460
And then all of a sudden, we bank hard 90 degrees.
00:26:10.700
Once we went hard 90, it was very apparent that something was wrong.
00:26:15.620
Owen doesn't know what went wrong, but pilots say that a chopper can lose lift
00:26:20.380
when it drops into the turbulence of its own downdraft.
00:26:26.280
because the downdraft was being magnified and reflected by the compound's walls.
00:26:40.860
And typically, they just, boom, they move right in, and they stick it.
00:26:52.420
Tail rotor and everything happened to miss this wall here.
00:26:55.280
And then we were just kind of sliding and falling out of the sky this way.
00:27:00.540
Although I was sitting on the left side, I was now in the front.
00:27:08.040
If it weren't for him hanging on to me, there's a good chance I would have been thrown from the helicopter.
00:27:12.120
As the helicopter is going down, what were you thinking?
00:27:18.720
Not to mention, guys, also, the fact that they're creating quite a bit of noise, okay?
00:27:27.740
Next thing you know, it's like fucking pretty much doing a Don DeMarco playing during a robbery, right?
00:27:34.080
So, you know, already, Bilal and his people are like, oh, shit.
00:27:51.800
The carefully rehearsed plan was out the window before the first boot hit the ground.
00:27:56.920
With one helicopter and half of the SEALs having crashed, the second helicopter abandoned the roof assault as too risky, and the SEALs began to improvise.
00:28:17.960
The pilot had mentioned, you know, I remember him mentioning in the rehearsals, he's like, you know, if I have to ditch this thing, I'm going to try and put it down in this courtyard.
00:28:46.920
You could tell, you could hear the helicopter winding up.
00:28:55.800
Had the angle been more, the rotors would have hit the ground, snapped off, and caused us to roll.
00:29:00.420
Had the tail rotor hit, obviously would have broke and caused us to break and roll.
00:29:04.280
The load-bearing section of the tail landed precisely on the wall.
00:29:08.460
The strongest part of the tail just happened to land on the wall.
00:29:20.660
I don't think you could recreate that if you tried.
00:29:26.340
Sucky situation, but the best of a sucky situation.
00:29:32.020
I mean, everybody wants to meet the guy who shot Menlon.
00:29:39.260
If the pilot had not brought your helicopter down intact, would the mission have failed?
00:29:49.600
And as soon as they saw us crash land, that Chalk 2 helicopter pilot saw that happen, decided not to push the position to go to the roof.
00:29:58.220
And that's one thing that Admiral McRaven said in one of our very last rehearsals, briefs, dry runs right there in Afghanistan.
00:30:05.400
Before we launched, he stood up and he said, hey, listen, don't try any fancy stuff.
00:30:09.340
Just get the guys on the ground and they'll figure it out.
00:30:14.940
And that's what happens when you have operatives that are this skilled guys.
00:30:17.380
Like you can really put them in almost any situation and they're going to find a way to make it happen.
00:30:22.960
And even with a horrible situation like this, they were able to improvise and make shit happen.
00:30:29.500
The Army pilots that was flying your team looked to you to be about 50 years old.
00:30:35.940
But I guess in this line of work, it's experience that matters.
00:30:40.060
He's probably been flying longer than I've been alive.
00:30:44.400
They had planned to be on the ground 30 minutes, but now they were running late.
00:30:48.740
Owen's team landed in this courtyard, walled off from the house.
00:30:55.740
I turned around and looked and I see the guys on the left side of the helicopter.
00:30:59.240
They're sitting right at them, staring at the front door.
00:31:01.400
So they simply hop out and go right to the front door like nothing happened.
00:31:07.080
The other helicopter landed outside the perimeter wall, dropped all of its seals and took off.
00:31:17.640
We're clearing and securing the southern compound.
00:31:19.540
You expect to find people in this building and you...
00:31:22.660
And when they say clear, guys, what that basically means is, you know, making sure that there's
00:31:32.820
Room by room, systematically, clear the area, clear, continue to push on.
00:31:37.580
And you don't push on until it's clear because you want to make sure that your six is covered
00:31:42.700
That's what he means when he says clear, secure, clear, secure.
00:31:45.740
You want to clear that building so the rest of the team can do what they need to do in
00:31:51.520
I think what seals are good at is what I consider pickup basketball.
00:31:56.760
You know, you hear the saying in the teams is, can you shoot, move and communicate?
00:32:02.340
We all know how to move efficiently and tactically.
00:32:06.580
So, and that right there, my friends is why they're the most elite unit in the world.
00:32:12.040
And the fact that the, um, you know, the president and, you know, the admiral sent them
00:32:16.560
in, they're sending the best and brightest in there.
00:32:19.200
So even though with the helicopter crash and everything else coming down, they're able
00:32:24.940
That's why, you know, budge training is so hard, right?
00:32:28.040
So that when you actually do get the job or you do get the mission, guess what?
00:32:34.100
You train so that when you actually do the real thing, it comes off as easy.
00:32:39.000
When something goes sideways, we're able to play that pickup basketball and just kind
00:32:47.280
One group was outside the perimeter wall to make sure no one escaped.
00:32:51.920
The group that was supposed to rope to the roof was outside the wall looking for a way
00:32:57.480
Owen led his team to the outer building where they expected to find one of bin Laden's
00:33:04.760
Obviously, we made tons of noise at this point.
00:33:09.620
So, you know, the element of surprise is slipping away quickly.
