A Brighton woman who worked for 15 years as a nurse after graduating from the Community College of Denver may sue the school for its representation that she never received
and vengeance at last, u.s. nails famed in pakistan. last night, the president made a statement to the nation, about 11:30 eastern time. here's a little bit about what he said stressing the historic perhaps of bin laden's death. >> at my direction, the united states launched a targeted operation against that compound in abbottabad, pakistan. a small team of americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. no americans were harmed. they took care to avoid civilian casualties. after a firefight, they killed osama bin laden and took custody of his body. for over two decades, bin laden has been al qaeda's leader and symbol and continued to plot attacks against our country and friends and allies. the death of balancin laden mare most significant achievement to date of our nation's effort to defeat al qaeda. his death does not mark the end of our effort. no doubt, al qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. we must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad. >> let me ask you about the president. we've seen publicly the capture and killing of osama bin laden had been diem fa sized. you can go back through transcripts and would not hear the name of bin laden come across the lips of the president. as you hear about the details last night, this was a priority of obama almost from the moment he stepped into office, told leon panetta, go get osama bin laden, behind the scenes whether you knew it or not. >> but it was smart to keep it behind the scene, didn't want to make it a failure, the fact you were specifically targeting people and he was smart saying, this doesn't solve the problem. the analogy i use is disease, terrorism is disease, last night we cured one disease but we have not gotten rid of the threat of girls or viruss all together. why it's important in a funny sort of way, as circuit as it is, not to overplay it. not vt day, we have not had the victory over terrorism, we have had a victory over terrorism, not just significance but also limits. we will go to libya and foreign correspondent richard engel and how the story is playing out there. richa richard. >> good morning. this is an incredible story playing out across the middle east. people are celebrating this as world reaction is pouring in, statements from european leaders, even the vatican saying this is a welcome act considering osama bin laden used religion to sew hatred and divisions among people. it is getting coverage across the arab world. so far, no public calls of sympathy, just condemnation for bin laden and hope that this will be the end. condemnation coming from pakistan, afghanistan, even yemen, which is bin laden's ancestral homeland, a yemen official saying they hope there will be more attacks against bin laden's leaders. >> and the response and back linebacker is violent. what are you hearing in your circles about this? >> jihadi groups on websites in particular are already suggesting they will carry out some sort of retribution. in the short term, it is very likely, you will see some militant groups calling out to carry out attacks to try and assert their authority, try and assert their independence from the al qaeda franchise. there have already been statements issued by embassies, i saw one hit my in-box this morning from the embassy in lebanon calling on american citizens to be vigilant in case there are any kind of terrorist acts in retribution or capitalize on this moment. it is certainly a blow to militants. a few years ago, they used to like to rub it in the nose of u.s. officials that osama bin laden had not been caught. every day he was alive was a victory for them and they can no longer claim that. >> richard engel in libya. thank you so much for being with us. security has been stepped up in new york. nobody knows that better than mike barnicle, every sunday night he comes into boston, stumbles into time square. >> likes to sit there and look at people. >> he did it last night. it was a little different last night when you stumbled into time square after midnight. >> it was, joe, actually 1:30, a quarter to 2:00 this morning. wasn't a huge crowd, perhaps 400, 500 people gathered, horns beeping, passing cars. i am not embarrassed to tell you, i had goosebumps and tears in my eyes, as a fire truck roared through time square with the flags on the bumpers, flapping in the breeze, in this cocoon of neon noise that time square is. this is one of the things this is obviously, we know, osama bin laden is dead. the other thing is this is an adrenaline shot to america, that has been long overdue. we've been sullied by our economy, we've been batted by our irrelevant politics, by the noise of the ideology and polarization of our politics, yet this, this, somehow energized so many people around the world last night, but especially here in this country. >> i tell you, on the local nbc affiliate, at some point, i guess it was midnight, they broke away from nbc news coverage and did local coverage. i was about to change the channel because i wanted to get the national feed but they went immediately to ground zero. i heard the chants of usa going up there. this is a place that, my god, for new yorkers, mika, you lived down there for weeks after 9/11. you ran down there, profoundly affected the life of so many around you and so many new yorkers. but, mike, my god, hearing those chants go up easily for the first time in almost a decade down there was -- i just got chills. >> you know, it's funny the way the mind works. one of the people and the many people i'm thinking of, i'm sure many think of those whose lives were changed forever, all our lives on september 11th, young 29-year-old lieutenant michael murphy, a navy seal from long island, who was killed in afghanistan in june of 2005, he's a medal of honor recipient, and he, i think, no doubt his navy seal team was in the hindu kush mountains looking for osama bin laden. we should think of him and all the others who lost their lives and families wounded here at home due to that loss as a result of these wars. >> we are showing the shots of ground zero and the celebrations there, which was the place of such devastation and such loss on 9/11. the first thing i thought of when i heard about this is the most vivid memory covering that story, walking around the air yo of the city everyone walking around with pictures of family members saying, can you help me find my sister? can you help me find my mother? can you help me find my son? hoping in some way, even though these people had been obliterated off the face of the earth, maybe in some way they were somewhere and they never got anything, they never got anything. maybe, maybe this is something. >> they had no closure right afterwards obviously for those terrible tragic reasons. willie, even in the search for osama bin laden over the past decade, it's been a cruel time for them, where we were so close at one point, in tora bora, and then we heard politicians saying, oh, we're close to getting him. i remember reading that in 2003, 2004, 2005. but again, a little closure last night for the families who lost loved ones on 9/11. >> ridgewood, wherthe guys who work in this city would go, park their cars, get on the train and go down to wall street. a lot of those cars sat there for several days on september 11th. nobody returned to the cars. i hope my friends and neighbors get a little comfort in this today. >> some closure. richard, the implications, as we move forward, obviously, this is as willie said and all said, this is not the end of any war on terror or against terror, whatever you want to call it. it actually causes some great complications for hillary clinton, the state department, president barack obama. pakistan was -- we have been saying over the past decade, the most important country in this war, and the most dangerous country. and there is no doubt, they let u.s. foreign policymakers down terribly in this episode. >> there is no doubt. that might be a problem that can't be solved. there's something structurally flawed, i would argue, with pakistan, given the composition of the country and government. i think there's a lesson here, which is the united states acted independently. it raises the question about whether our whole approach in some places like afghanistan is too heavy, that we're trying to build up local partners to do the war on terrorism for us. the tora bora came about because the united states essentially turned to afghans to get osama bin laden at a critical moment and they clearly weren't up to it. the sort of thing we're seeing last night in pakistan, where we act independently in a very tailored specific way, which is very akin to the sorts of things we do in places like yemen and somalia, my predictions is it might be the sort of thing we have to do in places like libya, where we have governments unwilling or unable to be a real partner. >> we all said it, there are several pakistans. but it is hard for anybody to come forward with a plausible argument pakistan's intelligence service, pakistan's police service, pakistan's leaders in the capitol of islamabad did not know that that massive structure in the suburbs of the capitol city in the shadow of a police training station, that all of the pakistans together did not know who was residing at that massive compound. >> pakistan sees terrorist groups as a useful tool. they see them as a tool against india, see them as a tool in afghanistan to manipulate events there. they're not on our side. every now and then, they'll work with us, particularly when they see their own government threatened. when they see terrorists as an instrument to be played against other countries and the united states for their own foreign policy interests, they will do that. again, we have to be prepared to do the sort of thing we just did, act independently, as if they were not an ally, a friend, partner, we simply have to take matters into our own hands, as imperfect as that is. it is not ideal. >> let me read you a quote hillary clinton took a lot of heat almost exactly one year ago, may 10th, 2010. here's what she said. i believe somewhere in this pakistani government are people who know where osama bin laden and al qaeda and the leadership of the taliban are, we expect more cooperation to bring to justice capture or kill those who brought us 9/11. she was criticized roundly in pakistan, how dare you suggest such a thing. looks pretty clear this morning, hillary clinton was right. >> she certainly was. look at these file footage images of osama bin laden, that we have seen on a loop for the past 9 1/2 years. we have always assumed that he was out in rugged terrain like this. but, mike, i remember about a year or two after the 9/11 attacks, taking out a map and drawing a line between is laclad and the peshawar province in the past, where he was believed to be. it hit me that there was a closer distance between the pakistani capitol and that area, and it is between new york and washington. oh, they have to know. well, i just didn't realize and i don't think anybody realized just how bad the scenario was for pakistan and just how obvious this morning it is that the billions of dollars that we gave musharraf's government and that we continue to give the pakistani people brought us absolutely nothing but contempt from a government that is not our ally. >> joe, i'm told early this morning by people you know, i believe, people you know as well, within the structure, the upper structure in washington, that the pakistanis were precluded from any information about this operation for nearly a year, nearly the past year. given the operational details of what occurred in pakistan yesterday, our time yesterday, and bits and pieces of it, i'm sure, will unravel but the operation itself, studying the terrain features, getting the blueprints for the estate he was staying at, room to room. it's important in an operation like this, colonel jacobs will tell you, it's important to know where you are on the ground when you go looking for them on the ground. that all occurred over months and months and months, satellites, everything, the pakistanis were completely precluded from even a hint of any of that information for nearly a year. >> mika, of course, before we go to our next guest, i'm sure richard will agree with me, we do need to put the u.s.-pakistani relationship in its proper context. the pakistanis, before 9/11, felt badly mistreated. we are a country that shows an alliance with india when india stopped flirting with the soviet union the way they did. we had military deals with the pakistanis that we reneged on throughout the years. so when 9/11 came, it wasn't like, briefly, richard, it wasn't like we had a wonderful relationship, that we were angels with the pakistanis as well. >> this relationship is like a terrible human relationship, like a bad marriage. each side has its own narrative. each side has historical milestones where it feels totally betrayed and let down by the other. >> because we let before 9/11 the pakistanis down. >> for example, they hate the fact we cut off all aid over their nuclear program. at times they feel we've been too pro indian or left them in the lurch. we have our narrative, what happened the last 24 hours will become the latest chapter on our narrative. this is a deeply important but deeply flawed relationship. we like to solve things. i don't think this is one we solve. we live with a wildly imperfect pakistan and the only scary thing, joe, as bad as it is -- >> it could get worse. >> you could have -- >> and that they have nuclear weapons. >> 100 nuclear weapons, home to the world's greatest terrorist organization. 175, 180 million people. what happens there could have tremendous repercussions. we can't fix it, can't control it, at best, a little bit of 41s, at best. >> i would say the relationship is deeply flawed, when you look at where osama bin laden was living, it was a compound where three families in the pakistani city of abbott ta babad, home t large military base and academy in the pakistani army, osama bin laden living about an hour away, the area is surrounded by hills. >> and the compound -- did we hear it was 12 times the size of any other -- >> a massive plot of land, valued at over a million dollar, surrounded by walls 12-18 feet high and barbed wire, just to make sure that no one gets in. >> to put this in perspective, mika -- >> two security gates. ? this would be like a massive massive compound. >> kind of can't miss it. >> in yonkers, among row houses, in yonkers. it just wouldn't have been hard, if your perspective is new york, if it is washington, it would be in shurlington? come on, there's no way -- >> former advisor to president bush, mark joins us now, the former president making a statement basically saying this country will never give up on justice. that appears to be the case. >> this is such cathartic news across the board. i'm also struck how great it feels. it doesn't feel political. this feels like the first time in maybe 10 years since -- this is not a democratic thing, not a republican thing, not a george w. bush thing, not a president obama thing, this is great for the country. i think everybody feels great about who we are collective as a country and what we've accomplished here. i had the great luck of being with wounded warriors and president bush this last week in big ben, texas, 14 amputees rode their bikes 100 kilometers across the desert, thinking today how they must feel and how much they sacrificed for our country. it's a great moment, not a political moment. what i'm struck by. president bush was out immediately with a great positive message. this is one of the few times we're talking this morning, not a harsh political partisan message. that feels great. >> mark, you know president bush very well. you've been friends with him a very long time. explain to people the bush you know and about the fact that unlike certain politicians, i've had very harsh criticism for george w. bush over the years. talking to you, i think it's pretty easy to conclude he is not gritting his teeth, like some politicians this didn't happen on his watch, as you've said, for all the flaws that i may think he had as a leader, he doesn't have that flaw as a person. he wanted this job done. >> absolutely. it's never been political or personal for him. he's only wished president obama the very best, even through the transition. it was very diplomatic. as you know, he's kept himself off the radar screen. he wanted to allow president obama the room to govern without president bush being inside of his business, criticizing what he's doing. i assure you this morning nobody feels as good about this as president bush does. this is a real no labels kind of moment. this is not