he still insisted that bin laden would never do anything like this. i said bin laden did it.aden did it, who told you. you did. he was mad. he was furious. because he thought i was putting words in his mouth. i said no, you told me that al qaeda was behind it, definitely. and i took a manila envelope i had and i put the photos that he identified, the seven hijackers or eight hijackers, i put them all in front of him. i said you want to know the hijackers? those are the hijackers. you told me they were al qaeda members. you told me that. he was in total shock. he put his hand like this and he starts shaking. and he asked for, you know, five minutes. gave him five minutes, came back, said so what do you think now. he said i think the sheikh went crazy. what do you want. >> my job is to kill al qaeda. either get shoulder to shoulder, get with us or get out of our way. [ speaking foreign language ] >>> a small group of people, many of them women, were blamed. they were blamed. they failed to connect the dots. connect the dots. if i hear that -- the washington machine turned on th

this is bin laden.nts everywhere are looking for someone who can help them reach their full potential. with an advanced degree in education from capella university, you'll be better equipped to deal with today's issues and make an even greater impact. let's get started at capella.edu. next minute i'm in the back of an ambulance having a heart attack. i was in shape, fit. i did not see it coming. i take bayer aspirin. [ male announcer ] so be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. see your doctor and get checked out. >>> they're planning something, but where, when, what. is it going to be an armed assault. is it going to be a hijacking. is it going to be an assassination, a bomb, you know. where. there were no real answers. >> the cia did very good warning in that period of time. there are dozens and dozens of reports in which we expressed the view that bin laden is intending to attack the united states. we would have weekly or biweekly meetings sometimes on exactly what was goi

these people were hunting bin laden before hunting bin laden was cool and popular.e back in the day, prior to 9/11 and in fact, opening line from homeland -- >> missed something once before. >> where she says i missed something that day. i think a lot of people at the agency, including these folks were animated by the fact that if that even had taken place and now they wanted to set things right. they were really focused on this, energy beyond description. >> for the real scoop, who better to ask than former cia counterterrorism officials. nada was a targeter of the leader of al qaeda in iraq and cindy was one of the first analysts to focus on bin laden. >> do you think there is something that women bring to this kind of work that is helpful? ? i document women tend to do it better. even the men i worked with who were trying to do a good job of it, very few and far between. >> let me make a crude generalization. women are more patient. they are better at recognizing patterns that are slightly complex. men are, eager to shoot first and ask questions later. does that

did they lead to osama bin laden? >> the black site that i had visited was probably the grimmest place that i have ever been. >> and then, tracking terror. how do you track a lone wolf. >> there's a whole bunch of things that are technically possible. but do you really want your government doing that? >> and it's not just a movie. two of the actual women in the hunt for bin laden take us inside the cia. >> when you think of oo 7, you don't think of jane bond. you think of james bond. >> and, last, i'll have my own thoughts on confronting terror today. . >> defining the enemy and understanding the threat. what does al qaeda look like today? it's been called alqaeda 2.0. loosely made up of affiliates and hangs on. who are these smaller organizations? should we be concerned about them? and what about the lone terrorists living in the west quietly plotting another boston bombing. cnn's national surt analyst oversaw the first television interview with osama bin laden in 1997. his book, "man hunt" is the subject of a new hb

did coercive technique lead to osama bin laden?ain, our intelligence experts weigh in. >> the site that i visited was probably the grimmest blase i have ever been. ran the counterterrorism center from 2004 to 2006. >> it's a business when you are, again, for understandable reasons, sequestering people who you believe have information, actionable information, which if you're able to acquire it, will save lives. >> in your experience, looking at all the information you got, does it work? is the use of coercive interrogation, which some people call torture, a useful way to get information? >> for -- those group of hardened terrorists against whom, you know, the normal sort of measures that you might encounter in a chicago precinct, for instance, simply did not work. simply were unavailing. we acquired a lot of very important intelligence. >> leon panetta was in charge the day osama bin laden was killed. >> i often get criticized for saying this but it was the fact we got information, even though you may not like the approach that was

