U.S. President Barack Obama has said that he wanted to send Navy SEALs into Pakistan to strike at Osama bin Laden but waited until all members of his team had a chance to have their say.
President Obama and key members of his inner circle spoke to CNN's Peter Bergen about the raid that killed the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the fifth anniversary of the May 2, 2011 raid.
"On decisions like this, you're leaning in a certain direction. I had been inclined to take the shot fairly early on in the discussions. But you hold back the decision until you have to make it. And in the end, what I had very much appreciated was the degree to which we had an honest debate," Obama said.
He said that the entire experience taught him that good process leads to good results.
"I could honestly say, by the time I made the decision, that everybody had had their say, that we had all the information we were going to be able to get," he said adding, "We had not looked at it through rose-coloured glasses. We knew the risks involved."
President Obama explained how he watched the operation from the White House Situation Room with key members of his government only to see one of the specially equipped Black Hawk helicopters hit the ground.
Also Read
"We came in here at the point where the helicopters were about to actually land. It's here where we observed, for example, that one of the helicopters got damaged in the landing," he said.
He remembered seeing the turn of events thinking it was "not an ideal start".
Obama's top military, intelligence and security advisers also watched the raid alongside him in the Situation Room.
"We were all worried. The good news was it didn't crash. Our guys were able to extract themselves. The bad news was that the helicopter itself had been damaged," the President said.
He remembered that one of the 23 Navy SEALs who conducted the raid smashed classified fixtures of the Black Hawk helicopter and then set off explosives to destroy it.
"Even though we had the best helicopter operators imaginable, despite the fact that they had practised these landings repeatedly in a mock-up, we couldn't account for temperature..and the fact that helicopters start reacting differently in an enclosed compound where heat may be rising," the President said.
President Obama said that decision to strike was "emblematic of presidential decision-making. You're always working with probabilities, and you make a decision, not based on 100 per cent certainty, but with the best information that you've got".
His exclusive interview to Bergen marks the first time Obama has sat down with a journalist in the main Situation Room, known as the John F. Kennedy Conference Room.
When Bergen reminded him that "the last person that bin Laden saw on Earth was an American" President Obama said, "And hopefully, at that moment, he understood that the American people hadn't forgotten the some 3,000 people who he killed".