Original subtitles

- [Laurence] Tonight, the attack that

struck the heart of America

and the relentless hunt to finally find the man behind it.

- [Kevin] It's an audacious attack.

To hijack airplanes and

fly them into buildings

exploited all of our weaknesses.

- [Nick] Between Shanksville, the Pentagon,

and the World Trade Center,

nearly 3,000 Americans lost their lives.

- Suspicion soon turns to one man.

- [Dina] The world found out that Osama bin Laden

was behind 9/11 pretty

quickly after it happened.

- [Juliette] The hunt for bin Laden begins.

The United States will get him

either dead or alive.

- [Paul] All of the resources of the American military

and intelligence agencies are

deployed to destroy one man.

And for 10 years, they can't find him, they can't kill him.

- Now, we explore the top theories

in the hunt for bin Laden,

leading to his unforgettable takedown.

- [Kavitha] He might be headed toward his old stomping ground,

the mountains in Tora Bora,

the tribal areas of Pakistan,

or a highly fortified compound.

- [Martin] SEAL Team 6 awaits their go order,

but no one will know if Osama bin Laden is in that compound

till those walls are breached.

- Where is the world's most wanted terrorist hiding?

[dramatic music]

[eerie music]

It' early afternoon on September 11, 2001,

Americans are in shock from the morning's deadly attacks.

President George W. Bush, flying on Air Force One,

summons his CIA briefer for a private conversation

to discuss who might be responsible.

- [Martin] This is the deadliest terrorist attack

on American soil, and it is a blatant act of war.

As the president is briefed,

He is told that the attack is carried out by 19 members

of the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda,

the leader of which is Osama bin Laden.

- [Laurence] Before 2001, Osama bin Laden is already

one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world,

dedicated to committing deadly strikes

against American targets.

44-year-old bin Laden is now the world's most wanted man.

- [Kavitha] Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia.

He's the 17th of 52 children,

and his father is a billionaire

construction mogul with connections to the Saudi royals.

- Bin Laden had a privileged childhood.

He grew up attending the most elite schools

in his country, studying economics.

He could have gone on to be a billionaire like his father,

but he was also driven by devout Sunni Muslim beliefs.

- [Paul] Even as a young man,

bin Laden was pretty religiously rigid.

[missiles booming]

Then, in 1979

the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

And Afghanistan resistance fighters essentially portrayed

this throughout the Muslim world as a fight

between godless communism and Islam itself.

- [Nick] Bin Laden starts to get radicalized

by what he's seeing the Soviets do in Afghanistan,

so much so that he joins the Islamic resistance

and he starts fighting the Soviets himself,

until 1988, when the Soviets are defeated.

- [Paul] Initially, bin Laden goes back to Saudi Arabia

and fears that Western influences

are corrupting the youth

and pulling them away from the ideals of Islam.

- The formation of al-Qaeda

was sort of a natural progression.

He wanted some sort of group that he could be in control of

to drive Westerners out of Muslim lands

as they had done for the Soviets.

In 1998, during an interview

with an ABC News correspondent named John Miller,

[Osama speaking in Arabic]

Osama bin Laden declared war on camera

against the United States.

Two months after that interview,

the embassy bombings happened.

- [Kavitha] On the morning of August 7th, 1998,

in nearly simultaneous attacks,

suicide bombers detonate trucks full of explosives

at the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

and Nairobi, Kenya.

224 people are killed and more than 4,000 are injured.

- [Lis] Two years later in Yemen, the USS Cole,

a US naval destroyer, is also attacked.

Two terrorists drove up alongside in their boat

filled with explosives, blowing a massive hole

in the side of the boat and killing 17 sailors.

- [Nick] With this string of successful suicide attacks,

al-Qaeda is only growing more confident and more powerful.

And it's in the summer of 2001 that President Bush

gets a briefing from the CIA

that al-Qaeda is planning another attack.

- [Dina] There were little red flags that were coming up,

but the CIA is not supposed to be investigating

on American soil,

and the FBI is supposed to be more law enforcement.

So there were suspects that one or the other knew about,

but they weren't connecting the dots.

