May 2, 2011

The founder and spiritual figurehead for al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is dead.

President Barack Obama said in an address from the White House that a small team of Americans carried out the operation to kill bin Laden in Pakistan, and that cooperation from Pakistani authorities was crucial.

A small team of Navy SEALs carried out the secret operation Monday. A senior U.S. administration official described the strike on the compound in Abbottabad, about 30 miles north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, as "a surgical raid by a small team designed to minimize collateral damage."

Only U.S. personnel were involved in the raid, and administration officials said great care was taken to ensure operational success. No information about President Obama's decision to launch the strike was shared with other governments, including Pakistan.

The raid took less than 40 minutes. Bin Laden and three other adult males were killed, as well as a woman who was being used as a shield. Two women were injured.

CBS News foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports that the operation was conducted under CIA Title 50 charter but carried out by Navy SEAL Team Six and the ground commander was a SEAL squadron commander. There were CIA present, but it was a military operation.

The Navy SEALs (their acronym is derived from the environments in which they are deployed - sea, air and land) were established in 1962, developed from the experience of World War II commando and demolition units. These highly-trained special operations forces function under Naval Special Warfare Command, within the United States Special Operations Command. There are about 2,500 active duty Navy SEALs, comprising nine active duty Teams and two Reserve teams.

Appearing on CBS' "The Early Show," retired Army Major General James "Spider" Marks (who served as a senior intelligence officer during the war in Iraq) said that the operation actually began years ago with intelligence work identifying the target - a courier for bin Laden.

"Our attention now will be on what took place on the ground, how this thing went down, the incredible precision, the real accuracy of what took place," Marks said. "But what preceded all of that was an incredible amount of very difficult, often very boring but necessary, meticulous, intelligence work that brought us to this conclusion. So a lot of hard work by a lot of agencies, and a lot of sharing in order to make this right."

Marks said once the suspect compound had been identified, specific logistical planning for the raid would have begun months in advance.

"Obviously there was a determination to give it to the SEAL team folks. They then worked the details [as] that intelligence got tighter and tighter and tighter," Marks said. "These special ops guys are incredibly trained. Basically, it's brilliance in the basics. They don't do anything that's super-special; they just do everything they're supposed to do, the blocking and tackling exceptionally well. And then you keep it very closely held within a tight-knit group, pull the trigger and make it happen."

Marks said, from what is known of the operation, "the president gave the green light on Friday. He probably established 72- or 69-hour delegated authority down to the director of the CIA and said, 'Within this time period you've got to make it happen, because if you don't, conditions are going to change, word's going to get out,' et cetera. Then it's simply a matter of assembling the team, which has been rehearsed many, many times on this precise target.

"They've done this in advance, in their heads, and on the ground in secluded locations, so when they execute, it really is simply a matter of staying focused. It's like a machine going about the business. The heart rates don't go up. They stay very focused. They do what needs to be done, and then they get it done. In fact, we're hearing that they were on the objective no more than 40 minutes. I would argue that they probably had the objective secured within about five to ten minutes, then had to do some, quote, cleanup operations to make sure they were at the right place, they had the right guys, and then they evacuated."

There were no American casualties, although a helicopter experienced mechanical difficulties prior to landing and was abandoned.