about politics, not about partisanship, not about who won or lost, about a collective achievement that was started by president bush and finished by president obama. for that, we can all cheer. >> mike barnicle, for years, conservatives like to say ronald reagan won the cold war. it was a cold war begun by harry s. truman and a cold war concluded by george h.w. bush. nobody won the cold war. you look back over the sweep of the 50 or so years, and it was just a collective -- a collection of decisions, wise decisions made by wise men from the truman administration to the bush administration and the cold war. and here, you know, i think republicans should stand up and certainly salute barack obama for making some -- again, making some very tough choices that his own base did not want him to make. that takes courage, that takes leadership, and we saw the results of that courage and leadership saying no to his own base yesterday. >> well, and the president's phrase, at my direction, that's how this operation was conducted successfully, at my direction, in the words of president obama, it was his decision. last night, early this morning in times square, 2:00 in the morning. there were no conservatives, there were no liberals, there were what was on every street and every town and city in america september 12th, 2001, there were americans infused with the spirit of this country i think has been missing or diminished the past nine or ten years. to mark's point, this is one of the healthiest things that happened to this country. >> we have mike allen coming up. richard haass, really quick. >> timing could not have been better for president obama, criticized over libya, the phrase has been claimed leading from behind. this is a situation he can say he's led from ahead. a good development for his foreign policy. >> "politico," mike allen, "politico" has an exclusive look at a heart pounding moment in the situation room during the raid on bin laden's compound. what happened? >> officials tell us they had actually done two rehearsals for this raid in april, able to monitor exactly what happened back here in washington, the situation room. the raid went back four years ago they first identified this courier, two years ago, they learned his name, followed him back to this compound, where they realized it was so suspicious, talking about how big it is, the fact the people inside burned their trash, the fact there was no cable or internet service going into it. the president finally decided to do this raid. originally, the first option he was presented was a bombing. the president decided not to do a bombing. he wanted proof that osama bin laden had been taken out. he didn't want 20 civilian casualties, they were able to avoid. after they drew up a plan for this helicopter raid, which was much riskier, much more daring, they roped in, and it was about 3:30 p.m. eastern time yesterday when this happened. it had been pushed off one day because of weather. originally, saturday night. 3:30 p.m. our time, rope in, the helicopter malfunction, they set it down in the compound, back in washington, people are thinking, blackhawk down, very worried both what was happening to our guys and what was going to happen to this mission. they went ahead with the raid not knowing if they would have a ride out of there, while they were doing it, including the firefight with obama -- with osama, including ransacking the place with every scrap of possible intelligence. we can assume they took any computer hard drives, got all of it, very valuable intelligence. while they were doing that, the replacement chopper came and they were able to leave with osama bin laden, now buried at sea. the administration didn't want any possibility there would be some sort of shrine to terrorism that would grow around him. >> based on your reporting and maybe richard can see this, too, will we see as we did with saddam hussein, a photograph, we can show the world he is dead. right now, you can hear people arguing, we never saw it. sure, you put him out to sea. will we see some evidence of his death? >> i would suggest yes because there will be people out there who won't believe it. this is the conspiracy world we live in. at some point i suspect there will be documentary evidence, hopefully not inflammatory and put to rest he still lives, is still out there. >> one of the reasons for the delay of the 4:50 eastern time conclusion, took about 40 minutes and the president's speech to the nation around 11:30 p.m. eastern time. they wanted to identify him conclusively and did it with dna and photographs and matching photographs of the face they got with photographs of bin laden, you can bet we will see those photographs. >> thanks so much. >> great coverage. >> thank you so much. mika, i was on the phone last night to an awful lot of people the second we got word this was happening. i can tell you, there were people in the intel community that have been fighting this fight a very long time that were surprised at the quick turnaround. sat there and said, wait a second, when did this happen? they were expected 24-36 hours to make sure they confirmed the dna. they were surprised by the very rapid turn around here. i guess that is what's so stunning, if you're just waking up and just tuning into the coverage, president obama went on the air last night, announced osama bin laden had been killed on a raid and, again, for me, the surprise is, mika, how quickly everything happened. the initial -- the initial rumors that were going around the diplomatic community and also the media community was that this is something that had happened a week ago, when the president came on, we found out actually it had been ordered yesterday. he had been shot yesterday, at very close range. >> yeah. >> again, very stunning how quickly this turned around. a navy seal. >> and the president addressed the country late last night. if you missed that. we do have new video into the compound where osama bin laden was hiding out about an hour outside of islamabad, pakistan in a city called abbottabad. and we were talking about what the raid looks like. large, three families lived there with large 12-18 foot wall all around it with barbed we're at the top. they were able to make this happen in 40 minutes time with minimal casualties outside of osama bin laden. that is one of the decisions the president made, not to bomb the place but to actually literally have bin laden's head, to make sure he was dead and minimize potentially casualties involved and more dangerous and risky and mike allen telling the story of the chopper that broke down and these guys going in not knowing they had a ride out while conducting this operation, that is bravery. >> for people like robert gates, who have been around a long time, when they heard the chopper went down, i know their hearts stopped and they went back to 1980. >> desert one. >> thinking is this really going to be a repeat of desert one. >> i know mika, you have told me for your father and the carter administration and those who lost their lives that day, it was a bleak moment. in fact, the united states armed forces completely changed operations, created this special ops part. special ops were created in large part out of that tragedy of desert one. yesterday, they were able to finish the job. let's bring in right now former communication director from president george w. bush, nicolle wallace. nicole, we just got finished talking to mark kennon. we certainly hope we can speak to somebody in the obama administration and for obvious reasons, they're not putting them out. this is something that a battle that began under bill clinton obviously intensified under your former bass and continues under barack obama. we've just been talking about what a remarkable moment it is for all americans. >> two thoughts. it's not a political moment in any sense. you cannot take away from the commander in chief the role that he played in this. it's a tremendous accomplishment. i can't imagine another moment matching this one in his presidency, and you can't understate the impact that the hunt for bin laden has on a white house staff. it is one of those things that keeps you up at night and the wound that 9/11 left on the bush administration and everyone that served under president bush goes a long way toward, you know, making all the steps that were taken, all the controversies started, new debates on this show every morning part of that wound that took place on 9/11. >> absolutely. >> almost every political debate in this country, all our political scar tissue in this country has its roots on 9/11. >> my favorite column in the 2008 election was a column by maureen dowd who said you never really know how a candidate is going to govern as president because you never know what issues are going to occur during his or her presidency that will shape that presidency. george w. bush's 7 1/2 years of george w. bush's presidency were shaped by osama bin laden. he has shaped this decade more than anybody living or dead. and he has shaped this new century the same way. last night, we closed a chapter on osama bin laden. >> that's right. you think about -- you were down at ground zero and we met stephanie dunn, pregnant, lost her husband. we have these families memorized, the families who perished on flight 93. these have become part of our story. to have this happen on any president's watch is tremendous. i think what mark mckinnon said about president bush's reaction is exactly right. i can't imagine he felt anything other than pure joy this happened last night without any loss of american life and we know so much so quickly about the heroics of the seals that went in, incredible. >> tom brokaw is with us. we lived through this. i was in pensacola, lived through this, with mika's coverage of ground zero and obviously, watching eau de in and day out. what -- put this in perspective for us, if you can. >> i remember that morning, saying on the air this is a declaration of war on this country and wondering whether i've gone too far. it has been a war and not going to end because we killed this notorious international criminal, osama bin laden. there are so many other questions still have to be resolved here. based on everything we've been hearing, he's not had command and control of al qaeda for some time. he has been an enormously important symbol, obviously, for this country. the idea he was killed in a firefight that went as well as it did is an enormous triumph for the american military operation and the persistence of this white house to go find him and take him out. i'm struck -- nicole was just talking about the politics of it all, you can't remove it entirely from that context, but here is a president who came into office as someone w who -- some real questions about his ability to be a commander in chief. some of the most impressive things he's done in the 2 1/2 years he's been in office, first the nobel speech prize when he laid out the obama doctrine when wars are necessary, the idea he was going to keep troops in afghanistan and go against his base in doing that and then to run this operation out of the white house and have it go as well as it did, however else you feel about him, that's all to his credit and to this administration and to the efficiency of the military special ops people there and apparently, coordination with all the intelligence agencies. >> mika, the intel community, who has been battered and abused. >> absolutely. >> it seems, since the church commission, through 9/11, through getting it wrong on wmds, through so many things, this was a remarkable success by an intel community haunted by the events in the past 9 1/2 years. >> i don't think this can underestimate the more ral boal for troops in afghanistan and feel their story isn't covered and people have moved on, this makes us salute them every moment of this day. >> mike, for moms and dads, who have lost their kids, for soldiers and marines who have lost their limlimbs, this is no substitute at all, but we even heard dads and moms saying last night, this helps me sleep better. >> last night, our time, we had a handful of young americans, probably no more than 12 or 15, on the ground, inside pakistan. they killed a man who changed the way we live in this country. who had been hunted for 10 years. tom, you travel the country, the sense of the scars and scabs september 11th has left in this country, the feeling we can't do anything the way we used to do it, we can't do what the greatest generation did, a lot of that, i think, may have been peeled off last night. >> i hope so. i think the country needed this for whoever was in office. i've been thinking, all weekend, spring break is over, folks, had the wedding last jeeks, the donald trump has come to an end and we need to get on with it in places like this, in news rooms as well as in the halls of congress and at the white house. this, it seems to me, is a break point and reminder of the seriousness what still exists out there. the issues intriguing to me, having spent a lot of time in pakistan, they sure as hell knew where he was. there's no way they didn't know where he was. >> this makes the case for going it alone. for all obama's talk about multilateral ism, the united states of america went it alone. >> when they got khalid shaikh mohammed, another operation, people have forgotten about, cia got that tip burt brought , bute paks to share the glory. >> and riding in the streets of kandahar, i knew somebody on the raid, our intelligence community were full partners with the isi. not so today. not so in 2011. >> for one thing i have believed a long time, the last thing pakistanis wanted to do was capture osama bin laden because they're terrified what happened from the ground up, a country of 175 million people, make about $2 a day. a lot of them have been educated by mullahs that say the only way to have a worthy life is join jihad against the united states. we went in there and took him out on another sovereign country's turf. we've had very strange welations with them especially in the last year or so. they have approved what happened so far but we haven't heard from the pakistani street yet. this is not over. >> we had a debate in the 2008 presidential campaign. this came up in 2008. we had this conversation as a country and i think most people support what happened yesterday. >> certainly support what the president did and the courage that the president showed making some tough decisions that i suspect were decisions he didn't even expect to make during the 2008 campaign over the past 2 1/2 years and he should be commended for his courage. speaking of courage, anybody that drives north of new york city and visits westpoint, i know we all have, cannot help but be moved by what you see the second you step on to that campus. i want to show you some scenes last night from westpoint, when this news broke. cadets, cheering and excited. to get an idea of the scope of this, the length of this battle that osama bin laden launched on september 11th, 2001, david ignatius, let me bring you in. david, cadets that, i guess began in westpoint this fall, will have been in -- were in third grade on september 11th, 2001. this is not the end of our war against al qaeda but it is certainly a moment that many americans will relish. >> it's a day for celebrating the defeat of the greatest symbol of this adversary. when bin laden declared war on the united states in the 1990s, part of his premise, if you hit america hard, we'll run away. cited americans in beirut left after the barracks were hit and americans left somali after they were dragged through the streets there, hit the americans hard and they will basically pull back. if there's one thing bin laden and the whole world has seen these last ten years, that's not right. that narrative of american weakness, that in the end, we'll get tired and give up, has been shown to be wrong. the persistence of this effort to get him, if we go into the details how they got this in tell and worked it over the last eight years, it's an amazing story. it's clearly a story of people who just were determined to get justice. the president, i thought, voiced that very well in his remarks last night, justice has been done. >> david, the other aspects of this, i think, it's a reminder of the american audience and people everywhere how unconventional this war is. any progress we do make is made on the basis of very hard won intelligence and operations like this that are developed in computer rooms and other places, and then they're inserted and have a specific mission taken out, not a big front line war. this is the kind of war that has been going on some time and you have these kind of victories because of the coordination of intel community, special ops and presence of the military. we need to be reminded of that? >> i think you put your finger on it. let me give you a