times even funny. we're going to play part of it throughout the hour. admiral william mccraven may not be a household name, but as you're about to see, he's a genuine u.s. hero. we always think of, in recent years, of course, at least in the past year, with admiral m mccraven, as the orchestrater, the architect of the raid that killed osama bin laden. and you know, we've all read a lot about it. i know peter bergen is here, he's written a whole book about it, an excellent book about it. but this is the guy who's sitting right here, who had the guts to tell the commander in chief, we should do it, let's do it, and when you ordered that raid, and when you said, you think -- you didn't even know for sure that bin laden was in a abbottabad in that compound, did you? >> let me make one thing clear, i didn't order the raid. >> but he told the president of the united states that he thought he could do it. >> and this is not a small point. the fact of the matter is, it was the president of the united states that ordered the raid. >> and he deserves an enormous amount of credit for that decision. >> absolutely, he does. >> and when he came to the head of special operations, that would be you, and said, what do you think, what did you say? >> well, first, i will tell you that it was a long process to get there. and our piece of it with, the military piece, of kind of what i look at as three components was probably the easiest aspect of the entire raid. the two other pieces of this were the cia's role and, i think when the history is finally written and outlined and exposed on how the cia determined that bin laden was there, it will be one of the great intelligence operations in the history of intelligence organizations. and a tremendous amount of that credit goes to director leon panetta at the time, because he built the right team, he had the right people, he made some very gutsy calls. and he was not concerned about who got the credit. and so when you take a look at how he built that team, which was a military and intelligence team, a tremendous amount of credit goes to the agency. and the other piece of this really is the president and his national security team. i've made it very clear to people, again, the military piece of this, we did, i think, 11 other raids that evening in afghanistan. now, i don't want to diminish the nature of this raid. it was a little bit more sporting. and we understand that there were some strategic implications to it. but at the end of the day, it was what we have been doing really for ten years. the president and his national security team, you know, i'm not a political guy, but i will tell you, as an interested observer in this, they were magnificent in how they handled the start-to-finish. we went through a number of meetings. the president asked all the right questions. his national security team, with secretary gates, secretary clinton, chairman mullen, the vice chairman, tom donilon, denis mcdonough, and john brennan and others really did a fine job of digging down to find out the facts, to make their recommendations based on the facts, and, of course, the president gave me ample time to prepare once the concept was approved. but at the end of the day, make no mistake about it, it was the president of the united states that shouldered the the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions, that was instrumental in the planning process, because i pitched every plan to him. so any indication that bill mccraven, you know, ordered this raid, led this raid was, you know, the key piece of this raid, is just patently false. >> but you're a navy s.e.a.l.. >> yes. >> and these men who went in there, navy s.e.a.l.s, they were taking orders from you directly. >> they were. >> you were speaking to all of them, you knew each one of them personally. here's just a technical question. did you rehearse it in advance? >> i'm not going to talk about the tactical details, but, obviously, we're not going to do a mission like that without rehearsing it. we rehearse every operation, particularly significant ones like that. like i said, i have made a point of not talking about the tactical piece of this, other than to say that it is what we do. we get on helicopters, we go to objectives, we secure the objectives, we get back on helicopters, and we come home. i was short one helicopter, but the -- >> well, that stealth helicopter, when it went down, and all of us have read about it, we've heard about it, i've spoken to people who were in that room, the white house situation room, as opposed to another swai"situation room," b when that helicopter went down, there was a gasp. because a lot of the folks there, correct me if i'm wrong, thought of desert 1 in 1980, and jimmy carter's plan to rescue americans in iran. >> well, i wouldn't pretend to tell you what they were thinking. >> what were you thinking. >> i was too busy, frankly -- i mean, we had a backup plan. we executed the backup plan, and at that point in time, you're worried about getting the mission done and getting the boys back home. so we had a plan, suffice it to say. >> and it worked? >> and it worked. >> that helicopter, by the way, all that -- the stealth technology and all that, is it gone? has it been shared with pad guys? >> i'm not going to address that. >> you don't want to talk about it. curious. let's talk a little bit about -- and i want to nail this down as best as we can. the president didn't have 100% knowledge that bin laden was hole up in that compound. did you have 80%, 50%? give me a ballpark, how confident were you that a tall guy was hiding out in that compound? >> again, i'm not going to address the tactical piece of that. suffice it to say, we were not sure that he was there. and again, that gets back to some tough decisions that were made. my job was to get him, if he was there. if he wasn't there, we would know that pretty quickly, and our intent was to get up and get out. >> i suspect you're not going to want to answer this question, but i'll ask it anyhow. and as the admiral and i know, we just spent some time tog, this is the united states of america, we can ask the questions, he doesn't have to answer them, but we can ask the questions. and i think it's an important question, that at least i