White House was tuned in to troops' helmet cams during Osama mission
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Helmet cams attached to the Navy SEALS' gear gave US President Barack Obama a front-row seat to the 40-minute firefight at Osama Bin Laden's 1$ million-dollar hideout, in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
Fresh details have now emerged from what's being described as a textbook operation.
Bin Laden reportedly used his young wife as a shield the second he spotted approaching US troops. The elite soldiers - from SEAL team Six - asked him to lay down his AK and when he refused, two bullets were fired - one hit him in the head and the second smashed into his chest.
US President Barack Obama and other top officials were watching everything via live feed in the Situation Room at the White House.
Obama looked 'stone faced', one aide cited by the New York Times said.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had his rosary beads. "The minutes passed like days," recalled John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief.
The code name for Bin Laden was 'Geronimo'.
The president and his advisers watched Leon E. Panetta, the CIA director, on a video screen, narrating from his agency's headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan.
"They've reached the target," he said.
Minutes passed.
"We have a visual on Geronimo," he said.
A few minutes later: "Geronimo EKIA."
Enemy Killed In Action. There was silence in the Situation Room.
Finally, the president spoke up. "We got him."
The body of the world's most wanted terrorist was then carried out on foot by troops, flown to a US aircraft carrier, weighed down in a bag and then buried at sea. But not before a DNA test to confirm the kill.
The test results have shown that it was Laden indeed - with 99.9 per cent certainty. The DNA was reportedly compared with samples taken from Bin Laden's sister's brain, who had died of cancer several years ago.
Bin Laden's retirement home, just a few feet away from a top Pakistan military academy, has put in the country in an embarassing diplomatic position. Politicians worldwide are wondering how the government 'did not know' about the alleged 9/11 mastermind's presence in the their backyard.
"There isn't any question that Pakistani officials, army and intelligence have a lot of questions to answer, given the location of the compound, the length of time he was there and that this facility was apparently built for bin Laden," Carl Levin, who heads the US Senate's Armed Services Committee, told journalists in Washington.
But Controversial statements by US and Pakistani officials over the raid make it difficult to assess the contribution of the Pakistani intelligence and military to Osama's killing.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said 'close cooperation' with Pakistani special services helped the US to 'achieve our targets'.
Close cooperation or not, the final piece in the Bin Laden puzzle seems to be in Pakistan, just like the man himself.
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