concrete example in this case. the cia got a make name for one of bin laden's couriers in interrogation of high targets, very controversial interrogation, let's make no bones about it in 2002-2004 range. it took them about four years to figure out who that nickname might really be. they finally got the true name in 2007. and then they had to figure out where on earth was this, literally, where on earth was this person. they used every tool the intelligence agencies have. it's in that period, i'm told, the pakistanis actually were helpful, before we condemn the pakistanis knowing all about this and hid it from us, after that period of 2007, they helped us figure out where this guy might be, this courier for bin laden might be living. turned out he was living in this compound with his brother, another family, a third mystery family with them and that's how we got on the trail. >> mika, how remarkable that intel they received in 2004, of the name of a courier, intel community worked for four years figuring out who actually that nickname was. seven years later -- >> it's amazing. >> seven years later, intel received in 2004 led to last night. that is how complicated david ignatius knows this, how complicated this job is. >> i'd also like to talk to david about our relationship with pakistan, tom brokaw brought up, this come cates things even more, we can talk to my father about that. i just gotten an e-mail from liz cheney with her father's statement, reads in part this, at this moment, former vice president dick cheney, when bin laden has been brought to justice, we especially remember the sacrifice of the young americans who paid the ultimate price in defense of the nation as well as the nearly 3,000 americans who lost their lives on 9/11. al qaeda remains a dangerous enemy, though bin laden is dead, the war goes on, we must remain vigilant, especially now and we must continue to support our men and women in uniform, who are fighting on the front lines of this war everyday. with that, i want to bring in nbc news terrorism analyst and former member of the u.s. national security council, roger cressey. i wonder, as we have celebrations in the streets of washington and new york city, where the attacks happened on 9/11, if there is concern that perhaps this opens a new door, in terms of our security. >> well, mika, this is a tremendous triumph. this is personal for many people. it's personal for me because i was in the white house the morning of 9/11, counter terrorism was my portfolio up until that day and weeks there after. i remember standing in the situation room watching as things unfold and thinking how long until we get bin laden and leadership, probably a matter of days and weeks. nobody could have predicted this long. it is still nonetheless an incredibly important day. to your question whether or not the threat has evolved or have a greater threat. al qaeda, you need to keep in mind, al qaeda has been coming after us not only since 9/11 but well before it. the sustained operational tempo the u.s. counter-terrorism community has been operating under in part to get bin laden is going to continue as it continues to dismantle other elements of the al qaeda network and disrupt operational plots and planning. that sustained effort continues. i joked with people before who said we can't kill bin laden, that might increase the threat of attack against us. i say to them, what's al qaeda going to do? they're going to come after us, which is what they have been doing already. we can't engage in what some people call a policy of self-deterrence, worrying about potential downside. this is the right thing to do and been the right thing to do since 9/11. as david said, a lot of hard work, anybody in the counter-terrorism said you have to have a little bit of luck, too. we got lucky and that type of luck translated into good work and ultimately, successful operation. >> david ignatius, with roger here, let's talk about briefly about the intel community. you talk to people in the intel community and they will tell you the most dangerous job over the last ten years has been being number 3 in al qaeda. at the same time, we've probably been through -- probably killed seven or eight -- >> number threes. at one point, i said, why do we keep doing that? things may get complicated if we get number one and number two. we got number one. let us, for americans that have not followed this closely, guys, let us talk about number two, who anybody that knows anything about al qaeda will tell you number two has been the guy running the operations over the past decade. >> zawahiri, the operations planner is often seen the more dangerous guy who would take americans out. i would note one interesting thing, in terms of zawahiri's life insurance policy it is, we grabbed a lot of intelligence in this mansion where osama bin laden was hiding. i don't know all the stuff that we got. people won't tell me and they shouldn't but we got a lot of stuff. i think people think now is the time to step on the gas, zawahiri is going to be in a panic, he may want to move wherever he is. these are the moments when there's a big event people move in ways that make them vulnerable, especially when we have new intelligence. >> roger cressey, what david ignatius just said, all of my contacts in the intel community said the same thing except they didn't say step on the gas, they said, now, we want to step on zawahiri's neck. this is the egyptian who, for those who don't know about him, a guy who was hardened after the assassination of sadat in egyptian prisons, how ironic this has come together at the same time egypt is moving forward after the sadat mubarak reign of the past 35 years. >> you're right. i believe all the events we have seen in the middle east have been extremely bad news this year for al qaeda and really culminates today. >> zawahiri is very important. he was the theoritician and would write on a regular basis. he is not the glue that kept al qaeda together before. the strategic opportunity this presents for the united states is al qaeda certainly has contingency plans for how to continue to operate post bin laden but there is no one leader who can be cohesive to bring all these despair rat groups together. the egyptians, yemen iis and uzbecks. you talk about al qaeda's number three. the joke is we keep killing them because we can kill them. >> exactly [ laughter ] >> pretty straightforward. not that we were putting one and two to the side. we could kill them. an opportunity here, two-fold. david talks about intelligence, exploitation phase what we gather in that compound could lead to serious opportunities for us. the second is watch the chatter, watch the movement of individuals to see if we create another opportunity from this that leads us to zawahiri or other members of the senior operation command and control. we have to continue to focus on that and pound them in the process. >> mike. >> david and roger as well, one thing that occurred to a lot of people and hasn't been discussed at great length this morning, is the fact over the past several years, al qaeda seems to have become a franchise operation rather than central core operation. what impact both of you think this might have on those various franchises and different countries around the world. the other element i don't think can be discussed enough is despite all our technological expertise with satellites, electronic surveillance, this came down to following someone on a motorbike. this came down to human intelligence on the ground, and finally, perhaps, we are beefing up that aspect of our intelligence gathering system. david, first. >> first, my question of al qaeda without bin laden, it is a franchise operation, what's kfc without the colonel, not the same business. there are counterterrorism analysts within our government are worried as you hit al qaeda central hard, you will get a dispersed movement not centrally coordinated. we have lot of freelancers who go off on their own. to some extent, the yemen al qaeda operation in the yemen operational peninsula shows signs of doing that. we need to be careful. this dispersed al qaeda, i don't think will close the threat of massive spectaculars like 9/11. a lot of angry people this morning thinking of ways to settle scores. nobody should be sitting back saying, whoo, that's over. that's not the case. >> i agree. three circles to the al qaeda phenomenon, al qaeda central and al qaeda's network and franchise, second, and with broader al qaeda movement, individuals, unrestricted free agents that aren't affiliated with a specific group all impacted in a different way because of al qaeda's death. al qaeda central continues to have operational capability and we will continue to go after it. most recently, arrests in germany. one if not two of those individuals went to the al qaeda training camps in the afghan pakistan border, still a threat there. the affiliates david talked about, the al qaeda arabian peninsula the most significant we have to worry about. who tried to attack the u.s. homeland twice in the past 12 months nearly successful, not al qaeda central, aqap. while obama's death was important it doesn't attack the operational tempo of the network. that last circle of individuals, unrestricted free agents, some might try and do something on their own right now in response to bin laden's death. others may think, this is the time i want to start planning to become operational. you look at these three circles and the u.s. government has to have a different approach to all three. >> mike brokaw, challenges continue for barack obama, hillary clinton, the new sec-def. >> and those we're talking about, al qaeda, large sharks independent the sea of osama rage. we have unsettled dealings in saudi arabia, we don't know what the resolution is going to, in egypt at this time and we don't know to go back to this again, what the future of pakistan is. in fact, ten years now, after 9/11, we still have enormous issues to deal with, in terms of the relationship between the ideals of the west and the values of the west, and what too many young muslims feel is their obligation in life, to join jihad and swipe back, to resist it. that is a continuing problem we have to address, as important as the killing of osama bin laden is today, and it is terribly important, we still have to work all that out. that's going to require the best efforts of all of us and probably some re-evaluation how we best can achieve that. let me say one other thing. while we're there in pakistan and afghanistan and iraq, the indians and chinese are building their economy without those kind of military investments in that part of the world. they have us pinned down, in effect, they believe, and we have to think about what the long term consequences of that are. >> what are the consequences of this on the $2 billion a week we spend in afghanistan? does that expedite the return of those troops home? >> you know, that's -- that's above my pay grade obviously. but i think it's a real question for next year and a real question that has to be on the table during the discussion we're now beginning to have finally about what are our physical liabilities and responsibilities and how do we best address them. >> you talk about young muslims, i think there's generations of young americans, i'm sure we all have the privilege of spending time on american campuses, the first question i always ask a college class, how old were you on 9/11. there is now a new generation of americans who can see a visible and tangible victory in a war that's been going on since before they were even aware of the fact they were growing up in a country at war. wouldn't you think that would have a significant impact in this country? >> i think it will focus their attention. what i do think is we have to stand back and remember that there's a wider war going on that goes well beyond that compound in pakistan and well beyond all that osama bin laden stood for. he was a critically important symbol. he was one of the great evil forces of the 21st century and what he unleashed and unleashed it not just on the west but his own people. when you think about the number of muslims who have died in the last ten years, muslim on muslim going into mosques and with suicide belts, insanity and what we have to keep focus on as well beyond this day and triumph of this day we still have the larger issue about finding a way for the west and for the large islamic world to move forward together. >> by the way, speaking of that, that's a great point about the muslims, that were killed by the extremism of osama bin laden. it had to be shocking to online and zawahiri and egyptians that surrounded osama bin laden through the years, to see the events unfold in egypt, just as robin wright predicted they would. >> and libya. >> and libya and north africa and across the middle east. as robin wright, we had her on last week, i know you know her, predicted a few years ago, the arab world and muslim world has looked into the eyes of al qaeda and they see there is nothing there. they offer no solutions. egypt, what happened in 2011 was a rejection of osama bin laden, who began this jihad originally, along with zawahiri, to get rid of mubarak, to change egypt. his world crumbled before him, didn't it? >> joe, i was just out in that part of the world, iraq and saudi arabia and also in jordan. everyone understands and no one understands it better than the people on the ground there, what's going on is going to change that region forever, they just don't know how it's going to change it, who will percolate to the top. you have the muslim brotherhood in the best position in egypt, what does that mean? what i'm trying to say, we have many issues yet to be resolved and worked through. >> david and roger, quickly, what do you think the reaction, david, what do you think the reaction is in riyadh today, to osama bin laden's death? >> you know, i think bin ladens have been a problem for the saudi government big time and they know it. i think there will be a sense of relief. the thing to watch today is the reaction in pakistan. i'm told the reason the president made that unusual just before midnight disclosure what happened, the pakistanis wanted. they wanted the news out we had taken bin laden, that's what the purpose of the news was before the public woke up today fearing reaction of public backlash. keep my eyes on that. i think saudi arabia, it will be mooted. >> obviously, there are several different pakistan, pakistan taliban crossing the wires right now are threatening attacks on pakistani leaders, army and u.s. as well after the killing of osama bin laden. that's according to a taliban spokesman and also hamas is condemning the u.s. killing of bin laden, calling it an assassination of an arab holy warrior. reaction from around the world. top of the hour, 7:00 on the east coast, welcome to special live coverage of breaking news overnight. tom brokaw, mike barnicle, nicolle wallace and my father is on deck, you're taking off? >> as long as your dad is here, i can go. snow if you're just joining us, breaking news overnight. senior obama official says the operation to kill osama bin laden was -- goes back two years. president obama announced in the white house address last night, it was officially done. he addressed the families of the nearly 3,000 americans who died on the attacks of 9/11 and also talked about the attack on the compound where osama bin laden was hiding. take a listen. >> we must also reaffirm the united states is not and never will be at war with islam. i have made clear, just as president bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against islam. bin laden was not a muslim leader. he was a mass murderer of muslims. indeed al qaeda slaughtered scores of muslims in many countries, including our own. so his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity. >> the white house, as i said, says back in 2009, president obama directed cia director leon panetta to locate bin laden in august of last year, intelligence officials briefed the president to a possible lead to his whereabouts. in the past two months, there were five national security meetings on the issue of osama bin laden and friday, president obama gave a final order to launch the mission. >> a small elite team of navy seals conducted a helicopter raid on bin laden's compound and stayed inside about 40 minutes. u.s. forces killed bin laden's son and two couriers, after bin laden apparently resisted in a firefight. officials say he was eventually shot in the head and killed. joining us now in place of tom brokaw, the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. >> we also still have david ignatius with us and mod waerao of meet t"meet the press." david, let me go to you first. we have been talking about pakistan the past hour and a half. you have warned us, as richard haass warned us