The memo went to President Bush that said,

"Osama bin Laden is determined to attack on American soil."

But no one anticipated that what they would do

is take airplanes and fly them into buildings.

- [Juliette] September 11th comes, a beautiful morning,

with most people none the wiser.

By the evening of September 11th,

it's clear that America

is going to war.

- I've directed the full resources of our intelligence

and law enforcement communities

to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.

- [Paul] The American public demands an aggressive response

and wants revenge after 9/11.

But the idea of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden

is easier said than done.

- [Kavitha] While the US knows that he's

somewhere in Afghanistan,

he's effectively undetectable.

Bin Laden is a master at living off the grid.

Back in 1997, he stopped using all forms

of electronic communication,

and he's protected by the Taliban,

an Islamic fundamentalist movement

that serves as the country's de facto government.

- The United States of America will not permit

the world's most dangerous regimes

to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.

[congress applauding]

- [Laurence] On September 20, President Bush issues

an ultimatum to the Taliban

to hand over bin Laden and the terrorists

or share in their fate.

The Taliban refuses to comply.

- [Juliette] Just two weeks after September 11,

President Bush authorizes a small elite team

of CIA operatives to go into Afghanistan and kill bin Laden.

- [Kavitha] Within the CIA, the instructions are

a bit more explicit.

They are to kill him and bring back his head

in a box of dry ice.

But first, they have to find him.

- [Paul] Osama bin Laden stands out in a crowd.

He's 6'4", he absolutely

towers over the average Afghan,

so you'd think it would be easier to track this man down.

But bear in mind that this is the area

from which Osama bin Laden fought off

the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The terrain is an absolute nightmare.

The Hindu Kush Mountains range over 20,000 feet

in a lot of places.

It's riddled with tunnels and caves and fortifications.

- [Dina] It's hard to find a needle in that kind of haystack,

and that's essentially what they were being asked to do.

So instead, a bunch of CIA guys

with big suitcases full of money

came in to see if somebody would tell them

where Osama bin Laden actually was.

- [Martin] They have $3 million in cash,

which is intended to gather intelligence information,

and they quickly realize that he is probably located

somewhere near the spiritual heart of the country,

the city of Kandahar.

[tense music fading]

It would make sense for Osama bin Laden

to be in hiding somewhere near Kandahar

because after all, it was there that he established al-Qaeda

and it was also there where he established

a training facility at a place called Tarnak Farms.

- [Paul] Tarnak Farms was an

old abandoned agricultural collective

about three miles outside of the city.

Bin Laden had converted it

into an al-Qaeda militant training camp.

In September of 2000,

an unarmed American predator drone flying over Kandahar

picks up the image of a tall man in a pure white robe

who appears to be walking surrounded by a security detail.

US intelligence thinks that this footage

was actually bin Laden,

and he was living with four wives

and multiple children at Tarnak Farms.

[tense music]

- [Juliette] Tarnak Farms becomes a focus

of the United States military missions by mid-October 2001,

when Operation Enduring Freedom begins,

and US and British troops launch

an aggressive air bombing campaign.

[bomb booming]

- The overall objective of Operation Enduring Freedom

was to destroy al-Qaeda,

to remove the Taliban from power

and guarantee that the country of Afghanistan

could no longer function as a safe haven

for terrorist organizations.

It was expected that because of the overwhelming strength

of the American military, this operation would be concluded

in a matter of weeks.

But that is not what happened.

- [Laurence] As the bombing campaign begins,

Tarnak Farms is one of the first targets.

The hope is that bin Laden is quickly eliminated.

- Bin Laden is not just a successful terrorist

because he launches attacks.

What made him successful is that he also was an expert

at controlling a narrative

as Operation Enduring Freedom begins.

He releases a video that confirms

the United States' worst fear,

that the aerial assault over Kandahar has not succeeded

and bin Laden has escaped.

- [Nick] It's actually the first time that we hear

from bin Laden since the attacks of 9/11.

And it shows him in broad daylight,

wearing military fatigues, he's dressed in a headdress,

he looks healthy, he looks strong,

and the timing of this is clearly very tactical.