to bin laden's door two years ago today. >> warner: joining me now to discuss the hunt nor bin laden and al qaeda i'm joined by two members of so called "sisterhood" of c.i.a. analysts who appear in the film "mhunt" and whose work was so crucial to the effort. cindy storer and nada bake yoas. like most c.i.a. analysts you worked in secret. your identities have been kept secret all these years. why did you decide to speak to openly through this film? nada? >> i wanted to tell the first-hand account story for essentially a lot of people still there in addition to my former colleagues. i thought it was a good opportunity to be able to give the viewer a sense of what national curity is ke an how the c.i.a. works. >> warner: cindy, what about you? >> my motivations were very similar. on a personal level i really hoped it would help people understand what our colleagues are doing and they wouldn't be faceless colleagues in the bureaucracy that you could put blame on for whatever is wrong. >> warner: this was informally your unit was known as the sisterhood. do you think there's something d

he is one of the men who shot osama bin laden.ight, you will hear his account of the raid on bin laden's compound. are these guys yelling and charging up the stairs? is there a lot of action? how is it unfolding? >> you know, it's... it's not like the movies. movies make it out to be, you know, loud and crazy and everybody's yelling. it's quiet, calm. >> pelley: you're walking up the stairs. >> yep, nice and slow.

that man's name was osama bin laden. he issued this self-styled fatwa which he called a declaration of war against the americans occupying the land of the two holy places. the land of the two holy places is saudi arabia. the two holy places being mecca and medina. osama bin laden was, of course, a saudi citizen, and his whole first declaration of war on the united states hinged on the fact that the united states had military bases in the land of the two holy places, in saudi arabia. so that was 1996. then two years later, the second bin laden and al qaeda fatwa, the first one i against had been a little rambling. this one spelled it out much more directly. it said everybody should try to kill americans, american military personnel and civilians and the justification for doing that started in the same place as the fatwa before. the one in 1998 says first for over seven years the united states has been occupying the lands of islam in the holiest of places. the arabian peninsula. so this one was 1998. and since the first ir

that's what it is. >> so are you saying that will we did with osama bin laden was wrong?that we should have not shot them in the head? he should've been brought back to serve trial? >> no. i'll tell you one premise that you cannot simply dismiss. we have not to what happened in that room. you have a navy s.e.a.l. in the space of three seconds and a dark room and in enemy territory making a decision whether switching for welcome, whether he is a suicide vest on and someone shoots him in the head, i'm not going to second-guess that got because i didn't have the guts to put on that armor and go into that room and try and kill them. that's a different is that if osama bin laden had been captured on the streets and handcuffed and brought to the united states, it would've been a big colossal horrific spectacle that would are just glorified him. if that's how they captured him that's what should happen and initiative shot in. >> the israelis had the same experience. they put in montreux, yet his opportunity to have a soapbox be dished they grabbed it without resistance. they kid

osama bin laden's big demand was that we pulled u.s. bases out of saudi arabia and president george bush pulled u.s. bases out of saudi arabia. two decades later, we did the same thing. in 1983 there was a huge suicide truck bomb at the airport in lebanon. six months earlier there had been another big suicide car bomb attack, not on a barracks but u.s. embassy, 63 people killed including 17 americans at the barracks bombing, the toll was almost unimaginable. 299 dead including 220 u.s. marin marines, 18 american sailors, three american soldiers, nearly 60 of the allied french troops. the americans and the french and troops from a lot of other countries were there. they were in beirut as part of a peace keeping force trying to stop or mitigate the effects of a civil war that was raging in that country. and the bombings were a terrorist message that those international troops could get out, get out you infidelity occupying armies, we do not want you in our country. pull out the peace keepers. then president ronald reagan responded by pull

