the intelligence analysis, why didn't he have an escape plan and it must be, they believe that he felt he was safe that had he had a network of protection, there are now several factors they're looking at. first and foremost, no escape plan he's found on the:30 floor of a building. no way to get out. he knows somebody is coming up the stairs shooting and it was, of course, the navy s.e.a.l.s. why didn't he have a better plan. why didn't his people at the compound attempt to destroy the mountains of evidence, the intelligence documents, the computer gear, the clues about what al qaeda was up to? why didn't they try to destroy it and, of course, the third thing is he only had three other men at the compound. one of his sons, a courier and the courier's brother. yes, they were trying to keep a low profile in the neighborhood, not attract a lot of attention but only three other guys. that's not a lot of firepower on a good day when you don't have 2 navy s.e.a.l.s coming at you through 18-foot-tall walls, so the feeling is he must have had good reason to feel he was going to be safe. he got complacent. what they're looking for now, what was the support network that osama bin laden felt he had? john? >> another important concern for the pentagon, secretary gates raised this tonight, want to read you what he told marines at camp lejeune in a speech today. secretary gates speaking to those marines. he said this about the raid and about those s.e.a.l.s. there's been a consistent and effective effort to protect the identities of those who participated in the raid and i think that has to continue. we are concerned about the security of our families and our troops and also these elite units engaged in things like that and without getting into any details i would tell you when i met with the team last thursday, they expressed a concern about that. and particularly with respect to their families." barbara, it is clear the defense secretary said they were beefing up security. they are worried that if the names of these elite s.e.a.l.s get out, there could be retaliatory strikes against their families. >> reporter: john, absolutely. this is extraordinary. this is the first indication america has of what this team is worried about, what these men are thinking about. there is always concern about the security of american forces, make no mistake, but these special operations troops, these covert operatives do the most dangerous work every day in afghanistan and now on this mission. there is concern about al qaeda retaliation and secretary gates openly saying they are, indeed, trying to pump up security around these men and around their families. they are very worried about it, john. >> an important statement from the defense secretary tonight, barbara starr at the pentagon, thank you. more on bin laden in a moment. now to new york city where police charged two men with allegedly plotting to pose as jewish worshipers and sneak a bomb into a manhattan synagogue. cnn's susan candiotti is tracking that. susan. >> reporter: the alleged plotters may have been short on details, but they had tall dreams, there was talk of blowing up both crowded and empty synagogue, a church and possibly even new york's iconic empire state building. the plot was busted before it became operational. new york's counterterrorist squad said they had their eyes on the men for seven months and set up a sting and once they sold them three semiautomatic pistol, 100 rounds of ammo and a disabled grenade they popped them on a new york street. >> do the prosecutors think they could have pulled this off. >> reporter: the two are described as self-motivated jihadists. lone wolf, wanna-bes not linked to any extremist groups but new york may are bloomberg calls them just as dangerous. the plot's not linked to the death of bin laden and ray kelly said the men hated jews, called them rats and said muslims, quoting here, are getting abused all over the world and we're not going to take it anymore. as to whether they could pull it off, it's hard to say. the suspects talked about disguising themselves as jews, attending services and then blowing up a synagogue. >> and, susan, who are these guys? you say they're not affiliated with anybody. but what do we know about them. >> reporter: one is 26 years old, immigrant from north africa. one calls a leader and a follower and the second is only 24 years old from moroccmorocco. a naturalized u.s. citizen and he is a livery service dispatcher. the fbi was aware of the case but deferred to the new york city police to lead and prosecute. if guilty they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars. they apriored briefly in court today and their attorneys say they are innocent of their charges. >> susan couldn't yachty, thanks. in abbottadad in a walled compound for as many five years there is still disbelief days later and growing anger at the united states. >> reporter: they're here because they're furious at the united states as what they see is an invasion of their sovereignty by the navy s.e.a.l.s at the bin laden compound. we're seeing protesters holding signs, some in english, also organized flags from one of the main pakistani organizations trying to harness this anger at the united states. >> no apologies for that raid here in washington where the obama administration is racing to search all the files in the bin laden compound for clues to the attack plans and whereabouts of other al qaeda leaders. from our reporting, number one, what have they collected from the raid? we know there was a home video brooib. about five computers. about 100 portable electronic storage devices, dvds and thumbdrives you might use on your laptop. what are they getting? intelligence from those. afghanistan and pakistan viewed as a lower priority. talked about african-american and latino recruitment, disgruntled americans at home to launch attacks. timing something to the september 11th anniversary. disagreements on