Obama, Others Watched Osama Killed In Pakistan

Although the operation to capture or kill Al-Quaida leader, Osama Bin Laden was a securedly kept secret, the Americans turned it into a reality TV episode, another soap opera. As the commandos invaded the Pakistani hideout of the wanted terror leader, President Obama and his national security team watched the entire dangerous drama live on a TV screen inside the White House.

They watched as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye. They watched as the SEAL then carried out what is known in the military as a ‘double tap’ – shooting him again, probably in the chest, to make certain he was dead.

The footage of the battle in Bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout – which played out like an episode of 24 – is said to show one of his wives acting as a human shield to protect him as he blasted away with an AK47 assault rifle.

She died, along with three other men, including one of Bin Laden’s sons. Within hours, the Al Qaeda leader’s body was buried at sea.

Together with the President’s national security team they watched a crew of Navy Seals storm the terror chief’s hideout in Pakistan.

While the men in the room, arms folded, remain largely expressionless as they stared at the live feed streamed from the helmet camera of a U.S. commando, it is the expression on Mrs Clinton’s face that clearly shows the tension that they all felt. She was unable to hide the emotion of the moment for which they had waited more than a decade.

Mr Obama, with his eyes intently focused on the scene unfolding and with his fist clenched to his mouth, was said to be ‘stony faced’ through the transmission, even at the point when a voice came over the speakers stating: ‘We’ve ID’d Geronimo’ – a code name for Bin Laden. After the terrorist was shot, Mr Obama was said to have turned to the room and said: ‘We got him.’

Guests at a White house dinner last night rose to their feet as Barack Obama arrived with First Lady Michelle Obama, while the Speaker of the House John Boehner congratulates the President. With the mission accomplished, those present were able to breathe a sigh of relief.

With Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton as the tense operation unfolded were Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and White House Chief-of-Staff Bill Daly.

American officials said last night they were ‘99.9 per cent confident’ that DNA evidence proved Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Scientists compared forensic samples from the body in the Pakistan hideout with those taken from the brain of the terror mastermind’s late sister.

Photos of the corpse have also been passed to experts in facial recognition, who are comparing them to previous indisputable images of the Al Qaeda leader.

America has carried out such tests before on tissue samples from unrecognisable victims of drone bombing attacks on remote Afghan and Pakistani terror nests, who it was thought might have been Bin Laden.

The apparent speed of the Bin Laden tests raised yet more questions about the U.S. operation last night. Merely transporting samples to laboratories where DNA profiling can be carried out usually takes time, as does the process itself.

However, new technology means that the process can be speeded up and it is entirely possible that the Americans kept a Bin Laden family DNA profile at one of their bases in Afghanistan. Indeed, one report yesterday was that the DNA test had already been conducted on the fresh corpse.

Pentagon officials said that photos of the body and a videotape of the sea burial may be released soon to answer doubts that Bin Laden was actually killed.

In the huge manhunt for the terror leader, the CIA will have eagerly seized anything Bin Laden is believed to have touched, and searched anywhere he is believed to have stayed. Dentists and doctors will have been questioned in the hope they have retained a tooth or other organic matter.

But previous information from the years following 2001 has suggested that America has been anxiously seeking genetic samples from Bin Laden’s numerous siblings and other relatives – an indication that the CIA did not have any such samples from the Al Qaeda chief himself.

And according to a report on America’s ABC news yesterday, a key sample had come courtesy of the death of one of his sisters in a Boston hospital several years ago, from brain cancer.

Immediately after her death, it was claimed, the FBI obtained a court order to seize her body. Her brain was then preserved, and tissue and blood samples from it helped form the DNA database that was used to match that of Bin Laden.

Such samples from siblings alone could not, however, prove 100 per cent that the new corpse is that of Bin Laden himself. Close similarity of the new corpse’s DNA profile with those taken from siblings could only show that a member of the Bin Laden family had been killed.

Further circumstantial evidence – including photos, perhaps his height (up to 6ft 6in), and location in a hideout at the centre of the Al Qaeda terror network – might then be added to provide all the proof the Americans feel necessary.

A U.S. intelligence official said last night that as well as being identified by U.S. troops on the ground, a woman believed to be one of his wives had confirmed Bin Laden was the dead man

As the world grapples with the reality of bin Laden’s death, and inspite of President Obama’s claim that the master terrorist’s death made the world a ‘safer, better place’, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency declared that terrorists would ‘almost certainly’ respond.