at the beginning there are many pakistans, this is very complicated. sometimes things don't line up the way they seem in america, like after 9/11, the iranians actually helped us with intel going into afghanistan. let's discuss, because moving forward, the great challenge, i think out of this story is, trying to explain to the american people why the pakistanis are not our enemies, when they allowed osama bin laden to live in a very large compound in the suburbs of their capitol. >> i have asked my sources in the intelligence community, joe, is there any evidence that pakistan officially understood that bin laden was living in this mansion, this large compound. they have all kinds of ways of knowing if that's true and they say, no, they didn't. they say further, pakistanis were useful the last several years figuring out who the courier, whose name they had gotten from interrogation of detainees, who this courier was and where he might be living. they didn't pinpoint the mansion in abbottabad but they helped. still lots of questions about pakistan's role, what did they know? when did they know it, what did they do? in terms of outright concealment of bin laden, a knowing effort by the isi, intelligence service, no, i'm not hearing that. >> richard haass, our lack of confidence in pakistan partnership is laid bare by the fact we did not share with them at any point the mission we undertook sometime yesterday morning. >> absolutely, because the fear is they would have tipped them off. going back to what david just said. i don't know what's worse, if pakistan knew some of this and didn't act and didn't share the information, they didn't know about this, that somehow all this could be taking place so close to their capitol and that lack of capacity. either way we have a partner or non-partner either unable or unwilling to work with us. this is not a reassuring scenario coming up to now and not going forward. we tried everything with pakistanis, we tried incentives to get them to cooperate and tried penalties and neither is the key that unlocks pakistani cooperation. i think that's probably reality going forward. >> another part of the story is how long the white house and specific facets of the navy seals and everyone else involved were working on this operation and how it never got out, it never leaked, even over the course of months and months, the biggest get you could get in terms of what we need to do to protect this country. there was this event this weekend, white house correspondents dinner when the media and white house and politicians get together and usually tips are exchanged in some way, shape or form, even a wink, nothing. before we go to david gregory, let's take a look at seth myers, who made a bin laden joke. you can see the president responding or not. take a look. >> people think bin laden is hiding in the hindu kush. do you know everyday from 4:00 to 5:00, he hosts a show on c-span? >> oh. >> david gregory, that is what you call a poker face. it was one of the funnier lines of the night. look at that smile. it is, for so many people, remarkable, even at that point, he knew. >> now, it means so much more looking at it. >> that something very big was happening. >> it's a reminder how little we sometimes know about what's going on inside the government. look how long this has been an operation that's been under way, intelligence has been gathered, at a time when the president's rivals have been criticizing him for failing to lead in the area of national guarsecurity, failio pursue a counter-terrorism policy as his predecessor, president bush, yet it was every bit as robust. one of the big stories on the era on terror was continuity from one administration to the next. one of the reasons bin laden was effectively shut down in his capacity as command and control of al qaeda was because of the work that was done over the years following 9/11 that had him on the run, had him living this way, although ironically, for all the thought, even talking to military officials as i did last summer in afghanistan, thinking he was buried deep away in the mountainous region of pakistan, appears to be untrue. at least where they found him. again, how little we know about what's going on and how important an operation like this is, to gather steam on, gather intelligence for and ultimately execute. >> i'm wondering, david, i was watching meet the press, as i do every sunday yesterday >> religious. >> part of the conversation was on the birth certificate. do you think we have finally turned the page and we don't have to raise this question anymore and we can move on and talk about serious things, because this is such a serious development, barnicle? >> before david answers, in addition to answering your question, david, do you think people like trump will now demand to see a death certificate. >> seriously. >> but that's actually not an -- not having to do with donald trump, but, you know, as we were gathering this information last night, as we were reporting the story out, a key piece of it from government officials was that the united states had his body. that would be tremendously important. i was thinking back to when saddam hussein was captured and images released of him being inspected by a military doctor, proof of life or death in this case is very important for the rest of world, for america. ultimately, proof that it was he who was captured, rather than somehow still being on the run, which underscores the perhaps. yes, mika, i do think this moves the needle a great deal past the silliness of what we've been talking about in politics and beyond. this is a huge leadership moment for any president and this president as well. there's continuity of the operation, strength of the military as well as the cia everybodying pursuing this over a long period of time and putting bin laden on the run, as david ignatius talked about robert cressey and others, your father talked about, mika, the diffuse nature of the threat, think back to the christmas day bombing last year, this was not osama bin laden bulge the strings on this -- pulling the strings on this, this franchise quality of bin laden doing everything possible to the united states. >> i want to talk about, richard, continuity. that is the word that we want to hear from you and everybody else. there was continuity. there's all this back and forth and screaming and scratching in the political arena, there was continuity of the bush and obama administration in the end that may have made the difference. >> absolutely re-orientation of u.s. intelligence resources became the priority after the cold war. the cold war i'm thinking of. one of the reasons we prevailed in the cold war after four decades, it didn't matter a lot what you had democratic or republican president, american foreign policy was consistent. i'd say the same thing. one of the reasons we have done as well as we have done, not just getting osama bin laden but essentially after 9/11, not having terrorist attack, this has been a consistent policy that didn't change dramatically even after the administration talked about major changes in fact the policy didn't change all that much and the military parts in particular were largely extraordinarily familiar. if a lot of the people who served in the previous administration stepped into their old jobs today, i think they'd be pretty comfortable with what it was they inherited. >> we asked david gregory if he could stay with us, i thought he had to bump over to the 234e9 wo -- the network. he's able to stick around. >> you talk about the people in the press and government not knowing exactly what's going on in the government. could you talk about what happened for you. our black buberries were hit at 10:45, the president will speak at 11:30. >> just hearing it at 10:30 at night, there was something big overseas. i think a lot of people felt instinctively it was about gadhafi and libya because of the night before. at the correspondent's dinner i spoke to military and senior officials about the need to monitor a situation. we were talking about the nato strike at that particular time in libya. even covering this story as i have since 9/11, the notion of getting bin laden was not something on my radar screen on a day-to-day basis. as this unfolded you realized we got word it was bin laden and the president was about to speak. it was just, you know, a huge moment as it continued to unfold. immediately, if the president's going to talk at 10:30 at night on a sunday night, he has something pretty major to announce. >> absolutely. with us now, we have nbc news chief white house correspondent chuck todd, who can give us the behind the scenes of what led up to that moment where the president walked the red carpet and made that statement to the nation. >> also, let's just -- because it's "morning joe," chuck, let's talk about the three letters you talked about last night, i was following your coverage. it was your first tip-off, this is not your typical presidential press conference. >> no, it wasn't. you're bringing up the fact i got a three-letter -- i got a three-letter emphasis getting down here from a white house official who said, i can't say it esa's a bfd. get down here. >> it wasn't biden, was it? >> no. it wasn't the vice president. but it was -- they weren't trying to be funny about it at the time, sort of like trying to almost steer us a little bit away. what david brought up, i think there was a lot of initial thought maybe this has something to do with libya, we knew what happened with gadhafi's family in the 24 hours previously, is there something going on there? their subtle way of saying number one, hey, tv network people, you need to break in. just trust us on this, and number two, this is a little bit bigger even than the stories you might be thinking this is about in the 24 hour period, joe. >> wow. mike barnicle. it really is something. >> it definitely beats the long form birth certificate. >> something huge was coming up. >> it also begs the question in my mind, i'd like to ask chuck this, you're at the white house each and every day, almost each and every day, the mind warp is that job on friday is after having given the green light to this operation, the president travels to alabama and other place in our south where they've been devastated by storms. saturday, he is standing up doing comedy, really, at the white house correspondent's dinner, having pulled the trigger on this operation, so you have all of that going on. if you can discuss, it is a mind warp to think of a job so huge, so multi-facetted you have to do all these multiple things. >> think about that come part mentalization. the president gives the order on friday morning in the situation room, literally walks out on to marine one, gets on a plane to go to alabama to tour that devastation. here's the other part of this. had everything gone as planned, this may have broken on saturday night, not last night, but they had a bit of delay, number one, and, two, one thing i wanted to emphasize, you guys were talking earlier about this continuity. one person in particular on this hunt as long as anybody in either administration and it was one of the hold holdovers, john brennaman, the president's chief advisor on terrorism, the guy more than anybody else on this, this is on his desk everyday, every second. david is right. we sit here and bin laden hadn't been quote on our radar, we're in the middle of dealing on the libya front, we have all the childish ridiculous games on the political front we're all forced to deal with front hand center and all that stuff. bin laden hadn't been on our front burner. john brennan, as much as anybody in this white house west wing provided that continuity. somebody that was part of the bush administration right after 9/11 getting the start-up of the counter insurgency, counter terrorism center, something we didn't have pre-9/11, didn't have those things. this guy has been involved in this hunt nfor bin laden as lon as anybody and sure nobody feeling as vindicated as him. >> in the continuity thing, chuck mentioned john brennan, can you talk to the fact under bush administration war on terror and clandestine war on terror and obama's administration didn't lose a step here and built upon the building blocks that were out there. >> no question about it. look at the record. ramping up troops in afghanistan, not directly related here, what is more germaine, of course, is continuing to work the detainees at guantanamo bay despite the fact the president said from nearly day one he would close it down. continuing to work those sources and ramping up intelligence operations in pakistan,ren dro attacks and covert action we know has been going on, launched from afghanistan in the border areas, but now something as sophisticated as this. some of the other areas, o, in terms of how they've been run through the justice system as well. that continuity is striking. i was reviewing president bush's memoirs last night. he talked about the great unfinished business of his presidency. the biggest regret he talked about was not getting bin laden. it fell to his successor to rewrite -- not rewrite but write chapter two of the war on terror which included finally bringing justice to bin laden. you talked about the mood of the country and emotion of all of this. i was watching last night as that crowd was building outside of the white house, watching as well, of course, what was happening at time square, i looked an at the faces, i had a young friend at american university that went down with his other friends and probably 10 or 12 years old when 9/11 happened. so for these young people, this was literally a nightmare for them, when they came of age, under this threat of global terror, for my own children, i talk about this only in cryptic terms because i don't want to explain the full trauma what the nation experienced on 9/11. this was something as nicolle wallace mentioned a few moments ago, this was a tangible elimination of someone who can really hurt you. that must be said in this middle of this dissection of this event. >> you're exactly right. 9/11 affected everybody in this country. but many who weren't even in the towers and at the pentagon, it affected their lives deeply! richard haass and also david ignatius, i want to follow up on the word of the morning we heard out of the white house from chuck todd, we heard from david gregory, that is continuity. again, i want to go back to it. president obama has been abused by his base for continuing many bush-cheney policies, whether it's gitmo, whether it was actually ramping up in a very dramatic way drone attacks, and actually keeping a scorecard inside the agency headquarters of those killed during drone attacks, something that even shocked agency insiders for a long time. tripling the number of troops in afghanistan, all of these things enraged the president's democratic base. but richard haass and david ignatius, the president must feel justified this morning. >> he has to feel good, particularly against the backdrop of all the criticism over libya, new yorker article leading from behind. there's continuity strategically, people are exactly right. what you also pointed to is change, the fact the united states began to act more 81 early in pakistan with the drone attacks and special forces attack we see over the weekend, that also tells you something. there has been something of tactical shift. for decades now we have largely worked through pakistan, whether it was to defeat the soviets in afghanistan or more recently against terrorists in afghanistan and pakistan, now, you're beginning to see a more unilateral american effort interesting, we'll work with you pakistanis when you show yourself able to work with us. if not j we're not going to give you a veto anymore, not going to take the initiative ourselves. in the context of continuity, that's a significant departure. >> david ignatius, when did the president shift from candidate obama that had one set of beliefs as far as foreign policy goes to commander in chief obama who like bill clinton became a much tougher commander in chief than anyone would have suspected? >> i think, joe, he made the shift as he became president. i was struck last night watching him, this is the commander in chief, increasingly self-confident one. you learn on any job and we'd all say obama's performance in the first year in office was sometimes uncertain, except on these intelligence related activities. from very early on, he decided he was not only going to continue the predator drone attacks over the tribal areas of pakistan, he was going to step them up significantly from what they had been during the bush administration. his willingness to conduct unilateral operations, as they're called, what we saw yesterday in pakistan. >> unilateral, again, david, so dramatic, unilateral operations in pakistan. this is the sort