00:33:21.040
My buddy who was with me is carrying a sledgehammer.
00:33:37.580
And right as I was attaching it, a round started coming through the door at us.
00:33:47.680
They're shooting at you from inside the house and the bullets were coming through the door.
00:33:51.380
So, immediately, my buddy who was standing up started returning fire.
00:33:56.300
I could, yeah, I kind of rolled away from the door.
00:34:04.920
Thankfully, the seal that was there with me initially returned fire with me.
00:34:09.160
So, he immediately started calling out to the people inside.
00:34:11.880
Started hearing the metal latch on the inside of the door.
00:34:14.940
For some of you guys that might have not saw the pod before, Bin Laden and his family are Saudis.
00:34:31.840
So, to have a seal there that speaks Arabic is huge.
00:34:37.080
Are they going to come out with a suicide vest?
00:34:49.100
And, you're looking at a woman with her children.
00:34:57.700
And, guys, you know, obviously, you know, 2020 highs on him talking back about it.
00:35:03.320
But, man, when you're in the moment like that and, you know, you got a gun to people, which I've been in that situation before.
00:35:12.080
And, I can only imagine it's even heightened to another level because you already know you're going into enemy territory where there's more than likely going to be a gunfight.
00:35:19.080
Probably not going to go ahead and surrender willingly.
00:35:30.380
He's asking her, you know, hey, where's your husband?
00:35:37.480
Which, keep in mind, guys, Bin Laden, you know, had multiple wives and his sons living with him on the compound.
00:35:44.760
Owen didn't notice until later, but he was bleeding.
00:35:48.020
A shoulder wound from a fragment of something in the firefight.
00:35:52.180
Yeah, I just got a little piece of frag in my shoulder from some of the rounds that came through.
00:35:59.320
But, I carry a set of bolt cutters to cut locks with.
00:36:02.760
When I got back, you know, I was checking my gears, any holes or anything, and I pull out the bolt cutters, and I've got the bullet stuck in the handle.
00:36:12.860
The handle will stick up either side of my head.
00:36:19.460
Plenty of other guys have suffered much, much, much worse.
00:36:33.540
More SEALs entered the compound and converged on the first floor of the main building.
00:36:39.260
Inside, they found another courier with an assault rifle.
00:36:43.780
Those SEALs were in the process of shooting the second gunman.
00:36:52.340
It's something very different than what we see in Afghanistan or Iraq.
00:36:54.980
You typically don't see the women that are this aggressive and hostile.
00:36:59.220
Even though the females had come out of this building and talked to us, they were still
00:37:06.060
So, and we saw that throughout the entire compound, even all the way up on the third floor.
00:37:10.140
They secured the ground floor and then the second floor.
00:37:13.500
The team continued to head up these stairs single file.
00:37:17.240
The first SEAL in line is called the Point Man.
00:37:25.440
The SEALs had been told they could expect one of Osama bin Laden's sons.
00:37:30.540
Guys start making their way up the stairs and it's quiet.
00:37:40.140
Intel had said, we think that Khalid, his son, lives on the second floor.
00:37:48.160
So, the guy in front of me, who's Point Man, he sees the head pop out and disappear really
00:37:55.340
It's like, okay, you know, what do you, who is it?
00:38:13.440
Khalid literally looks back around the, around the edge of the, the hall and he shoots him.
00:38:37.840
Give me a sense of what this scene is like in there.
00:38:41.400
I mean, are these guys yelling and charging up the stairs?
00:38:49.300
You know, movies make it out to be, you know, loud and crazy and everybody's yelling.
00:38:57.060
And so it's quiet, calm, like we've done it a million times before.
00:39:01.260
We have a saying, you know, don't, don't run to your death.
00:39:06.960
And just so you guys know, that's the best way to clear a house, man.
00:39:10.360
It used to be like police back in the day, used to call it dynamic entering where you'll walk into a house and you just like start hitting corners and go do it quickly.
00:39:18.800
Now, special ops or any type of tactical team, they typically don't do dynamic anymore.
00:39:23.180
What they do is they do systematic clearing where you're slowly going in your goal.
00:39:28.880
See, I'm getting back in my technical days back then.
00:39:36.420
We used to call them the tackle, the tackle berries.
00:39:42.140
But either way, yeah, you're systematically clearing.
00:39:44.100
You're looking at corners because if you clear the corner, then you know that that, that's clear.
00:39:50.460
Now I'm on to the next room and you just continue on clearing.
00:39:57.580
That's, yeah, that's a hundred percent like, you know, higher level training right there,
00:40:01.200
So, you know, I've done some tactical training myself as far as like clearing homes and everything
00:40:11.720
The point man is stepping past Khalid and now you're number two in the stack.
00:40:20.460
I kind of try to look around him, hear him take a couple shots, kind of see a head.
00:40:27.120
The point man had seen someone stick his head out a door and shot him just the way he'd shot Khalid.
00:40:34.720
Inside the room, I could see a body laying on the ground over him was, was two females real
00:40:46.540
He steps in to the room, literally rushes the two women, grabs one under each arm and
00:40:54.980
So if they did have a suicide vest on and they did blow themselves up, that they wouldn't,
00:41:00.500
that that wouldn't affect the rest of the guys.
00:41:10.740
You stepped into the room and saw the man lying on the floor.
00:41:16.040
Myself and the next assaulter in, we both engaged him several more times and then rolled off and
00:41:23.160
When you say you engaged him, what do you mean?
