The Death Of Bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden is dead. We’ll look at the planning and mechanics of the killings in Pakistan.

In the end, it was not on Pakistan’s wild frontier. It was not in a hut, or a cave. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed, President Obama announced last night, in a big compound — practically a mansion — in the heart of Pakistan.

A U.S. assault team helicoptered in. A gun battle. Bin Laden, we’re told, shot in the head, his body “buried” at sea. There will be not be a grave site.

After all these years, this is a thunderclap — maybe “the” thunderclap — many Americans had waited for.

This hour On Point: the killing of Osama bin Laden — how they planned it, how they did it.
- Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

Adam Entous, national security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

Bob Drogin, national security correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

Carlotta Gall, covers Afghanistan and Pakistan for the New York Times.

Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science