- [Dina] Osama bin Laden must have known that Tarnak Farms

would be an early target, so he was gone.

That particular attack really didn't do anything more

than put a giant hole in the ground

where there had been a training field.

- [Paul] It's very clear that bin Laden

and his top lieutenants

have not only survived the aerial assault,

but he might have been tipped off

even before the bombs started to fall.

Bin Laden is one step ahead of the United States

and has probably already fled the area.

- [Martin] The CIA is intent on finding and killing

Osama bin Laden.

Toward that end, they interrogate al-Qaeda operatives

who were found in the area around Kandahar.

They review satellite information

that might give them clues

about his location.

Overall, the hunt is on for Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.

- In the weeks after 9/11,

the first attempts to eliminate Osama bin Laden

seem to have failed, and he remains on the run.

The United States invades Afghanistan

in the hope of finding and killing him.

- [Juliette] By November 2001,

two months after the attacks on September 11th,

the United States' efforts are dependent

on a ragtag group of anti-Taliban warlords

known generally as the Northern Alliance.

- [Paul] The Northern Alliance has been trying

to essentially restore a democratic government

to Afghanistan, but it's been a losing effort.

Operation Enduring Freedom

inserted small teams of special operations forces

into Afghanistan.

Those individuals were able to call upon

an almost unprecedented amount of aerial firepower,

which allowed the Northern Alliance troops

to repeatedly defeat much larger Taliban armies.

- [Kavitha] When Enduring Freedom kicked off,

CIA operatives spent weeks interrogating Taliban

and al-Qaeda prisoners desperate for any information.

In early November, US intelligence believes

that they may have picked up bin Laden's trail

a little over 300 miles away from Kandahar

in the city of Kabul.

[tense music]

- [Paul] Although the Taliban movement started

in the southern city of Kandahar,

Kabul is still really seen as the key

to the conquest of Afghanistan.

The United States and its allies

have been bombing Taliban strongholds in the area,

softening it up for an assault

by the elements of the Northern Alliance.

- [Dina] From Kandahar to Kabul is not a big drive.

It's only about eight hours.

Osama bin Laden was thought in the beginning

to be going back and forth

between those two places

as he was trying to organize what would happen next.

- [Lis] Kabul is a city of 3 million people,

so the US can't just go in indiscriminately dropping bombs.

If Osama bin Laden is living amongst

the civilian population,

they need to figure out exactly where he is.

- [Nick] On November 8th, the US learns of an interview

that Bin Laden has had

with a Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir.

He's taken blindfolded to a safe house, basically, in Kabul.

- [Dina] As he was talking to this Pakistani journalist,

Osama bin Laden admits to

actually being behind 9/11,

but he wouldn't put it on tape.

He was worried that if the Taliban actually knew

that he'd admitted to it,

that they might kick him out of Afghanistan.

- [Juliette] This interview is interesting

because bin Laden, with a lot of bravado,

discloses that al-Qaeda is not done.

They are planning chemical attacks,

potentially nuclear attacks.

He's suggesting, "Oh, you think September 11th was bad?

You haven't seen the worst of it."

- [Laurence] The interview ends abruptly

when bin Laden's security guards suddenly rush everyone out.

Minutes later, bombs destroy the safe house.

[bombs bursting]

- [Paul] At about the same time, the Northern Alliance,

backed up by American special forces,

successfully assaulted and captured

the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

This means there's really nothing between them

and the capital city of Kabul.

- [Martin] On November 12, 2001, Northern Alliance forces,

with the assistance of the American military,

enter the city of Kabul after

having defeated Taliban forces

on the city's outskirts.

As they move into the center of the city,

they're greeted with applause

because the people of Kabul are excited at the idea

of the Taliban finally having been overthrown.

- [Juliette] But the United States' mission is not done.

On that day, CIA operatives see

a massive caravan leaving Kabul,

cars and cars.

This is clearly a high-value target.

- [Laurence] Two months after 9/11, operatives are hopeful

they're finally closing in on Osama bin Laden.

