meanwhile al qaeda continued to operate along that boarder and operate through its affiliates across the world. and so shortly after taking office, i directed leon panetta, the director of the cia, to make the killer or capture of bin laden the top priority of our war against al qaeda, even as we continued our border networks to disrupt and defeat his effort. then last august after pain staking work by our intelligence in the community i was briefed on bin laden. it took many months to run this threat to ground. i met repeatedly with our national intelligence team that they had located bin laden hiding within a compound deep within pakistan. finally i determined last week we had enough to take action.