now, imagine that terrorist was osama bin laden.tore, and nata bakos were dedicated to tracking down top al qaeda leaders, including bin laden. they knew how dangerous these terrorists were before many americans even knew their name. they were part of a documentary called "manhunt: the search for bin laden." it airs on memorial day week en here on cnn. i watched the film. i found it fascinating. i want to start to you, cindy. you say you mentioned al qaeda and you say it went there two weeks before the first world trade center bombing. and that you say it was basically brushed off. tell me more about that. >> i should clarify, i didn't say al qaeda exactly but it did talk about the veterans of the afghan war, we knew were being funded by bin laden who were -- being trained by afghanistan, and then around the world -- stuff like that. this was a -- piece. strategic warning piece, really, saying that these guys exist, this is a problem. it is going to be an increasing problem in the future. what so often happens with that kind of stra

bin laden hates him. he's a her atick. there's no connection between saddam hussein and al qaeda. >> the word goes out to the cia, fbi and all the intelligence services. find the connection. >> first, though, the war on terror goes to afghanistan. to capture or kill osama bin laden and destroy the taliban regime that supports al qaeda. by november, the enemy is on the run, forced to flee into the mountains and across the border to pakistan. but while bin laden remains at large, washington's attention turns to iraq. to saddam. >> i think the united states, since "desert storm" has always had a, a, a various planning with respect to iraq. >> "operation desert storm." also known as the first gulf war. in 1991, following iraq's invasion of kuwait, a u.s.-led coalition of 34 countries drives saddam's forces out of kuwait and decimates the iraqi army in six weeks. but despite that overwhelming victory, president george h.w. bush faces criticism at home for not going all the way to baghdad to rid the world of saddam hussein. >> i

we confirmed this with records seized from osama bin laden's compaq after his death. we saw this with the plot to bomb the new york subway system in 2009. meanwhile, al qaeda affiliate's have emerged as significant threats. al qaeda in the arabian peninsula operating in yemen has attended several attacks on the united states, including the failed christmas day airline bombing in 2009 and the attempted bombing of u.s.-bound cargo planes in october 2010. most recently, we have a growing concern about the threat from homegrown violent extremists. these individuals have no typical profile. their experiences and motives are often distinct, but they are increasingly savvy and willing to act alone, which makes them difficult to find and stop. in 2009, smadi was a 19-year-old jordanian citizen living in texas, and although he espoused loyal to -- loyalty to al qaeda and some of the modern, he was not affiliated with any groups that would become terrorists. he had become radicalized on his own on the internet. when he expressed clear interest in attacking a dallas skyscraper,

sitting in the situation room and monitoring the take down of osama bin laden.pposite of that. there's a whole lot of questions that need to be asked about the military chain of command. in my past experience when we got into these situations, especially after 9/11, we were always there, locked and loaded, ready to go on 9/11. we have specially-trained units that practice this thing all the time, they are very good at it. and they are chomping at the bit to go. there is a contingency team or extremist team, i'll refer to them, assigned to the commander in chief and local areas. where were they that night? why weren't provisions made to have forces within range and just an hour away from benghazi. why weren't they deployed ready to go to take action in any of those areas in the middle east or north africa? it makes no sense. they totally ignored their responsibility, partly because they didn't want to admit they had a problem. they were trying to perpetuate this fiction that there were no terrorists because they got bin laden. that's a lie. >> that would be consi

receiving end of the drone strikes these are people that level these are people that want osama bin laden to with you know in the terms of lindsey graham and all these other people they have every reason to be against al qaeda but we're giving them every reason to say well enemy of my enemy is my friend and you know blowback is i think inevitable you can't conduct these kinds of wars around the world killing innocent people in the pursuit of a few bad guys and pretend that it's not going to come back to you i can't tell you the number of people that i've met abbie when i've gone to afghanistan or yemen or somalia who said you know we had a positive view of the united states but then when this night raid happened that killed my wife or this drone strike happened that way out forty six people in this village i decided that i'm against you i had one guy in afghanistan whose family were not even pashto in their fighting against the taliban one of them was a senior police commander after a night raid he said i want to put on a suicide vest and blow myself up among the americans i want jihad ag