have always been very, very curious about. was the mission to capture bin laden, or was the mission to kill bin laden? >> you know, that's a great question. i'm not going to answer it. >> all right. but there were contingencies this guy would be brought out in a helicopter and brought somewhere? >> did they teach you this, to do the end-around, when the first question didn't work. >> trying to make sure -- you don't want to discuss that? >> no. >> the navy s.e.a.l.s who went in to get bin laden, did they speak other languages other than english? >> yes. >> okay. that's a -- all right. that's important. >> yeah. >> paubecause not only were the courageous and great physical shape and brilliant, they also spoke one other language. >> they did. >> all of them or just some of them? >> just some of them. >> that's very, very important. i told our guests here and those who were listening and watching that we'd come back to the bin laden raid. and there's been so much written about it, and i know some of it is great, but some of it not so great. share with us one nugget, one nugget that without violating sources or methods or classified information, that you believe is important, that the american people know about this raid, that they may not have read about or don't know about, something that you know, you want to share? >> yeah. you know, i think what the american people, they probably know, but they may not appreciate is how great our interagency process is. and i look around the audience at some of our great interagency representatives, but when you look at the cia, the fbi, the defense intelligence agency, nga, homeland security, national counterterrorism center, all of these folks day in and day out, that are going after the threat that's out there, that are looking at the threat, that are protecting the american people, and how well they work together, day in and day out. and you don't see that. you tend to think that the fbi's lane is very clear and that the cia's lane is very clear, and that the defense and intelligence is very clear. but in reality, they are all talking to each other, all day long, making sure that the information they've got and the intelligence they've got is right. they are checking and double checking. so as we went into the bin laden raid, this thought that this is going to be difficult pulling the military and the cia together, along with the support we had from the national security agency and nga and others, this was easy for us. it was easy for us, because for the last ten years, we've been doing this. we've been building this interagency team, and i've got to tell you, today it hums. you know, on the margins, are there problems? sure. but if you talk to, you know, bob mueller or keith alexander here or dave petraeus, i mean, we've known each other all for a long time. we are not only colleagues, but we are friends. and when you have that trust, everything else is easy. and we built that trust up over many, many years. >> and how good is this the intelligence? because without good intelligence, in the bin laden raid, if you didn't have good intelligence, you wouldn't have known anything. but when you go into a mission in afghanistan or any place elsewhere in the world, do you have confidence in the intelligence you're getting? >> we have the best intelligence agencies in the world, bar none. and there is nobody even close to us. coming up, stress, suicide, and war. admiral mccraven talks about the pressure on today's servicemen and women and what he's doing about it. plus, gays serving openly in the military and whether it's had an impact on operations. stay with us. you're in "the situation room." imimagaginine e ifif y yod alalwawaysys s seeee l e [m[mususicic]] inin t thehe b besest t lil. eveverery y titimeme o of f. ououtdtdoooorsrs, , oro. trtranansisititiononss® ls auautotomamatiticacalllly y fift ththe e ririghght t amamouountn. soso y youou s seeee e eveg ththe e waway y itit is memeanant t toto b be e ses. mamaybybe e evevenen a lilittttlele b betette. exexpeperirienencece l lifife e, asask k fofor r trtrananss adadapaptitiveve l lene. my rare discussion with the commander of special ops continues. i asked him about stress, suicide, and war, and the unusual pressures that are on members of today's military. the stress is enormous. the training is very, very rigid, very, very difficult. they serve two, three, four, five tours in a war zone. a lot of them come back, obviously, injured. some of them don't come back at all. they come back and they have posttraumatic stress and the suicide rate, unfortunately, is really getting higher and higher. certainly higher than it was 20 years ago. >> right. >> why? >> well, let me give you a little bit broader answer to that. before i took command, my predecessor, admiral eric olson, initiated a study to take a look at the pressure on the force. and they spent ten months looking at all of our units. i think they talked to somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 soldiers, about 1,000 spouses, went to over 400 different meetings to determine whether or not, what status of the force was. and that report landed on my desk about the time i took command. and frankly, as eric olson had said a number of times in testimony, the force was frayed. and i think that was exactly the right term. you know, we're not crumbling, you know, we're not destroyed, but we were clearly fraying a year ago. i think that fraying is getting a little worse. we are putting an inordinate amount of effort to making sure that we are now preserving the force and families. i have taken a look at the scope of the problem. i have assigned a general officer. identify got my command sergeant major and myself are going out, we're talking to the troops, trying to figure out what the real issues are. you can look at statistics, but statistics don't tell you everything. for example, you talked about our suicide rate. it is as high as it has been in recorded history, in terms of how long we've been keeping track of this, which is really a couple years now. having said that, most people would think, that's the result of fact that guys have been in hard combat, have seen their buddy killed in front of them, but we don't find that necessarily to be the