of thing, i know, you will remember, that got students in the streets when nixon did it in cambodia. you look at the drone attacks over pakistan, look at navy seals going into a sovereign nation, and just workable. >> it's a decisive use of power but it's discreet. it's not the invasion of pakistan, as the invasion of cambodia was, it's a discreet use of highly trained special forces who go in for a mission, take out their target and gone 40 minutes later. what's striking about this, what's a measure of the robustness of our forces today is that when one helicopter went down, unlike in desert one, during the iranian crisis, we were able to get another helicopter in there, blow up the one that was unable to fly and get everybody out of there safely. just the pure technical competence of this operation is striking to me. >> those navy seals, the guys in there, keeping their wits about them, carrying out this operation, not necessarily sure they will have that ride out, that's the definition of bravery under extreme conditions. >> it's also, i would think, just an amazing story, when it all spills out, it will over a period of time, we're not talking about a company of men, talking probably two squads, maybe 12, 15 navy seals. we're also talking, david just alluded to it, david ignatius just alluded to it, in terms of the mindset of al qaeda on the ground, in afghanistan, pakistan, wherever, what this does is it revitalizes the thought that america can do whatever it is we have to do at any moment and we can do it quietly, quickly and lethally. it's got to disturb perhaps shatter the confidence of many of the leaders of al qaeda. they did this, they got him, they could come and get me. >> we have a terrible swift sword. >> peggy noonan is with us. columnist from the "wall street journal." keep going. >> gosh, i'm happy. this is a wonderful moment. it took nine years and nine months, if i am counting correctly, it took a lot of persistence and patience, u.s. armed forces did the job and an actual monster has been removed from the face of the earth. it is good damn news. >> yeah. willie. >> i want to go to david ignatius again and ask you, david, about how this has been going on behind the scenes despite the fact we haven't heard osama bin laden name very much, frankly, coming from the mouths of government officials and certainly not from president obama. we read in this timeline now within a couple months coming into office, he told leon panetta, i'm giving you a directive to capture or kill osama bin laden. can you talk about how important it was for the president and his team to keep bin laden's name from the public even though they were pursuing him behind the scenes. >> my sources, i heard about an operation that dates back many years. the initial tip that led to yesterday's killing of bin laden came from some of the detainees subject to our very aggressive interrogation methods, who gave up the nickname of a courier that they thought bin laden had used, the nickname. it took from 2004, let's say, to 2007 to figure out who the real person behind that nickname was. that was going on all through the bush administration, and then they had to figure out where does that real person live. that happened mostly on president obama's watch. >> adding to the conversation now joining us also from washington, former national security advisor for the carter administration, doctors brzezinski. dad, i wonder as we look at the intricacies of this operation, big picture. what does this say in terms of where we found him and how he was living, about our relationship with pakistan as we move forward now? >> i think they will be tested. tested very seriously because on the one hand, the pakistani government will have to swallow the fact that we could go in, close to their capitol, and do what had to be done apparently without their compliance or knowledge, which puts them in an awkward position. but i assume the pakistani government will be intelligent enough to identify itself with what happened, to disown any notion of protection for bin laden and essentially take the stand this is a good thing for pakistan as well. the more problematic aspect, what will happen on the popular level? this is a country of 180 million people. we went right into the middle of it, did what had to be done and did it well and for them and some of them, it may be an extremely bitter pill to swallow. we have to watch the political play in pakistan. there's another country that bares watching for the same reason, saudi arabia, because bin laden is from saudi arabia, there is a public outlook in saudi arabia on a part of the population that's rather im pathetic to what he has symbolized. that will be the other country to watch, in terms of our major relations with some of the key islamic states. >> dr. brzezinski, david gregory is also in washington, moderator of "meet the press," has a question for you. david. >> dr. brzezinski, you're quoted widely in a piece in the "new yorker" about the president's approach to foreign policy. i wonder with such a huge development on the map as this, what you think we learn in more detail about that approach to that next chapter in the war on terror and how it extends now to the kind of leadership that will be required to bringing the war in afghanistan to a close, disapproval for the war in afghanistan is at a high of 49%, just months now before we're going to start withdrawing troops. the debate was if you want al qaeda, they're not in afghanistan, they're in pakistan, no greater example of that than what this has just been pulled off. >> first of all, let me say, i was really proud of the president last night. i thought he was presidential, i thought he had the historical perspective, balanced, committed, he was strong. that came across. that was really impressive and reassuring. i disagreed with him on issues. i have been critical of him on some issues. now, the test, as far as i'm concerned is, how do we play it after this great, great break through? i think we are in a position to ask ourselves, can we in some way, if not put to an end, then at least greatly reduce what was mounting over the last decade, namely a bigger and deeper conflict between america and the world of islam. this is a chance. we shouldn't crow, we should make the clear that we consider osama bin laden as an aberration and reemphasize common interests and on that basis address some of the outstanding lingering problems that have complicated our relationship with the worried of islam. among them, very important, may be awkward to be raising, but relevant, the isra israelly-palestinian peace process that has to be addressed. this is a moment of opportunity. i thought the president played it well. now is an opportunity to develop a strategy and implement it assertively. he showed himself as a leader yesterday and i hope that is going to be now the momentum that will carry him forward. >> dr. brzezinski, given that pakistan has been a very weak ally of ours, if you can call them an ally. let's circle back to another country you mentioned a few moments ago, saudi arabia. what can be done now to strengthen our relationship with saudi arabia, perhaps get them more aligned with us in this war on terror, given the fact that the they have been estranged the past couple of months over what happened to president mubarak in egypt? >> i think we have to open the dialogue over whatever fashion possible, quietly. saudis are a proud people, have a sense of their own worth. the dynasty at the moment is still strongly established. i don't think we ought to hector them publicly or lecture them publicly. saudi arabia is somewhat different from the other muslim countries because it is simultaneously a deeply embedded i do na dynastic state, more than probably desirable in this century, a long arranged problem. it is also a state which is the seat of the religion. it's the center of focus point of the religion. therefore, it gives it a very special standing. i think we have to be very careful how to handle it and engage it at the same time, in this larger process of promoting peaceful change in the middle east within the islamic countries and peaceful change within the middle east between the islamic countries and the non-islamic participant in the middle east. that, of course, is israel because we have that, too, as a huge stake of perhaps to us and something of great, great concern to the people in the region. >> we have the new york city, charles blow with us. what are your thoughts? >> >> oone thing that strikes m to look back a couple of months. the war never even came up. so many people's radar, the entire war had disappeared. pollsters stopped even asking about the war on a regular basis. you have a whole generation of young people, as someone mentioned before, this is not -- they lived with it so long they became numb to it. there was a pal last month, 42% of people said it was a mistake to even go there in the first place, and how this event today kind of brings that full circle and refocuses the attention the american attention back to the reason -- >> numb and even immune to it, not even feeling they have any stake at all. >> i often see soldiers when i'm in an airport, jolts me back, reminds me there is another kid and really look like kids. >> this changes the conversation. >> and they're going off to war. >> peggy, there was such a focus after 9/11, so many americans were so grateful for what our troops have done. i have to say even through the ugliness of political debates in iraq, americans remain focus not repeating mistakes of the vietnam area and holding unour military men and women and sacrifices they made despite bad decisions out of washington. i suspect as charles said, we will have a refocus again today. >> i think so. we'll be talking about the entire region again, mika, as your father said. let me pick up on something mr. blow said. the young people, young soldiers we all see going through the airports, all see more in the past derk kade on the streets, and integrated into our lives, they're in our families, we learn something from them, from their competence and discipline. last night, it was the young who came out at ohio state, in new york in times square, at westpoint, it was young people feeling pride and delight. >> outside of the white house, young people. >> outside the white house. >> democrats, republicans, independents. >> everybody. i love what's going on with the young. you could see, when you see that tape, they are -- they feel pride, good pride, not bad nationalistic, they feel good. we have done the right thing. we did it well, we removed this guy from the face of the earth. it's a wonderful thing. i find it very moving. i just love seeing these tapes. >> with the same understanding and something mika has underlined since we came on at 5:30 this morning, david ignatius, that the battle continues, this is not the end. you actually read a book with dr. brzezinski, you participated in a book with dr. brzezinski, that had conversations between dr. brzezinski and brent sc scokroff. >> let me talk about the process of writing this book, simply this. we are watching celebrations around america, the sense we have accomplished our mission, the sense of joy and ex sex subo what extent do you think we can connect with americans what's going on around the world. you wrote about a global political awakening we're seeing spreading across the arab world and the whole of to the world, the big thing happening. how is killing osama bin laden with the special forces yesterday going to fit within that larger narrative? >> that's a terrific question, really gets to the heart of the problem. you're absolutely right. the islamic world is awakening, awakening politically, becoming politically activated. this is one of those moments we can either engaining thatge thag and embrace it and steer it in the right direction or turn it against us. i think we have to be both delicate and decisive, delicate understanding its sass expirations, decisive in making its clear that anyone who deplores the killing of bin laden, and i just saw on the screen an indication that some parties in this islamic world are deploring, condemning the killing of bin laden, anyone who does that is in effect endorsing and associating himself or herself with 9/11, with a mass murders committed against americans. this is a moment of choice not just for us, but a moment of choice for them. but at the same time, in that context, we recognize they also have rights, want to be part of the modern world, the time of change has come to them and we're going to be helpful. then we have a whole agenda helping egyptians consolidate, helping saudis transform finishing this messy business in libya and reconciliation that makes israel a permanent legitimate acceptable part of the middle east forever, giving it security which it deserves on the basis of justice for the palestinians. we can work with the turks more closely to 4influence events in syria because they have a lot of influence. this is a pursuit of vital interest of the president in the middle east. >> david gregory, i'd like to ask you something about a night you referred to a few moments ago, in talking to your children, about how you were reluctant to spell out exactly what happened september 11th. we have been showing scenes from last night outside the white house and peggy mentioned penn state. i was in time square 2:00 this morning where hundreds, thousands actually largely young people gathered. a fire truck call in through time square about a quarter past 2:00 in the morning. the american flags rippling in the breeze, as it came through that cocoon of neon and noise that is time square. what is your sense of what goes on in this country now, given the fact the young people we see, many in college, think i will have a college degree and no job. their parents 30, 35 years old, thinking my paycheck is not worth what it was worth five years ago, my house is not worth what it was five years ago, suddenly, this adrenaline shot to america occurs yesterday. what's your sense of what happens from here? >> it's an important question, mike. i think there are these moments true national moments that transcend our political debates, that become about what we're capable of as a people, what we rally around each other, rally around the government in the name of the people, avenging the loss of 9/11. butthen ultimately it can fall away because our political leadership lets it fall away in the past and not building up on the moment. when you think of the aftermath of 9/11 and what seemed possible politically, the kind of agreement across the aisle and washington and around the country, it does give you hope. i think it is a reminder that there are intense debates that go on in this city and in the country about our role and the rest of the world and what it ought to be. it's very difficult to live in a sense of perpetual war. divisions overtake that sense of national unity, what our leadership does when it's really hard, when there's a really hard moment for the country and who we want to be and what image we want to project to the rest of the world. that appeared to get out of balance for the american people over the course of the bush presidency. but all the while, a president like barack obama understood that the american people still felt vulnerable, american people still wanted justice to be done and would rally around a moment like this, just as the president will realize that there is a reminder to the american people that's due as well, which is that this was just one man, there is a threat that still goes on and huge apparatus within our government that will have to remain focused even while we go about our business pre preventing, identifying and confronting this kind of threat still out there defined an entire generation of politics, national security and sense of national identity. >> all right. david gregory. we thank you so much coming in tonight. thank you for your coverage last night, like millions of americans. i certainly followed you throughout the night and thank you for it. >> thanks, joe. >> i want to right now read, briefly, mika, and then have you throw this to your father, we have a statement from the permanent mission of pakistan to the united nations pushing back obviously on many american concerns about how osama bin laden could have had found refuge in the suburbs of the capitol of pakistan in a huge, huge reinforced home, a compound. >> three family compound. >> three family compound in this shadow of a police training center. this is the quote coming from the pakistani government just released. osama bin laden's death illustrates the result of the international community, including pakistan, to fight an eliminate terrorism. it constitutes a major setback to terrorist organizations around the world. al qaeda has declared a war on pakistan