- [Martin] As the convoy escapes from Kabul,

it's being shadowed by a predator drone,

but this one's different than the predator

that had been over Tarnak Farms,

because this is an armed predator.

- [Paul] When the convoy stops

and its occupants move into the building,

the remote pilot fires

an AGM Hellfire missile into that building.

The high-value target is killed in the airstrike,

but it's not Osama bin Laden.

It's his number three, Mohammed Atef.

He's the operational commander of al-Qaeda.

- As Kabul falls and Afghanistan is liberated,

there is a hope that bin Laden actually was killed,

but eventually the CIA comes to understand

in their intelligence gathering

that bin Laden has escaped again.

- [Paul] Nobody is certain where he might have gone,

but there's the very real possibility

that he's still out there and planning the next big attack,

one that will dwarf 9/11 and cause catastrophic damages.

- [Laurence] December 2001,

three months after the 9/11 attacks,

Operation Enduring Freedom has scored a number of successes

in Afghanistan, dismantling the Taliban regime,

destroying al-Qaeda's training camps,

and taking out many of their leaders.

But no one can call it mission accomplished

until Osama bin Laden is killed or captured.

And while he may be on the run,

he's headed for one of the best hiding places on the planet.

- [Kevin] The Taliban, at this point, were bleeding out

of the urban areas and into the rural areas

where they were finding safe haven

in the mountains in Afghanistan,

one of the more difficult battlefields in the world.

It's easy to fortify them.

You have to be equipped to fight in the cold

and the altitude will limit your ability

to fly helicopters.

- [Paul] US operatives are combing through Kabul,

trying to find any clues as to where bin Laden

might have gone.

They begin to realize that he's almost certainly fled

the city and it appears he's headed towards

the mountainous cave complex known as Tora Bora.

- [Laurence] The Tora Bora cave complex

is an extensive series of fortifications built

with the help of the CIA

during the fight against the Soviets.

It was then further expanded by someone

with a lifetime of construction experience

and unlimited funds, Osama bin Laden.

- [Kavitha] It's hard to fathom just how vast

and inhospitable Tora Bora is.

The terrain is treacherous and steep,

and it's almost impossible

to conduct traditional warfare here.

Bin Laden widened and fortified all the underground tunnels,

basically making Tora Bora into a mountain fortress.

It makes sense that he might be headed toward a stronghold

that he's quite familiar with.

- [Martin] In December 2001,

the US is able to narrow down the search

for Osama bin Laden when a group

of Army Special Forces operators

and Northern Alliance fighters climb into

the mountains near Tora Bora

and overhear a shortwave radio broadcast

that features a familiar voice,

the voice of Osama bin Laden.

- [Paul] Knowing that bin Laden and al-Qaeda

are effectively trapped in Tora Bora,

the United States and its allies

commence an enormous aerial campaign,

dropping thousands of pounds of bombs on the tunnel complex.

But it's a mountain fortress that's almost impervious

to any form of airstrike.

- [Kevin] The US knew they needed something

to counteract these tunnel systems.

Tora Bora is a perfect place to hold up,

but the US has a massive bomb in its arsenal

that they're confident will end this manhunt.

- [Paul] On December 9th, 2001,

an American transport cargo aircraft

drops a 15,000-pound fuel-air explosive thermobaric bomb,

dubbed the Daisy Cutter.

- [Martin] The Daisy Cutter

is the largest conventional explosive device

in American arsenals.

And when it lands, it creates a kill zone

that's a radius of 900 feet.

Anything within that kill zone

is vaporized by the explosion.

So they drop Daisy Cutters in the mountains

around Tora Bora,

forever changing the landscape of the area.

It's complete silence afterward.

Nothing is moving.

They think they got him.

- They can't prove it because it's near impossible

to get the DNA evidence

given how big the bomb was.

But the United States believes the mission is over

until the CIA picks up an intercept from bin Laden

to al-Qaeda that he has survived.

- [Nick] On December 11th, the US intercepts a message

from bin Laden directly to his troops,

saying if they can't get out alive,

they have his blessing to surrender.

- [Laurence] Little do they know,

bin Laden and his entourage have another plan in mind.

