Manhunt by Peter L. Bergen

Author:Peter L. Bergen [Bergen, Peter L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-95558-6
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

12 THE DECISION

ON THURSDAY, APRIL 28, the day following the release of Obama’s birth certificate, Leiter presented the findings of the Red Team to the president and his war cabinet. “Bottom line is, the Red Team did not find anything or conclude anything revolutionary or new from what the previous team had,” Leiter told them.

For those who were in favor of the raid, such as Michèle Flournoy and Mike Vickers, the Red Team findings didn’t alter their views. “It really didn’t change anything,” explains Vickers. “People’s estimates before this ranged from maybe sixty to eighty percent believing that bin Laden was there. And then the Red Team, a couple of them came back and said sixty percent, and one guy said forty percent, but he said his forty percent was better than any other explanation.”

Leiter addressed Obama directly, saying, “Even if you’re at the forty percent low end of this range, Mister President, that’s still about thirty-eight percent better than we’ve been for ten years.”

Still, that one estimate of 40 percent was discomfiting to some. John Brennan recalls, “Some of us thought, ‘Whoa! We thought the prospects were higher that he was in there.’ And the president recognized that when people were saying, ‘Well, there’s only 40 percent of a chance,’ that some people were going to get a little bit soft on this.”

Ben Rhodes says, “There was a deflation in the room, because what you’re looking for as you’re getting closer to the call is greater certainty, not less. So essentially it played into all the fears that people had about what could go wrong. Is it worth the risk?”

Similarly, Tony Blinken says, “I think, if anything, the Red Team actually brought down the level of certainty; the positive ID percentage was higher before the Red Team got done. So I think we went from maybe seventy/thirty or sixty-five/thirty-five to fifty-five/forty-five or even fifty/fifty.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who had spent more than four decades in the intelligence business, says the discussion of exact percentages gave the impression of precision, but “in the end it was subjective. It didn’t matter whether the percentage of confidence was 40 percent or 80 percent. It seemed like the closer you were to working the problem, the in-the-trenches analysts who were really doing the legwork here, doing the grunt work, were very confident. And as you got concentric circles away from them, the confidence sort of went down.” Clapper personally felt “it was the most compelling case we had had in ten years. And sure, it would’ve been nice to have somebody inside the compound—the maid or the cook we could’ve recruited—someone who could say, ‘Yeah, that’s him and that’s who’s there.’ Well, we didn’t have that.”

For those who were inclined to oppose the raid, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Red Team analysis confirmed their doubts. Gates said, “I think this Red Team is really an outstanding piece of work, and I find it very persuasive.” Persuasive, in other words, that bin Laden might well not be living in the Abbottabad compound.

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