and scores of terrorist attacks resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent pakistani men, women and children, almost 30,000 pakistani civilians lost their lives in terrorist attacks in the last few years. more than 5,000 pakistani security and armed forces officials have been martyred in pakistani's campaign against al qaeda, other terrorist organizations and affiliates. it goes on and says pakistan's stated policy is it will not allow its soil to be used in terrorist attacks against any country, pakistan's political leadership, parliament, state institutions and whole nations are fully united in their resolve to eliminate terrorism. mika, this is a government back on its heels in a very -- for good reason, defensive crouch this morning. >> i wonder, dad, how we strike a balance so delicately with pakistan, given the negative forces within it and given the reality of where bin laden was found and killed. >> it's a terribly complicated and delicate situation for them, but also for us. my instinct this moment would be not to challenge that statement, not to mock it, not to criticize it. >> yeah. >> because we have a stake in pakistan not exploding. we don't know what the reaction will be in the country at large or some portions of it. i don't think it's in our interest to make pakistan more vulnerable, not to contribute to a political upheaval. obviously, there was some sort of an informal accommodation between the pakistani government and bin laden and his associates. obviously, the government knew he was there. i suspect they probably put some restrictions on him in fact operati operationally and why there weren't that many more statements by him in recent times. i imagine he probably wasn't using that compound as headquarters for terrorism worldwide, i suspect, i don't know. there was probably some sort of limit on it. they knew he was there and kind of defact umbrella under which he was living. given the stakes involved, i think it's important for us to take the position, we did what we had to do, will do it again if anybody else tries it. the pakistani government has to be aware of that and we accept their sense of relief he's gone. we'll see what happens in the field. see what happens in afghanistan itself. my guess is there won't be much difference there because taliban is not dependent on al qaeda, kind of informal alliance of convenience. >> dad, before you go, one of the last times you were on this show you bluntly graded president obama's foreign policy. i'm wondering, you graded it in terms of the vision he laid out as a candidate versus the vision he was actually carrying out as president. does this change anything or at least open up a world of opportunity for this president to carry out his vision? >> first of all, i think the grade i gave when both of you pressed me, was incomplete. >> okay. >> this particularly, on this issue, completes something very important. he deserve s credit for it. the u.s. armed forces deserve credit for it. this is a certainly be important phenomenon. it's an event, it's symbolic, it's significant. the president was terrific last night. it is not the same thing as a comprehensive long term strategy. i think he has now an opportuni opportunity, because his prestige is naturally higher and he is rightly being complimented for the leadership he has provided. it's an opportunity now to 3450u6 f move forward to address some of the problems with our complicated relationship with a huge population, particularly religiously motivated in a particularly sensitive region we have vital more ral intereal in instance the peace process with israel and palestinians and a region inhabited by the people affected last night. this is a strategic moment of opportunity that has to be seized and not allow it to be dissipated. >> doctor brzezinski, dad, thank you very much. see you tomorrow night at the council dinner. i called him at 11:30 last night and booked him. i don't think he was happy about the call. >> glad he answered the call. let's bring in the chairman of the security committee, congresswoman peter king of new york. you lost more constituents on september 11th than any other congressman, obviously, what are your thoughts this morning? ? >>. >> >> a great moment for the united states. as a republican, give president obama tremendous credit for this. he carried it out. i supported president bush's policies. the fact is, it was president obama who carried this mission to conclusion. it's important for all americans to stand behind him and give him credit as commander in chief for what he did. and on a very personal level knowing so many family and friends, here in the district who lost members of their families, lost close relatives, associates, people they worked with, i can tell you this morning, there was a tremendous sense of relief among them. i have gotten calls from many of them. they feel gratified, not so much happy as gratified and some sense of closure and justice from this horrible moment that occurred almost 10 years ago. >> we're looking at time squares, we have three new yorkers here, charles, peggy and donny deutche, a great great night for new york city, for america, the world, but especially new york city, peter king, like all of you, knew people so personally affected by 9/11. >> new york in this country, go back obviously to 9/11 and obviously the world changed. if you look at the 10 years since, as a country, i think we started to doubt ourselves a little bit, whether it's all of a sudden wars we can't close out, wait a second, i bought my house and the mortgage is blowing up, wait a second, are we this great nation? i talk a lot about this on our show. mike talked about this earlier, what happened yesterday in new york and across this country for the first time in ten years, we did a collective fist pump as a country, yes, we can. i think if everybody watching thinking about that's watching were affected, we all got this surge, i think that's going to be profound. guys who basically, maybe a guy who has been out of work for two months and having trouble getting out of bed looking for a job, he's out faster today. starting in this city there's a pump that will be culturally profound that yes we can. >> let's talk generationally as well. you have a son the age of my son. it's been a rough ten, 11 years for this generation and we saw the jubilant grouds. i want to get peter king in here as well. >> what we saw last night was visual return of competence. young people in their 20s they were children when 9/11 happened. it was a terrible blow. they saw last night after this time, after persistence and patience come back hard. it was the return of competence, i think. that's what they were waving flags about. >> it means a lot, again, for a lot of parents had to sit down and talk to their kids ten years ago and explain what happened. it was a new reality for all of us. mesh was not safe and protected by two oceans. >> our world changed on september 11th. it's been a rough 9 1/2 years. last night was a great opportunity for americans to see what our greatness can be, for young people to see america is still alive and vibrant. i heard what donnie said. i got a call about an hour and a half before the president spoke. the white house called me to tell me what he was going to say. it took about three seconds for it to sink in. after all these years to realize we had gotten osama bin laden. again -- >> and peter, the manner in which we had got him, i heard about an hour and a half before, what the president was going to talk about, i thought it was a random drone attack. could you have ever imagined as chairman of homeland security that it would be navy seals, firing the weapon, shooting osama bin laden at close range. >> that's the best way to have it done. i know the navy seals. i know how much they wanted to do something like this. it was too much to hope for. 9 1/2 years to hope for. thank god they did carry it out. this will be a long hard war. think of all the false leads they had. think of all the missions they had. they were not successful. they never gave up. that should be a signal to young people. this is not an easy war. there's going to be a lot of frustration. it's going to go on whether afghanistan, no matter what it is, the war against al qaeda and its affiliates will go on for a long time. as jubilant and satisfied as we are right now we also realize this increases the threat to the united states. we have to be on our guard, probably any more since 9/11. it's a wake up call as to even moments of great jubilation there's great stress. as a country if we stick together we can handle it. >> peter king, thank you so much for being patient and staying with us. we greatly appreciate it. we wanted to hear your voice. as a congressman who loss the most constituents on that terrible day 9 1/2 years ago. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> we have senator schumer here. what does this mean to new york? >> new york and particularly to your point about young people. my daughter's first reaction was that i lost two people in my grade lost parents on 9/11. that was her initial reaction to hearing them say this on television. and i think that the jubilation among young people is palpable but also fragile. this idea that they exhaled last night, it may not necessarily -- >> you guys are to discussion on the young people. i think it's the other people that needed the jump. the young people naturally have it. we as a country and oil go back to unemployed people, oil go back to a nation where oil spills out of our waters out of nowhere. i want to hear what the great senator from new york has to say. i think it reaffirms the middle generation about who we are as a country. the young people it's in their dna. >> there's been people, the older people, middle age people said we'll destroy your way of life. hitler, khruschchev and stalin, we'll bury you. when bin laden came on the scene and that horrible day of 9/11 we wondered what are we up against. it's not a country any more. it's not set armies. it's random terrorists killing civilians and his intent was not simply to kill civilians but to bury the way of life in the west. and he's dead. and we're here. and, you know, this morning i have to decide -- i'm going to give a speech on how new york can grow. >> you just smiled more when you said that. >> and particularly -- so it affects them and it affects the families because every day i talked to some of them. every day it hit them. why is that evil man who took my husband, wife, child alive -- >> we're supposed to get those guys. >> one other point. i'll tell you who else it send a message to. all those terrorists out there whose minds bin laden affected. they thought he was invincible. they blefd this propaganda that he and his way could beat the west and i think -- i think it's more than just a wake up call. i think in a certain sense it's a turning point. the war on terror is not but this could be the saratoga where things turn. >> they are not assentant and you don't see them burning american flags in syria and egypt and libya. i think the senator is exactly right. >> this is serious and good stuff. >> it is. and it certainly is a step at the same time there's still so much more that need to be done. i have a statement from general colin powell who says this an evil person has been eliminated. osama bin laden is dead and buried at sea. justice has been done. his death brings a sense of relief to the families of 9/11, the families of those brave american troops who fought this war. i congratulate the intelligence community and assaulting troops for this flawless operation. osama bin laden was just one man. the al qaeda threat remains and we must be vigilante and aggressive against them until they are totally destroyed. that's a long time coming. >> let's talk about the intel community. david ignatius said we got the nickname of the courser in 2004, the intelligence community worked on it for five years who is connected to this nickname. they found out in '09 and started working on it in the past two years. it's remarkable that the intelligence community who has been abused for the past 25 years did in this case. >> these people i meet a lot. they are the best. they are like soldiers. they go into these agencies for patriotic reasons. they don't get the glory. they don't get the pay. they do it because they believe it and they are amazing. leon panetta who was my roommate for 11 years is one of the smartest, toughest and most moral people i know, he would get home at 2:00 in the morning after working, sleep until 6:00 and then every morning go to mass at st. peter's. he's a fine man. >> when leon panetta first went to the agency it started -- it did not start well. i can tell you when he last week when the intel community heard he was moving on i called my friends in the community who had been harshly critical the first month or two, and they tipped their hat to him. they said he did a hell of a job. he got his sea legs. he protected the agency and helped us move forward. >> another place, hopefully there will be changes, pakistan. obviously our relationship with pakistan is rocky. pakistan is the number one foreign policy we face over the next decade. there's two sides. parts of pakistan even in military and intelligence that want to help us and parts that have been on the other side. it says something that we didn't tell pakistan about this until after was launched. this mission will strengthen the hand much those who say we should have a pro united states, pro western course. >> mika, i saw your eyes light up on this. it wasn't a drone. a shot to the head, navy seals. movie stuff. that's the brand of america is huge that's image. there's a huge difference, obviously taking him out. but the way it was done for brand america. >> even the way he was buried at sea, no real dignities, not a sailor so there could be no grave. >> mika, top of the hour. >> if you're just joining us and you haven't heard the massive breaking news overnight, osama bin laden, the mastermind behind the september 11th attacks is dead ending a ten year surge for the al qaeda leader and the most wanted man in the world. we have senator chuck schumer with us, donnie deutsch. president obama announced in a white house address last night he authorized an operation to kill bin laden. he sent four helicopters to swoop in on a compound in pakistan located about 40 miles outside of the capital city of islamabad. >> at my direction, the united states launched a targeted operation against that compound in abbottabad, pakistan. they carried out the mission with courage. no americans were harmed. they took care to avoid civilian casualties. after a fire fight they killed bin laden and took custody of his body. for over two decades, bin laden has been be al qaeda's leader and symbol. and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. the death of bin laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al qaeda. his death does not mark the end of our effort. there's no doubt that al qaeda will don't pursue attacks against us. we must and we will remain vigilante at home and abroad. >> all right. the information that's coming about how this is carried out is incredible. a senior obama administration official says the operation goes back two years, two years and there were no leaks, by the way, nobody was tipped off to this. the white house says back in 2009 president obama directed cia director leon panetta to locate bin laden. then in august of last year, intelligence officials briefed the president on a possible lead to his whereabouts. in the past two months there were five national security meetings on bin laden. and on friday, president obama gave the final order to launch the operation. now in pakistan, u.s. officials say a small elite team from navy seal team six conducted a helicopter raid on bin laden's compound and stayed inside the area for only 40 minutes. u.s. forces killed bin laden's son and two coursers, there was also a woman who was used as a human shield. officials say bin laden was shot during the fire fight in the left eye and killed. he apparently put up a fight and ultimately was shot in the head. bin laden's hideout in the pakistani city of abbottabad an hour drive away from islamabad, is located in the academy of the pakistani army. the army is is your roupded by hills with mountains in the distance. according to a senior obama administration official, obama's compound was on a massive plot of land and relatively secluded. the facility valued at over a million was surrounded by walls 12 to 18 feet high with barbed wire at the top. it included two security gates and two windows and three families lived there without any phone or internet access. >> let's go to jack jacobs. colonel jacob, a remarkable military operation last night. what can you tell bus it? >> had plenty