Think Again: The Bin Laden Raid - By Mark Bowden

"The decision to launch the raid was a close call."

Not really. The idea that U.S. President Barack Obama bucked the counsel of his key advisors in deciding to order the Navy SEAL assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, apparently arose from reports of the spirited discussions that the president entertained in the weeks before the raid. Some of the confusion can be traced back to the administration itself. Vice President Biden's National Security Advisor Tony Blinken was quoted in a CNN report saying, "First, we [didn't] know for sure bin Laden is there; the evidence [was] circumstantial. Second, most of his senior advisors recommended a different course of action."

In fact, nearly all the principals favored sending in the SEALs at their final meeting on the topic, three days before the raid. The biggest exception was Vice President Joe Biden, who was the only one who urged the president not to attack the Abbottabad compound ... yet. He wanted more time to make certain that bin Laden was, in fact, present. However, Obama had accepted months earlier that the chance the al Qaeda chief was staying at the compound was essentially "50-50," and that ordering the raid would mean accepting those odds.

Obama's advisors did provide him viable alternatives to a direct military assault on the compound. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs James Cartwright favored launching a small missile fired from a drone at "The Pacer" -- their term the tall man who was often seen walking back and forth within the compound walls, and who they suspected was bin Laden. This carried with it a greater risk of missing the target, but was much lower risk than sending a SEAL team into Pakistan.

But as the moment of truth neared, Obama's advisors abandoned the idea of a drone strike. Gates changed his mind the morning after the final decision meeting on April 28 after conferring with two of his deputies, Michael Vickers and Michèle Flournoy.

Support for launching the raid also went well beyond the principals, and included the CIA, National Counterterrorism Center officials, and the National Security Council staff. In the end, Obama would have only been bucking his advisors if he had refused to launch the raid.