targets within al qaeda and discussion by bin laden if security is big around washington and new york, maybe you want to look for smaller u.s. cities as your targets. also a lot of communications collected. cell phone, recording devices, a handwritten journal from bin laden and planning documents in multiple languages and printed materials going through. that's what is collected. the question is what intelligence do you get from it? they believe bin laden, remember many officials said he was out of the loop. they believe now he was in regular contact with al qaeda franchis franchises. direction focused on big broader objectives. not so much on specific plans. no apparent contact with the al qaeda in the arabian peninsula leader. the american-born awlaki but he was in touch with other aq/ap leaders. let's dig deeper. greg miller is the national correspondent and your detail is fascinating. in terms of bin laden's activities, what jumps out at you as most at odds with what we thought. >> he is in frequent communication with a very tight circle of people who he trusts and knows. u.s. officials say that circle has shrunk over time. more and more of those people are dead now and more -- and many of them are in guantanamo bay so in regular communication with a small group but also sending broader outlined messages out to groups like aqap in yemen to keep them focused on 9 united states. >> one thing i found fascinate, friction in the ranks. bin laden wants get the united states, go after cities in the united states. a lot had more regional grievances and that caused tensions. >> yes. as one u.s. official described it their reaction is, hey, that's easy for you to say. you're not out here with us. in yemen trying to carve out a place that is safe for them and they're thinking if we mount attacks on the united states then we're just going to have more drones patrolling us and dropping strikes against us. >> peter, as someone who spent so much time studying al qaeda, let's start first on the africa. bin laden is the leader but some of the ground troops, if you will, are having doubts about their thinking. >> they began before 9/11 where people within al qaeda were saying to him, maybe the 9/11 plan or attacking the united states is against islam killing civilians and maybe it actually is going to be counterproductive. we'll have this 800-pound gorilla coming after us which turned out to be true and documents picked up on it. senior members writing to each other saying this was a disaster so this has been a debate going on in al qaeda for over a decade. attacking the united states might not be a smart move but let's do the things locally that we want to do. >> they don't agree that on his grand plan. what does it tell you with the communication, not with the leader in arabian peninsula but a yemeni he knew in the organization. >> well, i think that's unexpected. the idea that he wasn't in strategic control. most experts thought he was. when you join al qaeda even as an affiliate you pledge your personal oath of allegiance to bin laden. he is the dictator of al qaeda and all its affiliates but the fact he was doing operational things with these groups, that i think is pretty surprising. >> from your reporting it seems he was having almost a debate with himself, bin laden. that he would love to do something on the grand scale of 9/11 again but also saying, go to the united states, find oppressed latino-americans, african-americans who might be disgruntled. >> there is a note of almost desperation in some of this. he's looking for ways to replicate that big strike and it's just so -- one of the things i think counterterrorism officials are puzzled by, given his fix indication on this, his inability to follow up on that over this past ten years is striking. >> and to that point, the inability to follow up, is it has surprised u.s. officials that bin laden was foe sack tiff. they thought he was up in the cave, not involved in day to day, what is the assessment now of he's active but effective, that's a question mark. >> well, certainly not effective and i mean it's interesting greg is talking about these latin americans he was hoping to kind from -- the united states to recruelty. there was a guy, neil venus from long island, hispanic american and traveled to an al qaeda training camp and was prized by al qaeda and talked about perhaps an attack on the long island railroad, so it wasn't just an aspirational thing but recruit people who are americans sort of disaffected, converse to islam just as bin laden suggested was the right approach. >> and we've been having a conversation about what bin laden wanted, which is almost in some ways backwards looking because bin laden is now dead. in terms of what they've gathered that gives them forward looking where are people like al zawahiri, what's your sense? >> my sense is it's interesting what is in this material but also what is not in the material and sources i've talked to say that there are no rosters. there are no lists of people and their locations. when he sends these messages out to his number two and number three, they are carried there by couriers but bin laden himself may not have even know where they were in hiding and this may be because of his isolation or the operational security employed by al qaeda, but there are certain things even al qaeda leader appears to be in the dark about. >> that's an interesting question. as someone studied him for so long would that be on purpose? bin laden did not want to know? >> well, certainly would help the operational security, but, you know, this was a guy who intentionally isolated himself from -- i mean i think there was the assessment before bin laden's capture he would be in one place for a very long time, that he wouldn't be in a cave and in this compound and keep the number of people knew where he was to the absolute minimum for obvious reason. >> a surprise bin laden had such a hands-on role after so many