of time to plan for it. we got information that this was an osama bin laden location back in august. we had plenty of time to map it out, check it out and get the intelligence and to plan for the attack, plan for possibilities. the more time you have an opportunity to plan for it the better it will run. the more back up plans can you have. and there was a very small number of people who were involved in participating in this exercise. a remarkably small number of people who were involved in participating in this exercise. indeed, there was a helicopter, an nh-53j that was used for this operation. had mechanical difficulties. had to crash land and was destroyed by our commandos so it wouldn't fall into anybody's hands and all the people who were involved in it went back on a single aircraft. >> remarkable. you look at the compound there. the massive compound. >> i'll tell you something. you wonder how this could possibly be put together and nobody in pakistan knew. it just defies belief. >> it certainly does. we've been listening, nbc news has been listening to -- we're looking at images of the compound right now. senator schumer, we have been listening in d.c. to reaction across the arab world from arab media. remarkably muted. detailing the facts of what happened. no condemnation. in fact, an awful lot of praise. only a few radical islamists putting out any kind of protests. this is a former spiritual leader who lost his following who killed more muslims than americans. >> interesting what you say about the media world. at about midnight my press guy got a guy from al jazeera would i like to go on. they never asked if i would like to go on. says something. i didn't go. look, this is a major, major change in the way the world thinks. and this idea that the west and our ideas of freedom and democracy are gone, and guys like bin laden can take them out, that's been -- a dagger has been through that heart figuratively. let me say another thing here. we're so good -- this was not just luck. we are so good at monitoring what's happening. this morning i talked to some leaders in homeland security and the fbi about whether there's any more chatter on the wires about increased terrorist threats and stuff like that. they hadn't seen any. the odds are damn good that if there were something they would find it. this house you talked about what is it alerted our folks to it? no internet connection. no electronic connection and i million dollar house. why? they knew they couldn't talk. electronically. they had to have these coursers and this courser finally gave it away. that slows them down dramatically. it's like the old days of smoke signals or people running pony express. >> it remind me of what thomas friedman wrote about right after the attacks when he said americans need to fight back and they can fight back by going out to football games on friday nights. going to the theater. and understanding and he wrote this a decade ago that every night for the rest of his life osama bin laden will know that he's a hunted man who will eventually be caught. >> we can feel good about this. 9-12rks i called home owners to twaer flag and in memory of those who i knew were lost, i put this flag on. i've worn it every day since. and boy do i feel proud to wear it today. >> chuck schumer, thanks very much. we greatly appreciate it. >> joining us now from capitol hill, we have republican senator from alabama senator richard shelby. of course we had booked for a lot of different reasons this morning. >> senator shelby, obviously our thoughts and prayers are with the good people of alabama. my son was in tuscaloosa when those tornadoes came through. horrifying experience for everybody there and so our thoughts and prayers are with you all and we will continue our focus on that. let us begin, though, this morning with your reaction to the news. >> this is a great success for the cia and also for the navy seals. this is a big victory. they should be congratulated. i had the opportunity to chair the intelligence committee for nearly five years. we put in a lot of reforms. now you're seeing the result of these. this is a signal victory. this is not the end of the war by a long time but theory be congratulated. this is someone that we, osama bin laden, we had been hunting for years. we found him. they executed the plan well. and theory be congratulated big time. >> senator, it's my sense, we can go back to 9/11 , the entir arab world just about said this is terrible what was done america. if you remember a lot of them so supportive of us. they knew who bin laden was at that time. things got a little murkier since. i got the feeling with the reaction today they still know who bin laden was. and he was little monster of history and nobody will mourn him and they won't do anti-american demonstrations. so, do you see it a little bit like that? >> well, a little. but let's be cautious. there will abreaction to this because you have osama bin laden operatives all over the world. look at yemen today. they have been spawned since 9/11. we have to be on alert. we have to be aware that this is a big step in the right direction but the war is not over and we have to really be alert in america right now. >> senator, earlier we were talking about the continuity within the intelligence community and the united states senate in politics from the bush administration's attempts to get osama bin laden to the obama administration's attempts finally successful to get him yesterday. we live in a world where a lot of people are turned off by the polarization of politics and the language of politics. could you speak a bit to the fact -- we think it's a fact -- that there is cooperation and continuity at the highest levels, you mentioned the senate intelligence committee in defense of this country that there is continuity and cooperation there. >> absolutely. you're absolutely right. the thread runs through. the security of this nation should be and is number one. and this has been manifested here in the last few hours. but we have reformed the intelligence communities. the community. and this is a result of this, i believe. we support them. we back them. and now we revel in what they've done and they've done a great job. >> senator, let's talk about alabama. >> sure. >> and the tragedy of alabama. it was great to see the president show up as quickly as de. >> absolutely. >> everything i heard on the ground is the federal government has done a remarkable job reacting quickly. what needs to be done moving forward. so many calling, emailing asking what can be done. what's the answer? what can be done to help the people not only in tuscaloosa but alabama and the southeast touched by this terrible tragedy? >> first of all, you're absolutely right. the federal government has been on the ground, fema is doing a good job now. there's been a lot of volunteers from all over the nation coming into alabama. my home town much tuscaloosa, birmingham, coleman, and you name it. that won't be enough. you know, if you see it from a helicopter, if you see it from the ground, not just tuscaloosa, my home town, but that's where a lot of it was, you see literal hell there. people are probably going through shock right now but it's going to be rebuilding. i believe our people are strong. i know we're going to stay together. and we need the help of the nation. we need the prayers of the nation to make a stronger and sustain us because this is not going over and i week, it will take probably years to rebuild what we had. >> the president said it was the worst devastation he had ever seen. >> it was the worst -- i've seen hurricanes, i've seen tornadoes, i've seen fires, i've been and i small earthquake one time but this is the worst tornado, i guess it's the mother of all of them. >> senator shelby we wish the best. our prayers are with your state this morning. up next live report from pakistan where bin laden was killed. also we're going to bring in nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. keep it right here on "morning joe". 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[ male announcer ] with xerox, you're ready for real business. >> where does capturing or killing osama bin laden fall? >> i think it is a top priority for us to stamp out al qaeda once and for all. and i think capturing or killing bin laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al qaeda. he is not just a symbol, he's also the operational leader of an organization that's planning attacks against u.s. targets. >> we muse also reaffirm that the united states is not and never will be at war with islam. i've made clear just as president bush did shortly after 9/11 that our war is not against islam. bin laden was not a muslim leader. he was a mass murderer of muslims. al qaeda squandered scores of muslims in many countries including our own. so it should be welcomed by all who welcome peace and human dignity. >> that was president obama in a speech last night. the town where osama bin laden was killed is al jazeera correspondent. give us a sense of, first of all, what went down in that town with the operation, if you could add any details and also any reaction there. >> reporter: yes. i'm here in abbottabad which is about an hour and a halfway from pakistan's capital city, islamabad. it's a relatively well-to-do city. a lot of mansion, a lot of vip people that choose to live here. it's a very beautiful location. the locals who i've been speaking to say at around 1:00 a.m. this morning local time they heard four explosions, and then a very loud explosion, an explosion they say was so loud it shook some of them out of bed. they say that it turned the sky orange. one of these locals i was speaking to said he rushed to where all this noise and where all this commotion was coming and he said what he saw was flames and smoke and security personnel surrounding this area. this area, of course, is the house that we know that osama bin laden was captured and killed at in an operation carried out by u.s. force. what he didn't see were any u.s. soldiers or any u.s. officials of any kind at this house but he did see an awful lot of smoke, an awful lot of fire at a house which he he say many in the community had many questions about simply because the people who lived there were very secretive. >> we heard reports this morning that no phones in there, no service to and from that compound. in fact, it was so closed off that instead of getting regular garbage pickup they would burn the trash there. how large is the community? and how hard would it be for suspicions not to be raised for such a compound being built in the middle of this area? >> well, there's sort of two answers to this question. we have to keep in mind that pakistan is a kuccountry of relatively uncertainty. a lot of houses here are compounds. they have high walls. they are heeavily fortified. this house was a very interesting home specifically for the neighbors here, the people that lived in this community. they say that -- again we're having conflicting reports of who this man was. they saw one man living there. the only interaction with this house was by a man who claims to have gone there on a daily basis selling bread and a chicken to this house. so, again, a lot of questions and a lot of being asked here in this community over just who these people were. this house, they say has been owned by this one family for a decade now. but now here we are hearing that the united states became aware of this or at least appeared on u.s. intelligence as of september of last year. at least for months now osama bin laden has presumably been living in this house. but it's raised a lot of suspicions and questions at least with locals here. what we're also hearing it didn't raise any questions about the military which has the large academy here. one of the most prestigious military academies in all of pakistan, in less than a kilometer from this house where osama bin laden was captured and killed. many questions. some were raised by the neighbors. but here we have this military academy less than a kilometer away from this house. >> i'm just curious. there's such a mystery to al qaeda, there was a mystery about bin laden, how advanced, is he livi living in a cave. the fact that they were just there in a compound, doesn't seem to be incredible security, should this give us more peace that these people are more backwards than we even imagined? one would think they would have him set up a bit better for lack of a better word. should this make us feel better? >> well, osama bin laden, at the very least had been living in the tribal regions of the country. islamabad is about an hour and a half outside of the capital. it's a very affluent city for lack of a better word. again, it's home to one of pakistan's most prestigious military academies. and yet at the same time osama bin laden is known to be living in this house. now we have seen some pictures of inside this house shot on amateur mobile phone video. ate relatively ramshackled looking place. we see sacks of sugar. not a very sophisticated hideout for the most wanted fugitive in the world. by no means sophisticated place. and, yet, we don't know exactly how long but possibly for months osama bin laden has been living here. it does beg a lot of questions how he wound up here, how he managed to elude captivity for so long. the questions are being raised over what sort of intell led to capture and killing early this morning. >> thank so you much for that insight and perspective. really appreciate it. >> great report. >> here with us on set, white house correspondent, savannah guthrie, new information. >> talking to u.s. officials this morning. we're getting more information about how this went down. the first thing i wanted to tell you the president was able to watch this and get what i'm told were live audio and visual updates from the situation room as this unfolded yesterday afternoon. this official didn't want to get into the exact technology that enabled this but suffice it to say the president was in the room with his team hearing and seeing in what form what was going on. at 3:55 in the afternoon, audio and visual updates. at 3:55 when word came from the ground that bin laden was killed, they had bin laden applause went up in the situation room. >> we heard from reuters across the wires this morning, george w. bush famously said wanted or alive. reuters said they didn't want him alive. it was a shoot to kill order. >> flafgs. can you imagine if they captured him alive. guantanamo? what might have happened then. there were two heart stopping moments during this operation. the first was when the helicopter stopped working which has been previously reported. apparently the operation called for the helicopters not to land but to hover and lower these special ops forces. it didn't crash. at that point a third helicopter that was third, they called it emergency one came in, conducted the raid. bin laden was shot in the left eye. came out with the corpse and they decided to blow up that first broken helicopter. they did so. they got on two helicopters and departed the scene and this is when the second tense moment came and actually i'm told as this happened as the helicopter went down everybody was just absolutely, laptops down. so much tension in the room. as they left pakistan, they were still in pakistani airspace i'm told when the pakistanis not knowing who these helicopters were, hearing of this massive explosion outside of islamabad which was the first helicopter being blown up scrambled their own fighter jets. so word has to be said to the pakistanis what was going on because remember they were not informed ahead of time. a little bit of color and information this went down. there was enough daring involved as with any information there were things that went wrong that could have gone so much worse. >> after 9/11 you had actually hollywood people brought in to try to imagine the type of scenarios for future terror attacks. certainly 9/11 took on, unfortunately, the negative qualities of a tom clancy novel. but the ending of the bin laden story, you just wouldn't believe it if you saw it. if you saw it on a screen. this was a remarkable event seen by the president of the united states. >> remarkable display of daring from the top on down and just to imagine those operatives landing in the dark of night, in the ground. they had a pretty good idea it was bin laden in there. but just incredibly courageous. >> i know you got to get ready for your show. as the president was able to watch this, i take it then this is something that can be reviewed and be seen? >> i don't know the details of that. and this official is very careful didn't want to explain in great detail how the president was able to get these, what was described to me as real-time audio visual updates and there are, course, photographs of bin laden as well. but he was