00:41:31.520
A little bit, but you couldn't see his arms, couldn't see his hands.
00:41:35.240
So he could have had something, could have had a hand grenade or something underneath
00:41:38.860
So after Osama bin Laden is wounded, he's still moving.
00:41:47.760
And the SEAL in the stack behind you also shot Osama bin Laden.
00:41:57.180
Now, this is kind of a point of contention here because the person that everyone thinks
00:42:02.020
killed bin Laden is this guy right here, Rob O'Neill.
00:42:06.840
O'Neill is a former United States Navy SEAL TV news contributor and author after participating
00:42:10.700
in May 11th Operation Neptune Spear with SEAL Team 6.
00:42:13.520
O'Neill is a subject of controversy for claiming to be the sole individual to kill Osama bin Laden.
00:42:16.900
So yeah, he claimed that he shot him three times.
00:42:18.720
I think in his own words, he two tapped him, which means a double shot to the chest and then
00:42:26.940
But, you know, obviously in this account of events, this guy is saying that he also was
00:42:35.800
And, you know, let's rewind it a little bit just to make sure we got that right.
00:42:40.300
But everywhere else, I mean, so we don't really know if he did it by himself or he was involved
00:42:46.940
He couldn't see his arms, couldn't see his hands.
00:42:48.800
So he could have had something, could have had a hand grenade or something underneath his
00:42:52.460
So after Osama bin Laden is wounded, he's still moving.
00:42:55.880
You shot him twice, a handful of times, a handful of times.
00:43:01.360
And the seal in the stack behind you also shot Osama bin Laden.
00:43:12.480
You know, everybody thinks it was like, you know, it's him.
00:43:15.660
And we're going to get Rob O'Neill on the show as well, guys.
00:43:20.080
I think it's called the Operator Podcast, you know, shout out to him.
00:43:23.060
But we will definitely have him on the pod as well.
00:43:25.220
I'm just ironing that out for y'all for fresh and fit.
00:43:33.260
You know, I'll ask him about this interview, actually, when we bring him on the show.
00:43:46.800
When you're in a house, a foreign house like that, your goal is to sit there like, I wonder
00:43:51.660
It's like, no, you got to just keep clearing the goddamn house.
00:43:53.880
So I completely understand where he's coming from.
00:43:57.380
Every single thing that the woman with the CIA had told them on the plane had been right.
00:44:04.780
Throughout the raid, the remaining helicopter was in the air.
00:44:07.720
It only had enough gas to stay for 30 minutes or so.
00:44:10.840
Pakistani neighbors had discovered the SEALs posted outside the compound wall, and it couldn't
00:44:17.120
be long before the Pakistani military would know they were there.
00:44:21.700
And that's not going to be good for foreign relations.
00:44:24.780
SEAL was charged with keeping an eye on his wristwatch and calling out the dwindling time
00:44:53.000
And then also, just so y'all know, Bin Laden spent quite.
00:44:55.160
He's referring to Bin Laden, by the way, when he's speaking.
00:44:58.020
Bin Laden dyed his beard often to not make himself look old, because which we're going to get
00:45:08.460
And he didn't like the appearance of of gray on his beard.
00:45:20.880
His nose to me was something that I could I could kind of identify.
00:45:24.600
So, you know, kind of looking at the profile shots.
00:45:31.260
I was like, OK, I was pretty sure that was him.
00:45:34.240
But, you know, I'm not willing to make that call.
00:45:39.700
Not willing because Owen says they suspected the president was listening at the White House
00:45:50.020
Could you imagine that shit that you're watching a stream live of these dudes going in like on some video game type shit?
00:45:55.140
Helicopter crash had been reported up the chain of command.
00:45:58.640
Owen says the SEALs wanted proof before anyone said anything on the radio about killing Osama bin Laden.
00:46:05.660
They turned to one of the SEALs in the room who spoke Arabic.
00:46:10.040
So he moved out to where the women and kids were, grabs one of the younger kids, says, hey, who is that inside?
00:46:35.640
You start shaking hands, patting each other on the back?
00:46:47.520
You know, they start fucking cheering in there with the kids and the fucking mom there sobbing because he's dead on the floor.
00:47:12.620
The commander used the code word for bin Laden, Geronimo, as he passed the message to Admiral McRaven.
00:47:19.200
For God and country, he said, I pass Geronimo, Geronimo, E-K-I-A, which stands for enemy killed in action.
00:47:30.460
When they round the 20 minutes had passed, 10 minutes left on the schedule.
00:47:45.520
But if a helicopter got shot down on the way out and it had the body, we wanted the other helicopter to have DNA and photos.
00:47:52.520
So they have some sort of evidence that said, hey, we do have them.
00:48:00.760
That's how they do it everywhere in the government, whether it's, you know, a lowly worker working for TSA all the way up to the SEALs.
00:48:09.560
And in this case, they had an actual real reason.
00:48:11.740
You know, obviously, their helicopters get shot down.
00:48:16.000
They actually took longer to do the raid, guys, because what ended up happening was they found a bunch of diskettes.
00:48:25.500
So they actually had to stay a full 18 minutes longer than expected to go ahead and get all the documents to, you know, for further analyzation.
00:48:33.080
So, you know, at this point, who knows what the hell is going to happen?
00:48:43.000
And remember, they didn't, you know, get country clearance to enter.
00:48:46.220
So this is almost an act of war, what they're doing, by the way, guys.