heavily laden vehicles. a good three month showed up by tanks. members of the international club of soviet paratroopers in afghanistan rushed to help them believe the combined efforts of. the commander of the second. has to use his. last resort. they drive into the field where the trouble is face another challenge setting up. their fathers and grandfathers were far more adept at restoring the war. gives them a boost before sunrise the camp is finally set up and the russian group a fast asleep. good. science technology innovation. developments from around russia we. covered a potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast. from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more power. line there's still a lot of snow out near a place for snowball fight. pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout. some emergency. oh and. the. russian military. of. two accordions to entertain the troops

osama bin laden is dead. >> al qaed. >>. >> we eliminated osama bin laden that.ths before the elections, that narrative they were selling turned out not to be true. do you think that is the reason why those talking points, the cia had it right from day one? do you think they lied to get reelected?. >> i can't know the answer to that. what i do know is that anyone dealing with that problem of al qaeda knows that we have killed leaders in al qaeda. and they are replaced within a matter of a month. there is a new one. you may go through three leaders in one part of iraq or afghanistan and they'll be re -- replaced. that is what happened. and that contingent that is -- has to be understood to be not correct. >> let's walk through this slowly. we know that the cia warned that there might be an attack on the september 11th anniversary. i would think that is a logical conclusion in deed. there were requests for security denied before the attack. during the attack we know from hearings there were two stand down orders people willing to go help those people under fire. th

military soldiers got to the compound to obama's that osama bin laden's compound base saw that they could have actually nobody was armed and so they could have captured him but yet they took him out and they did this without telling the pakistani government and obama said in his speech last week that in fact this caused a lot of tension between the united states and pakistan and and that's the kind of thing that happens when these drone strikes kill people especially in large numbers of civilians also the drone strikes don't just kill the target or whoever happens to be in the sights but then when people come to rescue the wounded then these drone strikes kill them as well and when they have funerals to bury the people who have been killed in the drone strikes then more drones come and kill the people at the funerals so this creates tremendous animosity against the united states and when high level generals were telling obama that this is actually having the opposite effect on these so-called. war on terror i think that he realized and he's probably realized for a long time that he wants

, two years ago today, we killed bin laden.as that ultimately symbolic or did that have a substantive impact on our foreign policy? >> i think it has a symbolic and substantive impact. the symbolic part is it confirmed what the government had been saying but hard for many americans to actually internalize which is that central al qaeda is in full collapse. what that is in some ways is that the reaffirmation, of what in the obama white house was called the light footprint strategy, a strategy moving i way from a focus on these big attritional wars where we send a hundred thousand troops to a country, rewire the nation and after six or seven years discover we haven't done very little other than build recentments there. and more towards the use of america's technological advantage or physical advantage against a smaller group. so there are drone strikes in afghanistan, and in the long run, harmful or helpful. there are cyber strikes of the kind that the book revealed that the united states conducted against iran. and then there's

it put the whole capability claiming the terrorist problem was solved once we got bin bin laden, and if they toll the truth about benghazi, that it was a terrorist attack by an al-qaeda-led group, it would destroy the confidence that was the basis of his campaign for re-election. they lied. they claimed it was because of a demonstration video, that they wouldn't have to admit it was really all about their incompetence. they ignored repeated warnings from the cia about the threat. they ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they needed more security. they reduced what was already there. and the administration either had no forces ready to respond to an attack, which should have been anticipated on the anniversary of 9/11, or they refused to deploy them when our people asked for them. >> the president claiming the talking points didn't matter. the original talking points and the cia's assessment was 100% accurate, that it was terror-related. al-qaeda-linked group, ansar al sharia. it evolved into somethi everything knew didn't have anything to do with the attack, it

and then you have osama bin laden was shot in the head? these are disparate treatments, but in both cases they both seem vengeful. >> oh, boy. what was that? please turn that off. danny? >> i'll put it in a provocative way. the discussion we're having of the justice system here is highlighted in international relations that much more which is when a crime is committed whether it's against an individual or by one country against a group, against another country, there's no way to make it right unless, of course, someone steals $5, then you can give the $5 back. there's just no way to make it right. so we're all in the business or the game or arena of trying our to do the best we can and figure out how to make it as right as one can while acknowledging at least to ourselves that it's never going to be right. and be you have a lot of trade-offs, and you have a lot of things to consider. and i'm really quite surprised by my colleagues on the panel that they speak about the system as if it's imperfect. everybody knows that, but it's pretty good