- [Paul] On December 12th,

a group of more than two dozen al-Qaeda fighters

are spotted heading across the border with Pakistan.

This is brutal terrain that they're moving across,

and they're doing it in the depth of winter.

They're at extremely high elevations.

There are very deep ravines.

They're relying on little-known smugglers' trails

that allow them to evade detection.

- [Kavitha] The group makes it to the Pakistan border,

but after they cross into the country,

they're arrested and handed over to the US.

- [Laurence] Once again,

high hopes for bin Laden's capture are dashed.

Though the group contains a number of his known bodyguards,

bin Laden himself is nowhere to be found.

- [Paul] It's possible that bin Laden had used a group

of his bodyguards essentially

as a decoy to draw attention away.

He stayed in Tora Bora for a few extra days

before quietly slipping away via a different route.

- [Nick] Two weeks afterwards, a tape is released,

and it shows bin Laden looking very gaunt, very frail.

the left side of his body is rigid,

almost as if, though, he's been injured

in that Tora Bora battle.

It's in this video that he says,

even if he dies,

the war against the US will go on.

- [Dina] That was twice in a very short amount of time

where the Americans think, "We got him," and they didn't.

- [Paul] President Bush is furious when he discovers

that bin Laden has slipped the net

and escaped from American forces.

It's clear at the end of 2001

that the United States does not have an actionable plan

about how to find the man

that has eluded capture for months.

- [Kavitha] It soon becomes crystal clear

that the world's most wanted man

has once again gone completely off the grid.

- By early 2002,

the Taliban has been driven out of the cities

and into the countryside of Afghanistan.

But al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden,

seem to have disappeared from the country entirely.

- [Paul] Months go by and bin Laden is nowhere to be seen.

No new communications prove to the world

that he's still alive,

and people begin to wonder if he might have died.

- [Nick] Where is he?

Did he get injured in Tora Bora?

And then an audio tape emerges

that shows that bin Laden is very much alive,

and he takes credit for a

string of suicide attacks.

A bombing against a French vessel in the port of Yemen,

a synagogue in Tunisia,

and a Bali nightclub that kills 200 people.

- [Dina] What Osama bin Laden was trying to indicate

in these audio tapes

is that you don't know where he's going to strike.

And it was incredibly frustrating

to US intelligence people,

because every time they thought,

"Maybe we've got him. Maybe it's done,"

he would pop up again.

- The CIA is under a great deal of pressure

to find and kill Osama bin Laden,

but these attacks and the recordings suggest

that he might not even

be in Afghanistan anymore.

He could be anywhere.

[tense music]

- [Nick] The US is grasping at straws.

They put out images of what he may look like

if he loses his iconic beard,

as if he may be trying to blend in in the West.

But ever since Tora Bora, bin Laden has gone dark,

and it's been nearly impossible to track him down.

- The United States has placed a $25 million bounty

on bin Laden's head,

and not surprisingly,

that's causing tips to come pouring in.

A lot of them are very unlikely,

like the woman who claims

that she saw bin Laden

at her local library in Washington State,

or the man who says that he was at a carnival

in Mexico City.

The CIA start to jokingly refer to these types of wild tips

as Elvis sightings.

- [Dina] They decide to find the people

who were around Osama bin Laden

and use them as a way to try and figure out where he is.

They saw that there were lots of members of al-Qaeda

using a safe house in a lawless town in Pakistan.

[metal door clanking]

So they break into the safe house and

they find Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also known as KSM.

- [Paul] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest

is major international news.

This is the first time that an important figure

within al-Qaeda has been captured alive

and potentially subjected to interrogation.

The CIA get their hands on his laptop computer

And it's clear that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

is within bin Laden's inner circle.

- [Laurence] But just three weeks after KSM's arrest,

the US widens its war on terror

by turning its attention to another enemy, Iraq.

- [Paul] The Bush administration has become convinced

that Saddam Hussein has very close ties to al-Qaeda,

and he might provide them

with substantial biological

and chemical weapons.

- [Kavitha] On March 20th, 2003,

the US invades Iraq.