years. anything else people have -- your sources say, we didn't know al qaeda was interested in this or didn't know al qaeda was talking about that. >> the more broadly they think it's not surprising that he's so focused and fixated on the united states. i think one of the things that is surprising to counterterrorism officials is something that you touched on at the outset which is the complacency or the apparent complacency here, this is an al qaeda leader who in his last moments appears to have made few preparations for his end or to take care of all of this material that is arrayed around him. >> but you know him as well as anyone, peter. does that tell you he had lost his edge or tell you he felt incredibly comfortable whether from the pakistani security service or military, someone that made him feel so comfortable he didn't plan an exit strategy. >> i don't think we've had evidence of complicity -- i think we'll find incompetence. >> every day you learn something new and a lot is alarming. thank you both. ahead an up close look at the classified photos showing bin laden after he was gunned down. we'll ask who lawmakers who viewed them ha they saw and whether they think bin laden's son should get to see them. did waterboarding help the cia find him? some say yes. john mccain takes issue next. 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>> i think those allegations are not substantiated by the facts. as i pointed out in my piece, the first information concerning this courier abu ahmed was obtained through another individual who is as we know is not subjected to these coercive techniques, in other words, torture. the fact is even though khalid shaikh mohammed mentioned the individual's name, he also gave false. this is one of the problems of torturing, you should get good information and you get bad information. also it's clear you could have gotten the same good information through using standards techniques which do not include waterboarding. >> in the days immediately after the killing of bin laden, director panetta said you can't be completely sure some crumb here or piece of evidence there didn't come from enhanced interrogation techniques. you had exchanges with him as you were preparing to write this essay. was he more definitive with you? >> he pointed out, again, the first mention of the name was from these noncoercive techniques. he also pointed out that the misleading information was provided by ksm and others. he also pointed out that there may have been information gotten from the use of torture, but we also got more reliable information from the standard interrogation techniques. >> did you write this because you just wanted to put an exclamation behind your position that what happened in the past should not happen in the future or do you sense and feel a genuine reviving, maybe we got something here, we should do it again. >> that was the main reason because this flood including former attorney general's statement that they got a flood of information, the first information from khalid shaikh mohammed, that was false and so i felt -- and i had some reluctance, frankly, to get into it that we had to -- had to speak out because i do feel strongly because it really is about the moral standing of the united states of america and the world. >> increasingly when we talk to administration offices, they say they have almost no doubt left that somewhere in the pakistani government or intelligence services, bin laden had a support network. what should happen now? >> it's pretty clear there was some level of knowledge. we're not exactly sure what that is and i think we better set up benchmarks for the pakistani government and the military and isi to meet as a contingency to our further cooperation or assistance. john, it's a complicated issue. they are a nuclear -- they have an arsenal of nuclear weapons. they can provide a safe haven even more so for taliban and al qaeda elements. a failed state in pakistan is not in the united states' interests. there's a downside. there's a downside to a failure of the pakistani government so we'll have to be very careful how we approach this and but yet the status quo is obviously not acceptable. >> because of your role as the senior republican on the armed services committee you are among a select group of members of congress who can, if you want to, sir, go to the cia headquarters and look at the pictures of bin laden to prove to yourself if you need proof conclusively that he is dead. will you take advantage of that? >> no, john. i've lived a long life and i've seen enough dead bodies in pictures. >> you think it would serve no purpose or just you have no doubts and would serve no purpose. >> both, i have no doubts this was osama bin laden and in my view there's no need and i've seen enough of it. >> you have been particularly critical of the case of syria. secretary of state clinton said today that the crackdown in her view, the unacceptable crackdown is a sign of remarkable weakness, her words. what do you think this administration should do more to pressure the assad regime? >> well, i think long ago we should have done away with this idea that ba sthar assad was a reformer. there was no basis for that except wishful thinking. second of all we should be identifying him himself as a subject of sanctions, as you know, we have three others and some others, but he is the one that's responsible. we should be standing up for the people of syria who are lift rally sacrificing their lives in the name of democracy and freedom. ronald reagan proved to anyone's satisfaction during the cold war, you stand up for people, you tell them you're with them. we can't use military force there now. i don't know of any, frankly, viable option but we could certainly tell these people that we are with them and that -- back in the cold war as you might recall that happened and it's so important that we lend our voice especially that of the president of t