also today, there was a major federal court ruling related to the killing of osama bin laden.the raid on bin laden's compound in pakistan in 2011, there have been a lot of efforts by advocacy groups to get the government to turn over photographers taken of bin laden's corpse after his death. more than 50 images of dead bin laden were taken the night he was killed and those images have been classified as top secret by the u.s. government. the government has refused to release those images publicly saying they provide no information of public utility but they are potent enough to endanger american lives particularly abroad if they were released. today a federal appeals court in washington ruled in the government's favor. they ruled the government is not trying to hide something by keeping these photos secret but the release of the photos could lead to "the killing of americans and violence against american interests" and so the photos do not need to be released. the conservative group that lost this case today does have the option to appeal this ruling to the supreme court but w

after the killing of bin laden in a suburb of islamabad two years ago, bilateral ties with the u.s. reached a point of no return. pakistan's leadership reacted angry to the american raid claiming that sovereignty had been violated. with strong anti-american resentment, how to handle the u.s. is one of the hottest topics in the election campaign. >>> he is a popular contender in the upcoming general election. his party pakistan moment for justice positioned itself more than any other party as anti-american. he's particularly opposed to the is on going u.s. drone strikes flying over pakistan. >> translator: drone strikes are a complete violation of human rights. they're assassinating large numbers of innocent civilians. >> reporter: over recent years the united states has dramatically increased the use of unmanned drones to target muslims extremists in pakistan. but these strikes have also killed an estimated 400 civilians so far, fueling strong resentment among the population. the city is about 150 kilometers from the iran border. it's now home to many refugees who were driven away f

that man's name was osama bin laden. he issued this self-styled fatwa which he called a declaration of war against the americans occupying the land of the two holy places. the land of the two holy places is saudi arabia. the two holy places being mecca and medina. osama bin laden was, of course, a saudi citizen, and his whole first declaration of war on the united states hinged on the fact that the united states had military bases in the land of the two holy places, in saudi arabia. so that was 1996. then two years later, the second bin laden and al qaeda fatwa, the firs

go after bin laden and his terrorist network. kill and capture them and their supporters." >> narrator: greystone was a challenge to the old ways of fighting, and the secretary of defense, donald rumsfeld, knew it. >> priest: so the cia was very much in front of the military, and that bothered rumsfeld greatly. >> narrator: but rumsfeld's generals had no plans for dealing with al qaeda or afghanistan. >> delong: we had no plan. i mean, to be honest, you have operational plans for different parts of the world. there was none for afghanistan. >> narrator: rumsfeld scrambled, but cofer black was way ahead of him. in less than a week, the president initiated greystone. >> mclaughlin: we all assembled in the cabinet room, and the president lays down about 12 decisions, just like that, machine-gun fashion. >> interviewer: what did he say? >> mclaughlin: well, of course, the thing that stands out in my memory, because it hit me vividly, was... he said, "i want cia in there first." >> narrator: that day, president bush signed a key docum

but bin laden's most toxic legacy is really the ideology of bin ladenism which unfortunately does liveand seems unfortunately the tsarnaev brothers signed up for that. saying it was the wars in afghan and iraq that radicalized them and they wanted to protest. even though bid laden is dead, killing the idea is more problematic than killing the man. >> you still suspect because we don't know because this investigation is still really very much at an early stage where these individuals, these suspects, were sort of self-inspired, if you will, or if they had a direct operational involvement with any sort of al qaeda affiliate or anything along those lines. that's what federal investigators are now trying to determine. >> it wouldn't fit, wolf, with the history of any successful or even unsec e successful bombing attacks in the united states from long before 9/11. the first trade center attack in '93, the bomb maker trained overseas. the unsuccessful times square attack in 2010, the bombers trained overseas. the unsuccessful attempt to bomb the manhattan subway in 2009 around the eighth ann