It marks a significant shift away from bin Laden

and towards Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

It's undeniable that it did take some of the heat

off of al-Qaeda and allowed them to regroup.

[guns firing]

- [Juliette] There's growing concern

within the counterterrorism community

that the United States has become distracted

from its mission to get bin Laden.

- [Laurence] By the end of October 2004,

18 months after the invasion of Iraq,

Bin Laden re-emerges on video for the first time

in three years.

- [Kavitha] Bin Laden releases his video message

just days before the presidential election,

and for the first time, he takes full responsibility

for the 9/11 attacks.

- [Martin] Every one of Osama bin Laden's videos

is combed over by CIA analysts

looking for clues

about where his location might be.

If there is a rock outcropping in the background,

geologists are brought in to analyze where in the world

those rocks might be located.

If there's a bird chirping at the audio track,

ornithologists are brought in

to determine what bird species it is with the hope

that that might point an arrow at his location.

- [Juliette] Bin Laden knows how the United States works.

This video gives no clues.

The background is bare.

There are no outside sounds, no hints of where he could be.

He's like this phantom who's appearing out of nowhere

to remind the United States that he is still alive

and that he promises more attacks.

- [Laurence] Nearly a year later,

bin Laden follows through on his threat

by unleashing al-Qaeda on America's allies.

- [Paul] On July 7th, 2005, al-Qaeda militants launched

a coordinated campaign of suicide bombings

throughout London.

52 British citizens are killed

and more than 700 are wounded.

It's the deadliest terror attack in British history.

Now, the US is absolutely desperate

to uncover bin Laden's whereabouts and is terrified

that al-Qaeda will continue to launch attacks

against its allies and

drive those allies away

from the war on terror.

- [Laurence] Following 2005 London bombings,

investigators discovered that two British nationals

who carried out the attacks

had attended al-Qaeda training camps

in a remote area in Pakistan.

- [Kevin] The region between Pakistan and Afghanistan

is called the tribal areas,

and it's known as somewhat of a lawless land,

an area where the Taliban

and al-Qaeda could find safe haven.

- [Kavitha] The region is not only

mountainous and difficult to reach,

but local tribes have sheltered al-Qaeda members

throughout the years.

Intelligence experts begin to theorize

that if al-Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas,

then perhaps bin Laden is hiding out there as well.

[tense music]

- [Paul] The CIA devotes substantial resources

to the tribal region in the pursuit of al-Qaeda

and in particular, in the search for Osama bin Laden.

[bomb exploding]

- [Juliette] The United States begins to aggressively take out

dozens of high-level leaders of al-Qaeda,

but not bin Laden.

- [Laurence] In 2009, President Barack Obama is inaugurated.

One of his early campaign promises

was the elimination of Osama bin Laden.

- President Obama instructed his CIA chief

to double the operations in the hunt for Bin Laden.

In the summer of 2009,

Jordanian intelligence comes to the US

with some invaluable information.

Earlier that year, they arrested

a pediatrician turned jihadist named Humam al-Balawi.

And in exchange for a ton of money,

al-Balawi has agreed to spy on

al-Qaeda in the tribal lands.

- Shortly after the Jordanians expose him to the CIA,

he actually sends in a video of himself sitting next

to one of al-Qaeda's chief lieutenants.

and perhaps he's going to be the key to finding bin Laden.

The CIA calls for a face-to-face meeting with al-Balawi.

They want to verify that he's actually the real deal.

[suspenseful music]

- The CIA is set to meet al-Balawi in Camp Chapman,

which is their base in Afghanistan.

He gets there.

He's in a car, he pulls up.

And as he walks towards the agents,

he pulls inside of his coat and boom.

- [Martin] Seven agents are killed in the blast.

It's the deadliest attack against the CIA in 25 years.

But if bin Laden thought

that this would somehow discourage the agency,

he was dead wrong.

Because all it did was cement the agency's resolve

to find him and kill him.

- It is here where the CIA begins to rethink

how they are going to find out where Bin Laden is.

Bin Laden is off the grid.

He's not using phones.

The only way he's able to get his message out

is through courier.

- [Paul] The CIA starts looking at

a number of potential prospects

for who might be bin Laden's chief courier.