buried at sea. >> speaking of the president and one thing people knocked him on is lack of testosterone. i've never seen a more commanding commander in chief than that guy that walked out at 11:30 last night. the man in control. i think will live with him forever. that was his defining moment. no question about it. >> the moment the president had that moment, because of very difficult decisions that he made over 2 1/2 years. decisions that his own political base did not support. decisions that he probably did not believe as a candidate he would ever have to make. but he made them. and that speaks volumes about the leader. going against his own ideological leanings to believe what he has to do in best interest of this country nine can't help myself. this is what he was doing over the course of two years and the past six months and past few weeks where you had, you know, groups of people out there drumming up questions about his birth certificate. >> separate the leaders and the pretenders. >> savannah, thank you for the information. actually fascinating. we'll see you at 9:00 a.m. and i promise today straight up. i promise today because of that report i promise i'll be good. let's bring in michigan mitch she's nbc news chief correspondent. andrea, was watching you last night. great coverage. thank you so much for your reporting. what can you tell us this morning? >> reporter: first of all i think, savannah guthrie, she has all the great reporting this morning. on the details of this operation. what this tells us about the way they have been able to manage it. the heart stopping moments that she pointed out and the courage of these forces. the fact that they were willing to go in when they were not sure that they had a path out. that they were willing to go in and take him out. whether or not they would be able to get out with his body was in doubt until that third chopper came in. that remind us so much of what happened with jimmy carter in 1979 and the tragedy, of course, in iran. and that had to be on their minds. >> we were talking about the people that were around in 1980 and, obviously, i'm sure the secretary of defense was watching. his mind had to go back to desert one. he was working for your dad in 1980 in the carter administration, a dark, dark moment not only for the carter administration but for the u.s. military in this country. another helicopter failed. but this time we finished the job in extraordinary manner. >> reporter: indeed. in fact, the fact that as savannah reports, we now have the technology for the not monitor it from the situation room. we've known for a while this technology existed. we first saw it at a harrison ford movie and looking at terror training camps in real-time from the cia. that's been translated to the counter terrorist snoert the cia to all of these joint operations and to the situation room and that is extraordinary indeed. the other thing about this is i have a question. we were told all along the conventional wisdom he was and i cave. clearly they've known for many, many months that they thought he was in this house. they never had eyes on him in this house. they inferred from a lot of intelligence, knowing the name, the nickname of that courser, tracking the courser, seeing all of the physical evidence of this unusual house, the burning of the trash, the lack of internet communication, the fact that such an expensive facility had no telephone or internet hook up told them a lot. but they never eye balled him. they acted on faith. but that was leap of intelligence, good solid intelligence. but the fact that they did all of this was pretty extraordinary. it says to me are we so sure that conventional wisdom that he was no longer operational because he was so isolated and i cave was that correct or did he have more of a role in some of the other operations than we figured? >> mike barnacle, just stunning. the location of this compound, our friend from al jazeera coming on a few minutes ago from this town saying it was less than a mile away from the most elite military training facility in pakistan. >> joe, the fact that this was a year or more of planning for this operation. incredibly complex operation having to do with logistic, terrain feature, the blueprints of the home on the ground in pakistan. it begs the question, andrea, at least to me, fbi director bob mueller is leaving in september. john brennan, national security adviser to the president of course is there in the white house. through all of the noise about politics that we engaging each and every day there are people who have conducted a nonpartisan foreign policy intelligence operation on behalf of the united states of america for years and we rarely hear about them. >> reporter: they are the men and women of intelligence, some known, many more unknown. bob gates, let's pay tribute to this man who served under so many presidents, who was the cia director, who was the national security adviser, and really should be leaving with tremendous success. this is also a personal victory for leon panetta. he did really target them under orders from barack obama. >> a victory for everybody in the national security community. remarkable. hey, andrea, thank you so much. as we go to break, mika, i want us to look at an updated fbi ten most wanted list. and osama bin laden who, of course, had been at the top of the list, well the website has been updated. >> great. >> great to see. we'll be right back. ♪ sun in the sky ♪ you know how i feel i'm loving weight watchers new pointsplus program and the edge it's giving me. ♪ freedom is mine ♪ and i know how i feel i never feel deprived. you know how freeing that is? ♪ it's a new dawn, a new day i feel good. i feel good. i feel good. ♪ and i'm feeling good go on, join for free. weight watchers new pointsplus. because it works. there's a look at ground zero, the tower that's going up right at the spot where the world trade center once stood. we also saw downtown, mark hanes live at the new york stock exchange. good morning. >> a good morning it is. >> give us a sense -- i was wondering if he was chewing gum. how are markets reacting to what's going on? >> so far we're looking at a very muted reaction. right after the news broke out futures and things like that jumped, but have since backed down a bit. the futures are indicating a positive open, i don't know, maybe 50 points on the dow. no way of knowing whether that would have happened regardless of the news out of pakistan. i think we can link oil pretty solidly to the news and oil is down a buck and a half, which is -- what is that? it's about 1%. and gold also down. but not by much, by about 4 1/2 dollars. so, on the whole we're seeing a positive, but muted reaction in the financial world to the news. i want to read you a statement which those of us here on wall street regard as very important. howard lutnick is ceo of a firm that was virtually wiped out in the 9/11 attack. he says it's been a long and painful ten years since the worst attack in america's history. on behalf of all of those who perish our heart felt thanks to the military and the intelligence community. sorry. it's kind of an emotional day down here on wall street as well because, of course, we took the brunt of that attack. but the markets quiet, but upbeat. >> it's donnie. i'm surprised, you know better uncertainty is what drives the matters. initial instinct we should have a huge pop. is this maybe -- is this market muted which is almost a negative response given what you think maybe because they are concerned about the retaliation and in a strange way knowing there's a calm out there and is that what this muted response is? >> the problem is, as i said before with the futures up seven points, there's no way to know what would have happened on the markets this morning if bin laden had not been killed last night. for all i know, gold might have been down five bucks anyway, oil might have been down anyway. so i personally don't think the markets are that impacted one way or another and i don't think there are any more concerned about retaliation from islamic extremists than we were than without the death of bin laden. so, personally my view is the markets are all about money. while bin laden was, obviously, a very important figure, really not that important from a financial standpoint. >> this morning, on wall street, just like the days after 9/11 i would guess, mark, as you read that statement, it ain't about money this morning in the hearts and minds of a lot of people like you that have worked there every day for a very long time. this is the closing of a terrible, terrible chapter in the history of wall street, but regardless of how the markets close today there are a lot of people down there who in the short term just aren't going to give a damn because something really great happened for a lot of people like you. you get to close the book on this man who killed a lot of your friends. >> i'll be honest. i'm tearing up about this. but it's a great day. >> thank you for your time. >> mark hanes, thank you. >> we'll be right back. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 what if every atm was free ? 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[ male announcer ] that's why only zales is the diamond store. how do you feel? >> vindicated. i'm proud of our president for getting the job done and it's about time. >> revenge is not a good feeling but this is definitely good. >> my brother was a fireman who got killed at the world trade center. so, feeling pretty mixed right now. >> i'm here because ten years ago we lost a lot of innocent people. >> i wish i had him. >> it makes me feel amazing that our country can come together again like this and we can finish what we started. judge bay bridge to "morning joe". joining us from utica, new york, whose brother was killed on 9/11 and aboard flight 93. gordon thank you very much for being on our broadcast. you saw probably the video of jubilations in the streets of new york and washington. but four this is deeply personal. what emotion does this moment bring for you? >> well, it's a mixture of emotions. certainly, this dredges up all the pain and anquish over the loss of my brother that we've lived with over the past ten years. but at the same time there is a sense of satisfaction of completeness in that this chapter, the chapter of osama bin laden is over. that he has been killed. and there is great satisfaction in that. >> satisfaction and completeness. all morning long we've been talking about whether or not this does something for family members of those who died on 9/11. it's definitely important to hear it from you that it does something. we wanted that for you, for sure. the president calls it justice. justice has been served. but still there's so much more ahead for families like you who will live forever with this loss. do you think it will help in whatever healing process there still is to go? >> absolutely. we get asked frequently whether this puts closure on our loss. the answer is absolutely not. my brother is gone. he was murdered. he'll never be brought back to us, to his family. however, our military and what they did last night helped assure the families that there will forever from this point forward be no question that osama bin laden is dead. killing him, recovering the body, saves us the anquish of wondering whether he died in some undisclosed location, whether he was killed by a bomb released from a drone never to be recovered, all of this leads us to wonder where is he, what could happen in the future. but now we know that not only the man but the symbol of global terrorism will no longer walk the earth. >> gordon, it's willie geist. we so appreciate you being here this morning. your brother edward, 41 years old on flight 93 traveling for business when the plane was hijacked and father of two. i'm wondering how are his children doing today? >> the children and wife are incredibly resilient. they continue to mourn their loss, but it has not kept them from moving forward in their lives, attending college. and thriving. there will always be a hole in our hearts at the loss of my brother. >> how old are the children now? >> they are college age. >> wow. have you been able to talk to them about this yet? >> i haven't had a chance to make verbal communications, but we have electronically communicated, yes. >> peggy, what are your thoughts this morning? >> i think like everybody i feel like god bless the u.s. navy seals. god bless the cia. god bless the usa. a lot of gratitude to go around today. but i'll tell you, joe, one big thing i'm thinking it's important the white house and u.s. military declassify everything around this operation right now in the next few days. it's important in a skeptical world to show them everything that we've got, the video, the pictures, the facts as samantha wonderfully shared them of the attack itself. the pictures of bin laden, the proof. the proof that this happened. the proof of how it happened. we live and i world where anybody can say anything and nobody will believe nothing so i think they ought to get these u.s. navy seals out there and talking and really relaying exactly what happened. tell this story, declassify it. >> gordon, you had to deal with a horrific loss of your brother, and in the years that followed, within a year that fold the united states was unifiedunifie had to provide you some comfort. we've been through five, six, seven years of very ugly divided time in this country. centered around this global war on terror. did you ever lose faith in your government that they would do the right thing, that they would find justice or did you have a belief that this day would come, that justice would be done? >> i've always believed that this die would come, that justice would be served. while our country has struggled politically with some divisiveness, i'm satisfied our government has been vote lut and certainly our military has worked as one to secure the death of bin laden. i think it's a day where we should be incredibly proud of our military and very grateful to our government for continuing to search out and kill those that brought terror to your shores. >> gordon, thank you so much for joining us this morning. and telling us your thoughts this morning. we wish you the best. >> thank so you much and our thoughts and prayers will remain with you and the other families. and i want to bring in right now colonel jack jacobs again. colonel jacobs, let's talk about, and so many people to thank this morning but let's talk about the remarkable navy seals and the men and women of our armed forces who got the job done. >> they will all get the job done any time it's given to them. too often we rely on the military as a default issue in a policy. when we need diplomacy we rely on the military, we need economic instruments of policy to be used. this is one instance when we relied on the military and they can always get the job done. these people have been training for this for their entire professional lives. knew the information they needed to know back in august and have been working on it ever since and they are extraordinary folks. so when you meet them you can tell that they are the best of the best. we're very lucky to have them. >> we're very lucky to have them. what are your final thoughts this morning. >> with the families. around the new york city area, washington, d.c. area, people who hopefully in this one moment for this one day have a little closure. but as so many said this morning the fight continues the war against this stuff is not about one guy. >> mike? >> my thoughts, the flag, the faces of all those young people in different places across this country, the renewal of pride, patriotism, the feeling that america is what we know it is, a country that can get things done the right way. america can seek justice and achieve justice and i hope the pictures we've seen of all of these americans in the streets would remain in our minds. >> peggy? >> you know, for me it comes down to we did it. we did it. we did it. it's good news for us and for the world. and for all the kids who are watching. bad guys get caught. joe? >> just thanks to the navy seals. thanks to the men and women, the military. thank you for the intel community, for the families who sacrificed so much over the past decade, and thank you, mr. president. great job. >> yeah. all right. osama bin laden is dead. shot in the head during a 40-minute assault on his compound in pakistan. our coverage here continues on msnbc with chuck and savannah. thank very much for joining us this morning on an important day in our country's history. right now, all over the country discover customers are getting five percent cashback bonus at home improvement stores. it pays to switch, it pays to discover. how can expedia now save me even more on my hotel? 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