00:48:50.300
The only reason they're able to do this to Pakistan is because, well, quite frankly, we can bully Pakistan around.
00:48:55.940
But if you did this shit to another world power, bro, this is an act of fucking war.
00:48:59.920
You brought military personnel into the country.
00:49:10.340
That's essentially what it is, even though they're murdering a terrorist.
00:49:13.860
But in the eyes of Pakistani law, this is illegal.
00:49:17.280
So you go in there, kill them, you know, raid the house, all this other stuff, kill a bunch of other dudes.
00:49:26.140
So they're obviously have some very serious implications.
00:49:29.120
I guarantee you, the U.S. probably had to give a bunch of goddamn financial aid to Pakistan after this shit.
00:49:34.780
We definitely owed them a couple of steak dinners, if you know what I'm saying.
00:49:47.540
I figured these were probably some of the most important photos I'd ever take in my life.
00:49:51.240
So, you know, make sure I do it right, get good angles and all this other stuff.
00:49:57.940
You know, for a fact, that boy took a fucking selfie, man.
00:50:05.120
He probably had to get the right angles, right?
00:50:09.180
So he had to make sure he knew what he was doing in this one.
00:50:18.300
So one of my buddies had a Camelback with some water in it.
00:50:26.200
So obviously they had to clean the blood off his face.
00:50:30.660
Kind of wiped the blood off and then took photos.
00:50:33.120
Wiping the blood off of Osama bin Laden's face.
00:50:36.320
Camelback is one of those backpacks that has a water bladder in it.
00:50:43.000
And you shot pictures of his face in a profile.
00:50:51.880
And just so you guys know, they put makeup on this guy.
00:50:55.040
He doesn't really look that weird or whatever it may be.
00:50:57.120
It's just that they had to put an insane amount of makeup.
00:51:02.100
You know, that's why he has that weird glassy look to him.
00:51:15.300
I mean, it was like 20 guys that did an admission.
00:51:17.580
So they were able to figure out who he was immediately.
00:51:22.400
And he had done like a couple of speeches and stuff like this, too.
00:51:36.060
Two SEALs took the body downstairs and zipped bin Laden.
00:51:39.700
And that's a big part of the reason why they didn't release the pictures of his body.
00:51:44.320
Because they didn't want to incite other terrorists or anything else like that.
00:51:46.620
Because, you know, it can inspire other, you know, jihadists to try to, you know, do something.
00:51:53.340
In the bedroom, Owen found an assault rifle and a pistol on a shelf.
00:51:57.820
And some people would argue that, you know, why did that point man take those shots?
00:52:04.440
Well, immediately, the first door we went to, my team was engaged by enemy fire through the door.
00:52:11.340
So, automatically, we know we're going into an enemy compound.
00:52:25.980
So, basically, all these other idiots made it a lot worse for bin Laden.
00:52:29.760
So, they were already going up there by the time they encountered him last.
00:52:32.520
They assumed that he was going to try to shoot, you know?
00:52:44.520
I don't know if he shot, but he had access to a weapon.
00:52:47.940
It's just that he was an idiot and poked his head out and ended up getting hit with that fucking...
00:52:52.280
Get that AK or the grenade thrown down the hall or the suicide vest.
00:52:58.100
So, in the split second, that's when he engaged.
00:53:09.540
I think in the end, he taught a lot of people to do, you know, martyr themselves.
00:53:18.120
But in the end, he wasn't even willing to roger up himself with a gun and put up a fight.
00:53:26.180
Back on the second floor, the SEALs were grabbing computers, discs, flash drives, videotapes.
00:53:32.480
More priceless intelligence than they could carry.
00:53:37.840
The guys were just stuffing this stuff in garbage bags?
00:53:40.780
We had carried bags with us, but we filled all these bags up.
00:53:44.420
So, you just find some, you know, an old gym bag on Target, dump out whatever's in it, and use that.
00:53:50.300
As we were running out, I look over at my buddy.
00:53:52.460
He's got a bag of stuff in one hand, like, you know, Santa Claus running out of there.
00:53:55.980
But a bag full of goodies in one hand that he'd collected and a computer terminal in the other.
00:54:01.960
The plan had been to be on the ground for 30 minutes, but now they were a few minutes late.
00:54:14.720
They're coming over to investigate what's going on.
00:54:17.600
They were the neighbors, and they had a lot of questions for the SEALs standing guard outside the wall.
00:54:24.900
Who the hell are you dudes all tacked out with night vision goggles and camouflage,
00:54:33.200
Wait, because the neighbors didn't know that he was there, right?
00:54:38.180
They just knew whoever lived there probably had some money, though, with that big-ass compound.
00:54:43.080
Which, by the way, you guys, we got to watch that episode that I did on bin Laden and the CIA.
00:54:47.760
When bin Laden's father died, guys, I think in 1969, just so y'all understand this,
00:54:58.540
In 1969, $25 million in 1969 today is the equivalent to, let's see here, $25...
00:55:10.640
I'm doing the inflation calculator right now for y'all, okay?
00:55:19.020
Here, I'll just show you guys instead of you guys thinking I'm cap here.
00:55:35.980
That's what he was worth, guys, back in 1969 when his father died, if I'm not mistaken, of a plane accident, right?
00:55:43.280
And when his father died, just so y'all understand this as well, okay, his construction company, because that's how bin Laden's made all their money, was worth $5 billion, which is the equivalent today of $44 billion, okay?