They start to focus on an individual

named Ahmed Abdul al-Kuwaiti.

It's almost on luck that the CIA intercepts a telephone call

in which al-Kuwaiti reports that he's back to working

with the inner circle of al-Qaeda.

- [Kevin] When they figured out

that al-Kuwaiti was the messenger,

the CIA set up an

elaborate operation to track him.

They followed him to a compound in Abbottabad,

which was unlike anything else in the city.

18-foot walls.

They weren't linked to internet or telephone.

They were burning the trash.

And so at that point,

the CIA had a hunch

it might be Osama bin Laden.

- [Paul] Abbottabad is not where you'd expect

to find a terrorist hideout.

It's in the foothills of the Himalayas Mountains.

It's pretty remote, but it's kind of a resort town.

Essentially, the CIA starts turning all of its resources

towards this compound.

There are satellites monitoring movements

in and out of the compound from above.

There are human agents on the ground.

They're keeping it under constant observation.

- [Lis] The CIA, using satellite imagery,

focuses in on a figure that paces the courtyard every day,

and they give him the nickname "The Pacer."

Now, they can't see his face,

so they can't clearly identify him,

but they're pretty sure it's Osama bin Laden.

- [Kevin] They were able to use his shadow

to measure how tall he was,

and once his height matched

Osama bin Laden's height of 6'4",

they decided to put together plans to attack the target.

- [Juliette] President Obama decides early on

he is not going to drop a bomb on the complex.

He wants to have proof of the death of bin Laden,

and he worries about civilian losses.

But also a bomb being dropped

is going to have unmanageable consequences

with the government of Pakistan.

So SEAL Team 6 is brought in.

- [Kevin] They selected pretty much an

all-star team of operators

and get them ready to execute the mission.

At that point, they'd also figured out

the parameters of the compound

and built a mock-up in North Carolina

that they could train on.

- [Lis] And what they're doing there

is trying to figure out things like,

how do they get from point A to point B?

Where are the helicopters going to land?

Where are their vulnerabilities?

- [Martin] This three-week training operation

is one of the most covert missions

to ever take place on American soil.

No one knows what's about to happen.

- [Paul] In late April of 2011, SEAL Team 6

deploys to Afghanistan.

Even at that time, no one can be certain

whether bin Laden is even present in Abbottabad.

The only way to find out will be to launch the assault.

- [Laurence] May 2nd, 2011 at 10:30 PM,

two Black Hawk helicopters take off from Afghanistan

with 23 members of SEAL Team 6 and one interpreter on board.

The operation codenamed Neptune Spear has begun.

They're heading towards Abbottabad, 150 miles away.

[choppers whirring]

- [Martin] The mission's going to infiltrate Pakistani airspace

without permission.

And because Pakistan is a modern nation

with a modern military,

they have a robust air defense system,

so there's the chance

that the mission might just get shot out of the sky

before they can even reach the objective.

However, the Blackhawks that they're using for this mission

have been specially modified to reduce sound

and radar signature.

So they're essentially stealth helicopters.

- [Kevin] The SEALs had stripped their gear down

to the bare essentials

because they were concerned about weight.

And they wanted to make sure they could get the whole team

into the two helicopters.

So going in, they didn't have any heavy weapons.

They carried minimal ammunition.

They had their night vision,

and that was about it.

[helicopter whirring]

- [Paul] Inside the White House,

the president, the vice president,

the secretary of defense,

they're all in there watching the raid in real-time

while it's occurring.

But you've got to imagine how bizarre it would be

knowing that the president of the United States

and his closest advisors

are literally watching over your shoulder.

- [Martin] At 12:30 AM,

the Army helicopters transporting SEAL Team 6

reach the compound in Abbottabad.

But as one of those modified Blackhawks

maneuvers into position to touch down,

it creates a vortex effect that kills its lift,

and so the aircraft comes down violently rather than gently.

- [Kevin] The element of surprise was absolutely gone

at that point.

The helicopter looked like a lawn dart inside the compound,

and anybody in the compound knew now that this was

some sort of military operation coming for them.

