CIA officer reflects on long career in new memoir By All Means Available
Michael Vickers:
So, the options operationally ranged from airstrikes, big bomber strike, to a small drone strike, and then various kinds of raids. And some were rejected.
Like, a big bomber strike would have caused collateral damage, not only would have killed women and children in the house with Osama bin Laden, but neighbors as well. And so that one got rejected pretty quickly. A small drone strike option didn't have much reliability to it. It would only work when bin Laden was walking around for exercise, and a very small bomb might not — might have missed, might have injured him, and then he would have fled.
So, President Obama settled on the SEAL raid that we ended up one version of a special operations raid, but the one we ended up conducting, and that was the best option. It had its risky elements, but we tried to reduce the risk as much as we could by adding additional helicopters, reinforcing forces, et cetera, to make sure the force could get in and out.
So, with the special operations raid, if we got him and got his DNA, we would be able to convincingly tell the world. If we had done an airstrike, we wouldn't have.
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