00:56:01.400
A lot of people think he was just some poor dude in the cave somewhere, but he had quite a bit of money, guys.
00:56:09.640
So, the Saudi government tried to get him cut off.
00:56:14.620
They couldn't, like, cut off his money, though, because he had already had it.
00:56:18.980
Because he was getting a $7 million a year allowance.
00:56:30.600
So, bin Laden and a bunch of resistance fighters were successful in keeping away the Russians,
00:56:40.160
a.k.a. the Soviet Union, from invading in Afghanistan, which, by the way, bin Laden got a lot of aid from the United States
00:56:45.980
to fight off the Russians during this conflict in the 80s, okay?
00:56:49.460
Started in 1979, ended sometime in the 80s, right before the Soviet Union collapsed in, I think, 91.
00:56:59.700
And that obviously poses a national security risk for Saudi Arabia.
00:57:04.840
So, bin Laden, high-office victory from the Soviets, he's like, listen, we can fight these guys.
00:57:12.120
This is the beginnings of al-Qaeda now at this point, right?
00:57:19.520
But what does the Saudi royal government want to do?
00:57:22.160
They say, no, we're going to go ahead and use the Americans.
00:57:25.000
The Americans are going to, you know, help us deal with Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
00:57:29.700
And to bin Laden, he looked at this like betrayal because, number one, they're, in his eyes, infidels, right?
00:57:39.420
They shouldn't be, you know, fighting a holy war like I should be fighting for us.
00:57:45.160
And he didn't like the United States because the United States obviously supports Israel.
00:57:49.540
And any, you know, we all know the Middle East hates the U.S. because of Israel.
00:57:53.020
And everybody in the Middle East hates Israel for obvious reasons because of the Palestinian conflict, right?
00:57:56.740
I don't want to make this a geopolitical podcast.
00:57:58.340
But these are just some basic things that you guys need to know so you can understand where this deep-seated hatred comes from.
00:58:05.360
So since bin Laden wasn't allowed to fight the Iraqis, a.k.a. Saddam Hussein's regime, when they invaded Kuwait, he spoke poorly about the Saudi government slash royal family.
00:58:17.400
And they stripped him of his Saudi Arabian citizenship, and he was exiled.
00:58:22.920
So he went and hid in Sudan for a while, and al-Qaeda operations moved there.
00:58:26.760
And, yes, for you guys that are wondering, yes, my parents are from North Sudan.
00:58:34.100
So at this time, you know, back in, like, early 90s, Sudan was one country.
00:58:39.680
Now North Sudan is the Arab North, which is where my family's from, Khartoum.
00:58:42.640
And that's where Osama was in the early 90s, right?
00:58:50.400
So that's where the hatred came, and that's how he ended up getting problems with the Saudi government.
00:58:58.280
It was for his criticisms of the Saudi government utilizing the United States for protection against Saddam Hussein and the invasion in Kuwait.
00:59:05.720
And this obviously stems from the petrodollar and the United States making an alliance with Saudi Arabia, saying that we will protect you guys from all, you know, types of issues and or invasions or whatever, because for obvious reasons, Saudi Arabia controls the oil.
00:59:21.020
And as long as the Saudi Arabian government agreed that all oil deals would be done in U.S. dollars, which guess what?
00:59:28.240
The entire world's got to use U.S. dollars to buy oil.
00:59:33.320
And that right there ensures that the U.S. dollar stays in power, stays the reserve currency.
00:59:37.540
And that, my friends, is how the petrodollar was created.
00:59:41.540
I know that was a very rough explanation of it, but that right there is how Osama made his millions upon millions, how his family made billions, his exile from Saudi Arabia to Sudan, and why he hates the United States and how the issues started with him in the United States.
01:00:01.600
It stems from support of Israel and from them taking over and protecting the Saudi Arabian kingdom from Iraq, which he feels the United States had no business on Islamic lands.
01:00:22.620
Somebody wants to know what was going on inside.
01:00:24.200
That team had way more responsibility than just about anybody else because they were dealing with all the what-ifs outside.
01:00:39.720
The interpreter that was out here said, hey, there's a police operation going on here.
01:00:47.360
Among the unfinished business was the crashed helicopter.
01:00:54.520
Now, this is going to be interesting here, what they have to do here.
01:01:01.640
Yeah, because the helicopter, guaranteed, probably had technology in it that was classified to a high level.
01:01:09.560
It was passed to their explosives expert called the EOD man.
01:01:19.200
Like, the EOD guy thinks he means prep the house to blow.
01:01:33.300
Well, I guess he's going to, you know, they knocked down the Twin Towers.
01:01:37.960
So, he's running around the first floor of the house, setting his charges, getting ready to blow up the house.
01:01:49.420
Well, he hadn't got the word that there was a helicopter even down.
01:01:56.040
So, he runs outside, sees the helicopter, and then they proceed.
01:02:00.860
And remember, guys, they were split into different teams.
01:02:02.700
So, that's why that guy might have not known that.
01:02:08.200
Two large helicopters called CH-47s, filled with reinforcements and fuel, had been standing by during the raid.
01:02:16.700
The remaining Blackhawk would return for half of the SEALs.
01:02:22.560
The Blackhawk that's picking us up lands first.
01:02:27.080
We run through the field, carrying the body in the body bag, load the remaining Blackhawk, and then we slowly lift off and move away.
01:02:37.200
While they're waiting for the 47 to come in, the timer on the charges is ticking down.