- [Paul] It could have been a catastrophe,

but ironically,

the crash probably got them

on the ground quicker.

The first task for them is to basically secure

all of the surrounding environs around the house.

Then an assault team storms the building itself.

[C2 bomb bangs]

- [Dina] Obama, Clinton,

all these people who are sitting in the room,

they have a drone that's watching all of this,

but they have no idea what's happening inside.

Obama said it was the longest 40 minutes of his life.

[tense music]

- [Paul] As the SEALs are moving up through the house,

they encounter one of Bin Laden's adult sons,

and they shoot him dead on one of the landings.

Adult males in the compound are presumed

to be al-Qaeda fighters.

And the women and children are basically zip-tied

and herded together.

They're not offering any significant resistance,

but it is taking time to secure these noncombatants.

- [Dina] And what they had figured is that Osama bin Laden

was probably with his family on the top floor,

and they start making their way up the stairs.

They have no idea

what the inside of the house looks like, right?

They've only seen it on the outside.

They don't know if it's gonna be booby-trapped,

so there was a concern that every time you opened a door,

they'd blow themselves up.

- [Martin] The SEALs make their way up the staircase

to the third floor,

it's the most fortified part of the compound,

so anyone inside has had minutes

to prepare their defense.

As they enter, they see a man peering at them

from one of the doorways, and they open fire.

- [Kevin] The SEALs get to the doorway.

The door opens, and on the ground is a man, wounded.

And there are women in the room that rush towards him.

The point man shields the women, and the SEALs behind him

get to the side of the man on the ground,

and they shoot him.

[gunshot]

At that point, they then secure the rest of this room,

and they're trying to identify who it is

that they've just shot.

- The SEALs only have 40 minutes on the ground,

so they're in a race against time,

and they don't know whether or not the man

that they have just killed is actually their target.

He has gunshot wounds to his face,

so they can't tell by looking at him.

However, then one of the women in the room

confirms that, yes, they have indeed killed Osama bin Laden.

- [Kevin] They also find a treasure trove

of al-Qaeda intelligence material,

which they try to gather up as much as they can.

- [Juliette] But they've lost lost one helicopter.

The other one only has about 40 minutes

of capacity to wait around.

A backup helicopter has been sent in,

but time is short.

- [Paul] They evacuate bin Laden's dead body

and some of the SEALs

on the remaining stealth helicopter.

They bring in a Chinook to pick up the rest of them.

That's the big, heavy transport utility helicopter.

They're loud, they're enormous,

and now they've given up any possibility

of secrecy or surprise.

- As they're flying away, they receive reports

that the Pakistani Air Force

may be scrambling fighter interceptors

to come and shoot them down.

And so every single minute feels like a lifetime.

For 90 minutes, they fly towards safety,

and then eventually,

when they enter Afghani airspace,

they are finally safe.

- They take the body, they perform some DNA tests

to make sure it's Osama bin Laden.

And then it's flown to an aircraft carrier

where they conduct a Muslim funeral

and bury Osama bin Laden at sea.

[dramatic music]

- [Laurence] Osama bin Laden's reign of terror

is finally over.

- Tonight-

- [Laurence] President Obama reveals

the news with a public announcement.

- The United States has conducted an operation

that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda.

[crowd chanting]

- It was such a jubilant moment for the country

that people drove hours and hours

just to celebrate outside of the White House.

It was a chapter closing for a lot of Americans.

- Shortly after the successful conclusion of the raid,

the members of SEAL Team 6 redeployed back

to the United States for a secret meeting

with President Obama,

who awarded each of the raiders the Silver Star.

- [Martin] Finally, after 10 years of missed opportunities,

false leads, and dead ends, Osama bin Laden,

the most wanted man on planet Earth,

the man who killed over 3,000 Americans on September 11th,

and the man who's responsible for the deaths

of thousands of other people worldwide,

he has finally been killed, and justice has been served.

- It's the end of one of the most intense manhunts

in history, and while bin Laden's death doesn't end

the threat of terror,

it does prove that even the world's most elusive fugitive

can't escape justice forever.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching this case-closed episode