Retired Adm. Mike Mullen says an iconic White House situation room photo taken May 1, 2011 captured the “intensity” of those watching live updates of the Navy SEALs raid that killed 9/11 terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.
In a pretaped interview aired Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” Mullen said the photo taken by White House photographer Pete Souza of then-President Barack Obama and his national security team caught the mood just right.
“That picture captures a lot of intensity,” said Mullen, who served then as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It was incredibly intense, and it almost froze the place.”
“Right after we heard ‘Geronimo,’ I looked down to the vice president [Joe Biden], and he’s getting his wallet out and he’s about to put his rosary ring, you know, into his wallet,” Mullen added. “I turned to him and I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, I’ve got 48 or 49 American sailors and soldiers illegally in a country. I’ve still got to fly them out. I’ve got to get them back to Jalalabad, and then I’ve got to fly them through Pakistani air space to get the body out to an aircraft carrier and bury him. Please put that ring back on. … Now is not the time to stop praying.”
And Biden did exactly that, putting the ring back on, Mullen told ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz.
Afterward, Mullen recounted how he walked outside and heard the celebration in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.
“I left alone, and I walked by the Rose Garden, and I could hear out in Lafayette Square, this chanting, USA, USA,” he said, recalling it was “dominated by young voices.”
“And that’s sort of when it really hit me is how significant it was, that these young men and women who had been 9 or 10 I think when the towers were taken down, that it was such an extraordinary moment for them,” he said of the hit on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City.
“And that really, that was the moment for me that kind of raised it to how significant this really was,” he said.
Mullen said it was crucial to keep everything secret during the run-up to the raid.
“There was a lot of risk,” he said. “We felt comfortable that we could get in and out of Pakistan without being detected in a timely way. We felt we could get into the compound.”
“Sort of the final dress rehearsal that I went to … involved upwards of 48 to 50 SEALs, and then I specifically met and shook hands and looked every operator in the eye to, one, express my gratitude,” he recalled. “Are they ready to go? And I was very confident that they were.”
“You needed to keep this very, very close because if bin Laden or his people had gotten wind of any potential operation there, he would have been gone,” Mullen added.
“But I think what made it all work ,” he said, crediting an appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when “we acted as if everything was normal, and that was the plan.”
Source: Newmax