01:02:48.460
And, guys, they have to blow it up because it's a classified, probably designed, they don't want foreign, the Pakistani government, you know, any other terrorists to get a hold of this plane and be able to get access to U.S. technology.
01:03:03.220
The team leader that was in charge of the demo team, he gets a hold of the commanding officer, gets him on the radio talking at the 47, tells the 47 to do a go-around as he's doing the go-around of the South.
01:03:22.480
The 47 comes right back around, lands, the guys load on, and now they're airborne.
01:03:31.680
That glow at the compound was the helicopter on fire.
01:03:37.860
The SEALs were on the ground about 38 minutes, which meant their Blackhawk had been in the air, waiting a little longer than planned.
01:03:46.240
Sure enough, I'm sitting in the helicopter, and you turn around and look in the cockpit, and I see flashing red lights.
01:03:52.180
Well, I'm not a pilot, but anything flashing red in a vehicle is typically not good.
01:03:59.900
And just so you guys know, I'll tell you guys this from my training experience as well.
01:04:03.200
So when I've been on surveillance, I hated using helicopters because helicopters can only be up in the air for like 30 minutes, bro.
01:04:09.040
30 minutes to an hour, depending on the gas tank and the size of the helicopter.
01:04:12.000
But the thing is, is that they have to constantly go and refuel, guys, because it burns up gasoline.
01:04:19.520
So I could only imagine for them, like, oh, shit, we're behind schedule.
01:04:25.920
Are we going to have enough gas to make it back over the border into Afghanistan?
01:04:29.220
So I totally understand where he's coming from here because helicopters fucking suck.
01:04:37.560
During their escape, the SEALs were forced to land in Pakistan.
01:04:42.180
One of the CH-47s was waiting on the ground and refueled their Blackhawk.
01:04:47.540
The Pakistanis didn't get you on the way in, but you're concerned they're going to get you on the way out.
01:04:53.040
When did you know that you were out of Pakistan?
01:04:54.660
Because once again, guys, keep in mind, they're in a foreign country.
01:04:58.100
They committed something which many would look at as an act of war.
01:05:06.720
If anything happened, guys, let me tell you all this.
01:05:08.780
I guarantee you they probably can't say this during the interview.
01:05:11.100
But if let's say they had to engage like the Pakistani government or some shit like that and the military showed up or whatever.
01:05:18.340
They would have gotten to the into the it's a firefight.
01:05:22.740
And the U.S. government would have wiped their hands clean.
01:05:31.240
Obama be sitting at the freaking at the table with the Pakistani president like with amnesia.
01:05:41.040
Guaranteed that they probably had orders like, yo, if you guys engage with the foreign government or whatever it may be, this does not come from the president.
01:05:52.900
That's why they're freaking out to get out of the country, because they're not supposed to be there, guys.
01:05:58.780
They radioed over or came on over the radio, said, hey, we're back.
01:06:07.700
Yeah, what they did, guys, was wild, right, from a geopolitical standpoint.
01:06:20.640
Was there ever a point, Mark, in which you shook hands with each other, slapped each other on the back?
01:06:26.560
Yeah, once we landed, everybody kind of hugged and high-fived and took a couple photos.
01:06:31.600
And, you know, it was our five-minute, hey, cool, we pulled this off.
01:06:40.660
All right, so let's go ahead, and we're going to move on over to what they actually found in bin Laden's compound, guys, okay?
01:06:49.020
I remember this day right here when bin Laden addressed the nation.
01:06:55.800
I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.
01:07:04.940
The operation, called Neptune Spear, took 30 minutes, but then one SEAL alerted...
01:07:11.560
...commanded that they'd found a ton of computers and electronics and needed more time.
01:07:16.040
The SEALs were granted 10 more minutes that stretched into 18.
01:07:20.700
They grabbed computers, VHS tapes, books, thumb drives, hard drives, and notebooks, carrying them out in bags strung around their neck.
01:07:30.060
How important was that last-minute decision by the SEAL team to take those documents?
01:07:36.880
Bin Laden's greatest fear was about exposing al-Qaeda secrets.
01:07:41.760
And so the fact that the SEALs decided to recover these letters ensured that al-Qaeda secrets were exposed.
01:07:51.640
Really interesting stuff here that we're about to see, guys.
01:07:54.980
2012, Nellie LaHood was teaching at West Point when the CIA declassified the first 17 documents from the raid.
01:08:02.760
She was asked to lead the analysis of those documents for West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.
01:08:11.340
She's obviously a fluent Arab speaker, Arabic speaker, so this is going to be good stuff here, guys.
01:08:16.740
...reading, translating, and analyzing the remaining declassified documents,
01:08:21.880
consulting with U.S. generals, admirals, and members of the Special Forces community to make sense of it all.
01:08:27.540
There are home videos, like this one, of Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza.
01:08:34.000
Which, by the way, Hamza, okay, guys, he was killed under the Trump administration in 2019.
01:08:49.880
They don't have the exact day, but this is him right here.
01:08:59.200
Laden, better known as Hamza bin Laden, was Saudi Arabian-born member of Al-Qaeda.
01:09:03.040
He was a son of Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and following his father's death to 2011,
01:09:06.520
he was described as an emergency leader within a group, which is why they killed him in 2019.
01:09:19.440
They killed him in either 2017 or 2019, he was 28 to 30.
