Obama monitored Osama bin Laden attack in real time
President Obama and members of his national security team monitored the attack against Osama bin Laden on a real-time basis, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said today.
"It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled here yesterday," Brennan said in a White House press briefing. "The minutes passed like days, and the president was very concerned about the security of our personnel."
The president and his team were able to monitor the sequence of events from the very start of the operation through its completion, Brennan said. It took the team of CIA officers and Navy SEALs carrying out the operation no more than 40 minutes to kill bin Laden in the compound in Abbottabad, which is close to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad.
Brennan said the president and his team had "real time visibility into the progress of the operation," but would not go into details about what sort of technology was used.
"It was clearly very tense, a lot of people holding their breath, and there was a fair degree of silence as it progressed as we would get the updates," Brennan said. "And when we finally were informed that those individuals who were able to go in that compound and found an individual that they believe was bin Laden, it was a tremendous sigh of relief that what we believed and who we believed was in that compound actually was in that compound and was found."
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