Here is where the president’s political lens made a critical difference. As the president received briefings on the plan, he urged the team to develop a backup plan in case one of the helicopters went down and our forces had to fight their way out. In Afghanistan or Iraq, where U.S. forces controlled territory, fighting our way out was not politically risky. He thus directed McRaven to add additional helicopters to the plan, so that there could be a Plan B if one of the helicopters failed or if backup troops were needed.
McRaven redesigned the mission and ordered two CH-47 Chinook helicopters to fly behind the lead Blackhawks. Pushing them into Pakistani territory was risky because it increased the radar signature of our entire operation, but the president weighed that risk and decided it was worth it.
On the night of the mission, the first helicopter approached the compound, slowly banked, began to lose lift, and turned 180 degrees around and just plopped down in the compound’s animal pen. Our hearts were in our throats as we watched the rotors of the Blackhawk slowly churn to a halt. This wasn’t the plan at all. Then the second chopper, seeing the “crash” of the first, aborted its plan to drop SEALs on the roof and went to another point outside the compound. All of sudden, instead of having a dozen SEALs in the courtyard, several on the roof, and the rest on the perimeter, we had a dozen SEALs in the compound’s animal pen, and the rest stuck outside the compound walls.
Managers need to know when to take the long view to keep a team focused on the key priorities, even in the face of crises or distractions
This is where the training of Special Operators kicked in. On a secure video teleconference line, we asked McRaven, “What the hell is going on?” McRaven coolly responded that nobody was hurt, that they would carry out the mission, and that he was sending in a backup helicopter.
The SEALs conducted the mission from these alternative entry points, all the while knowing that their only “ride out of Dodge” was disabled for good and would have to be destroyed. (There was no way the single remaining helicopter could hold everyone for the flight back to Afghanistan.) The team conducted the raid flawlessly, killing both brothers, heading up the stairs of the main compound, killing Bin Laden’s adult son Khalid, and finally killing Bin Laden in his bedroom on the villa’s third floor.
But in Pakistan, the president rightly worried that a gunfight could pose unnecessary risk to our team members and to the relationship with Pakistan
After taking Bin Laden’s body off the compound, collecting as many computers and thumb drives as they could grab, and ensuring that all of the surviving women and children were safe, the team ran out to the inbound backup CH-47 Chinook. They boarded the helicopter – all of us watching from the CIA operations center in stunned silence. The operation went nothing like we had rehearsed, but the backup plan worked.
The hunt for Bin Laden lasted a decade, overseen by four CIA directors and two presidents. The U.S. spent billions in military and intelligence resources dedicated to the mission. We were the beneficiaries of all of these prior efforts. But the fact that much had been tried did not absolve us of the need to try harder.
We needed to address a problem that plagues so many managers: the tyranny of the inbox, where the urgent replaces the important. Finding Bin Laden was a classic case of an important, but not always urgent, mission.