01:09:35.180
Okay, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced on March 1st, 2019,
01:09:39.140
they revoked bin Laden's citizenship through a royal decree signed in November 2018.
01:09:46.760
Which, by the way, just so you guys know, Saudi Arabian citizenship is very difficult to get.
01:09:51.580
And I think the reason why they were able to take it away from these guys is because bin Laden,
01:10:07.180
The last episode I did, guys, we talked about bin Laden's background,
01:10:10.360
which a lot of you guys were interested as to how he had all that money.
01:10:14.220
And, you know, I'm surprised that more Americans don't know that bin Laden was extremely wealthy.
01:10:18.660
Like, how the hell are you going to wage jihad against the United States when you don't got no money, bro?
01:10:26.160
He's a Saudi millionaire from Hadaramut, Yemen,
01:10:28.840
and was the founder of the construction company, his father.
01:10:33.540
So, and like I said before, back in 1969 when he passed away,
01:10:38.080
the construction company, guys, was worth $5 billion back then,
01:10:48.320
which is, I think, the equivalent, as we said earlier, $220 million today.
01:10:58.940
Nellie Lahoud focused on 6,000 pages of them for her book,
01:11:05.860
So you were creating kind of a narrative based on all of the documents.
01:11:11.560
You couldn't have a division of labor where several people would take on
01:11:17.080
Vague references in one letter can only be explained
01:11:21.940
So really, to get a grasp of what was really going on,
01:11:25.880
you really need to be able to have read them all together.
01:11:28.760
And there's probably a purpose for that, right?
01:11:30.680
So if you find one piece of paper and you don't understand the context
01:11:36.140
you're not going to be able to know what the hell is going on, right?
01:11:38.840
So I'm sure bin Laden probably did this on purpose
01:11:40.600
so that you need to have everything to make sense of anything.
01:11:44.080
Letters were the only way Osama bin Laden communicated with Al-Qaeda associates
01:11:50.820
for nearly a decade because he was trying to evade capture.
01:11:57.140
but didn't have access to the internet or phone.
01:11:59.880
So everything was written by hand or on computers.
01:12:03.600
Interesting, guys, as far as bin Laden having access to television,
01:12:14.520
this is what this guy used to do when you watch TV.
01:12:17.860
He seemed to curate for himself what he did and didn't want to see.
01:12:22.060
A clue to this is how he watched TV news footage.
01:12:28.080
he'd take his remote and kind of flip up the satellite channel
01:12:36.160
And when she disappeared, he would turn it down and put it back onto a normal screen.
01:12:47.380
If there is other photos, press conference by President Obama or anything else,
01:12:55.440
You want to see nothing American in women or America?
01:13:06.620
He doesn't want to see anything else but Al-Qaeda and but himself.
01:13:11.060
A bunch of violence, of course, as well, right?
01:13:19.220
Of course, he doesn't have violent videos all over his stuff.
01:13:26.020
Didn't he, like, use the videos and, like, pornography to, like, write messages?
01:13:35.520
Well, since Christina ruined it, I'll get to that part here in a second.
01:13:40.780
Made a lot of videos of extreme violence, which Bin Laden may well have been monitoring,
01:13:44.800
but many of which are so violent that we can't even show them to you.
01:13:57.400
Even a video of a young boy in Iraq beheading a hostage.
01:14:03.120
A video of a group of kids kicking at the dismembered leg of an American soldier
01:14:13.180
You guys can see the deep-rooted hate for the West, you know, in these propaganda videos.
01:14:19.200
And that stems from, you know, the Israeli situation.
01:14:22.020
Uh, okay, let me find the porn stuff, since Christina wants to ruin it for a minute.
01:14:26.540
Viral video downloads, like Charlie bit my finger.
01:14:33.840
And as well, the treasure trove of personal communications.
01:14:39.220
Which we're going to get into the documents here in a second, but let me find the porn,
01:14:42.860
because they actually used it for a very intelligent reason.
01:14:48.600
Ali Soufan, you know, was a member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force out of New York.
01:14:54.420
You know, interviewed KSM, interviewed Abu Zubaydah, a bunch of these terrorists that worked under the Al-Qaeda network.
01:15:02.780
And, you know, him and the CIA butt heads a little bit, because, you know, he's not really a fan of waterboarding, but the CIA is.
01:15:09.780
And he's more of a fan of, you know, traditional interviews where you're able to say, so am I, right?
01:15:13.920
Of course, because I'm a criminal investigator, especially just like he was, right?
01:15:18.300
And, you know, with us, it's like, if you're trying to gather evidence for a criminal trial, can't be out here waterboarding, guys.
01:15:23.500
It's not admissible, because now he's under duress.
01:15:25.400
You know, that's coercion on a whole other level.
01:15:28.920
So that is why, you know, people wonder, oh, why hasn't Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any of these other guys been prosecuted?
01:15:35.400
I think one of the guys at KSM reported being waterboarded like 180 times, if you guys watched the last documentary.
01:15:42.020
So you can't prosecute these guys when you're torturing them.
01:15:45.060
But, you know, of course, national security overrides criminal prosecution.
01:15:48.840
So, you know, the FBI and CIA do things a lot differently.
01:15:51.500
If you guys want a little bit more detail on that, go watch the last podcast I did on Osama bin Laden.
01:16:00.000
Osama bin Laden was in the hideout with his family, in isolation of the society that they lived in.
01:16:07.340
Bin Laden and his bodyguards went to considerable length to make this a fortified compound.