case. the suicides that we are tracking right now tend to be related to a couple of things. relationships. there's always a bad relationship in there. there's alcohol or drugs that are involved. and there are some other, other things that contrite to it. but it's not as ey as saying, this kid was in combat and that's why he has, you know, that kind of stress that caused him to commit suicide. so i will tell you, there is a tremendous effort on the part of the secretary of defense, actually, the commander in chief on down to take a hard look at our problems with suicide and do something about them and we are making a full-court press to do that. >> now that gays are allowed to serve openly in the u.s. military, i assume the special operations, among the 66,000 troops that you command, there are gays and lesbians who serve there, how is that working out? because we heard all sorts of horror stories, fears that this would be a disaster. >> yeah. but at the end of the day, all we care about is whether you carry your rucksack and whether you do your job, you know? so whether you're a female, whether you're gay or lesbian, whether you're a minority is immaterial to the guy in the military. we just want somebody that steps up and does their job. >> and close quarters, has this been an issue at all? we heard all sorts of fears that this was going to be bad. >> no. can i tell you, i don't want to speak for the other services and the folks that are down range, but i have not had to deal with any of those issues as the commander of socom. not to say they're not out there and somebody else hasn't had to deal with them, but right now nothing has been raised to my level. >> my interview with admiral mccraven continues in a moment. up next, the qualities he says are crucial to become a u.s. navy s.e.a.l. 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'cause we love chex. ♪ [ male announcer ] and now try new gluten free apple cinnamon chex. i think we should see other people. in fact, i'm already seeing your best friend, justin. ♪ i would've appreciated a proactive update on the status of our relationship. who do you think i am, tim? quicken loans? at quicken loans, we provide you with proactive updates on the status of your home loan. and our innovative online tools ensure that you're always in the loop. one more way quicken loans is engineered to amaze. ensure that you're always in the loop. this is new york state. we built the first railway, the first trade route to the west, the greatest empires. then, some said, we lost our edge. well today, there's a new new york state. one that's working to attract businesses and create jobs. a place where innovation meets determination... and businesses lead the world. the new new york works for business. find out how it can work for yours at thenewny.com. how many tryout out to beca navy s.e.a.l. and how many are eventually accepted? >> well, historically, and i'm not exactly sure what today's figures are, but historically, it's about a 50% will make it through. that's kind of splitting the officers and ten listed. the officers tend to do a little better, in terms of their success rate, because we start with them a little bit earlier at the naval academies, at other areas. the enlisted rate tends to be a little bit lower on that scale, but we're working very hard to get more folks through without diminishing the quality. because at the end of the day, it is the quality of the individual we get that will make us successl on the battle field, not the quantity. >> when you look at a young man or woman out there, 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old, who wants to be a navy s.e.a.l., what do you look for? >> well, we look for a couple things. one, they've got to be able to think on their feet. the physical aspect of it is important. but we all know people that are very physically fit but can't think on their feet. at the end of the day, i want somebody who can think, react, and operate under pressure and make the right decision. somebody that's got some life experience, some maturity. what you find across the soft spectrum is that the average operator is about 34 years old, married with two kids, spent about six years in the conventional force, so he's got some life experience. now, that's not all always true. the young s.e.a.l.s come in, some of them are 18, 19 years old, some of the young rangers come in, some of them are 18, 19 years. but across the board, our population is a little bit more experienced. but at the end of the day, the physical piece is important, but thinking on your feet is the most important piece. >> a lot of people don't realize that you had an excellent major when you were in college. do you want to tell everyone here what you majored in while you were in college? >> i majored in journalism. >> excellent. >> what was i thinking? >> excellent. excellent major. >> coming up, admiral mccraven makes news when he tells mell u.s. troops might not be out of afghanistan by the end of 2014. >> i'm not sure all u.s. troops will be out by 2014. 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[ normal voice ] so i can trust 'em. unlike randy. are you in good hands? we're back with the first interview since the bin laden raid, with the commander of special ops, admiral mccraven. you're about to hear us discuss afghanistan. and i was surprised about something he said. listen to this. one of the controversial areas, and i want you to discuss it as much as you can, in afghanistan right now is the, are these night raids that are going on, and the afghans, and i interviewed president hamid karzai at the nato summit not that long ago, and as someone who's watched all this unfold, it's still hard for me to believe, accept the fact that the u.s. still has almost 90,000 troops in afghanistan right now. u.s. taxpayers still are spending about $2 billion a week, $100 billion a year, maintaining that military presence in afghanistan right now. yet, hamid karzai, occasionally, and i criticized him for it in front of him, he seems to think he's doing us a big favor by t letting us do that. how do you deal with that? when you're dealing with someone, you have a mission to do, and the host country occasionallyot only says bad things, but isn't nece