01:16:12.940
There was a very high wall around the compound.
01:16:17.780
And everything was about staying inside the compound, not going to school, not going shopping.
01:16:44.140
And in a sense, it was a sort of a prison of...
01:16:46.980
At one time, Mahmoud is trying to find the poor guys.
01:16:50.220
That means that everything we see on these drives can be linked to bin Laden.
01:16:58.140
But basically, guys, long story short, they sent pornography to each other.
01:17:02.500
And there was coding in the pornography that was encrypted so that they can communicate with each other.
01:17:09.540
Encrypted on flash drives that were given to couriers to deliver.
01:17:19.640
And I'll find this pornography part here in a second.
01:17:28.600
Somebody who is very different from this powerful figure that we were reading about daily in the newspapers for over a decade.
01:17:38.060
And the disconnect between his ambitions and between his capabilities is confounding.
01:17:50.840
That disconnect was clear immediately after the 9-11 attacks.
01:17:56.140
Al-Qaeda did not anticipate that the United States would go to war.
01:18:04.740
But they didn't think that they would go beyond that.
01:18:11.040
So now we're starting to kind of figure out what they had planned after what they thought was going to happen after the terrorist attacks.
01:18:17.420
Which this was a huge miscalculation on his end thinking, oh, we'll just get a couple of airstrikes.
01:18:23.220
But little did he know that George Bush would not only go after him, but he would go after Saddam.
01:18:34.640
But as the war raged on in Afghanistan, Lahoud says these letters show that Osama bin Laden was surprised by how Americans reacted to 9-11.
01:18:45.420
He thought that the American people would take to the streets, replicate the anti-Vietnam War protest, and they would put pressure on their governments to withdraw from Muslim-majority states.
01:19:01.860
Yeah, he thought the Jews were just going to say, you know what, man?
01:19:09.420
He just wanted, you know, Israel and Western countries out of Muslim lands.
01:19:14.220
That's why a lot of these terrorist attacks occur in the first place, guys.
01:19:22.400
For not realizing that they were not going to, you know, respond in that manner.
01:19:30.360
In November of 2002, U.S. intelligence officials warned Al-Qaeda might be planning, quote,
01:19:37.280
spectacular attacks that could cause mass casualties.
01:19:40.980
But Lahoud says letters show that by that time, Al-Qaeda was weak.
01:19:46.840
Top leaders had been killed or forced into hiding.
01:19:55.520
I mean, the U.S. waged a huge war on terror after 9-11.
01:19:59.060
The narrative that Bin Laden was still controlling Al-Qaeda from behind the scenes,
01:20:15.840
She says Osama Bin Laden didn't communicate with his Al-Qaeda associates for three years
01:20:24.000
Three years, no leadership, three years, just a bunch of chaos, three years.
01:20:28.680
No one to, you know, to run the organization, guys, because he was too busy hiding, man.
01:20:37.080
It's still unknown exactly where he was hiding.
01:20:40.020
But in 2004, he reconnects with Al-Qaeda in this letter,
01:20:44.400
offering surviving members his new plan to attack America.
01:20:51.960
And for all the people, you know, that, you know, believe...
01:20:55.140
And don't worry, guys, I'm going to cover the conspiracy theory episode next pod,
01:21:12.540
you know, how would they find this stuff in Bin Laden's house?
01:21:15.860
obviously hidden away in a certain way or whatever.
01:21:30.300
how structurally impossible for it to come down that way,
01:21:38.460
which we're going to cover on the next episode.
01:21:41.500
You know, this is coming from a guy that was a former Fed.
01:21:56.940
you know, saying death to America in the past 10 years?
01:22:02.280
So, but let's continue on with what she finds here.
01:22:05.940
So, he wants to go ahead and do the 9-11 attacks again.
01:22:24.760
You know, homeland security is real now after this shit.
01:22:29.880
to the head of Al-Qaeda's International Terror Unit.
01:22:33.160
Bin Laden writes that rather than hijack a plane,
01:22:50.840
He wanted to have 12 meters of steel rail removed
01:23:20.240
He thinks he doesn't want to leave anything for chance.
01:23:28.580
this wasn't just an idiot sitting in a cave somewhere
01:23:30.460
in Afghanistan hiding against the United States
01:23:40.920
Obviously, to be able to pull off a tax like this
01:23:44.880
you know, you got to have some kind of wits about you
01:23:57.300
Fortunately, he was never able to execute his plan
01:24:00.600
because Lahoud says Al-Qaeda had been gutted by the war.
01:24:11.840
He's telling Osama bin Laden just how incapacitated
01:24:48.200
particularly because of the delicate situations
01:24:52.620
That delicate situation is bin Laden's life in hiding.
01:25:01.420
Doesn't want to make himself look old and senile and weak.
01:25:04.220
So, you know, and that's why when they found him,
01:25:21.440
...some of his wives, children, and grandchildren
01:25:24.080
seen here in this video seized during the raid.
01:25:27.200
In this clip, bin Laden's 22-year-old son, Khaled,
01:25:37.640
That was Khaled who got killed during the raid,
01:25:45.240
Khaled also recorded his father's public statements
01:25:48.840
that were intended to be seen around the world.
01:25:51.380
You can hear him giggling as the lights malfunction.
01:26:38.060
start preparing, start thinking about the ideas
01:26:54.520
women are not part of the public face of jihad.
01:26:59.260
But privately, the bin Laden women were very involved.