WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden was unarmed when Navy SEALs burst into his way and stab him to death, the White House said Tuesday, a shift in the official report that raised questions about whether the U.S. ever planned to get the terrorist leader alive.
The Obama administration was still debating whether to release gruesome images of bin Laden's corpse, balancing efforts to prove to the earth that he was dead against the chance that the images could provoke further anti-U.
. sentiment. But CIA Director Leon Panetta said a picture would be released.
"I don't mean there was any wonder that ultimately a picture would be presented to the public," Panetta said in an audience with "NBC Nightly News." Asked again afterwards by The Associated Press, he said, "I guess it will."
Asked about the final showdown with bin Laden, Panetta said: "I don't believe he had a lot of time to say anything." The CIA chief told PBS NewsHour, "It was a firefight going up that compound. . I consider it - this was all split-second action on the office of the SEALs."
Panetta said that bin Laden made "some threatening moves that were made that clearly represented a clear threat to our guys. And that's the ground they fired."
The SEALs were second in the U.S. at Andrews Air Force Base outside Capital for debriefing on the raid, lawmakers said after merging with Panetta.
The head of how to deliver bin Laden's death to the public is a difficult balancing act for the White House. President Barack Obama told Americans that justice had been done, but the White House also stated that bin Laden's body was treated respectfully and sent to reside in a somber ceremony at sea.
Panetta underscored on Tuesday that Obama had granted license to defeat the terror leader: "The office here was to kill bin Laden," he said. "And obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't seem to be representing any form of threat, then they were to seize him. But they had good assurance to defeat him."
For the long-term legacy of the most successful counterterrorism operation in U.S. history, the fact that bin Laden was unarmed is improbable to weigh much to the Americans he declared war against. President George W. Bush famously said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," and the CIA's top counterterrorism official once promised to bring bin Laden's head back on a stake.
Yet just 24 hours earlier the White House acknowledged that bin Laden had been unarmed, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said: "If we had the chance to take bin Laden alive, if he didn't show any threat, the individuals involved were capable and disposed to do that."
Will it matter about the earth? Some may try to have lots of it in Pakistan and elsewhere.
"This area has gone through a lot of injury in price of violence, and whether or not he was armed is not going to produce a conflict to people who were glad to see the support of him," said Mosharraf Zaidi, a political analyst and columnist in Pakistan. "The majority have a suspicion of Us and this will reinforce their distrust of America."
Others may not yet think it.
"I believe he was definitely armed and he was firing on U.S. commandos," said Hamid Mir, an anchor for Geo Television. "Osama told me many times that he will not surrender; he claimed that he will defend and I guess he was fighting."
In Washington, the publication will turn portion of the political debate over Obama's terror policies. His national security team had offered differing accounts of what would find if the U.S. ever had a risk to defeat or capture bin Laden. And Republicans have criticized the chair for closing down the CIA's controversial network of overseas prisons and stressful to close Guantanamo Bay, moves they say have left the U.S. with few options for interrogating terrorists.
On Monday, the White House said bin Laden was mired in a firefight, which is why the SEALs killed rather than captured him. On Tuesday, however, White House press secretary Jay Carney said bin Laden did not attack on the SEALs. He said bin Laden resisted but offered no specifics. Bin Laden's wife rushed the SEALs when they stormed the room, Carney said, and was shot in the calf
"Bin Laden was then shot and killed," Carney said. "He was not armed."
That was one of many official details that have changed in the two years since bin Laden was killed. A White House transcript misidentified which of bin Laden's sons was killed - it was Khalid, not Hamza. Officials incorrectly said bin Laden's wife died in gunfire while serving as his human shield. That was actually bin Laden's aide's wife, and she was only caught in cross fire, the White House said Tuesday.
Carney attributed those discrepancies to the fog of war, saying the data was approaching in bit by bit and was even being reviewed.
"We provided a big care of data with great hurry in place to inform you, and done you the American public, about the functioning and how it transpired and the events that took place there in Pakistan," Carney told reporters Tuesday. "And apparently some of the data came in part by pick and is being reviewed and updated and elaborate on."
Five people were killed in the raid, officials said: Bin Laden; his son; his most trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and al-Kuwaiti's wife and brother.
After killing the world's most wanted terrorist, the Seal team in just minutes quickly swept bin Laden's compound for useful intelligence, making off with a stash of computer equipment and documents. The CIA was hurriedly setting up a labor force to survey the stuff from the highest tier of al-Qaida's leadership.
The documents provide a rare chance for U.S. intelligence. When a mid-level terrorist is captured, his bosses know just what information might be compromised and can change plans. When the chief is taken, everything might be compromised but nobody knows for sure.
Al-Kuwaiti inadvertently led intelligence officials to bin Laden when he used a call last class to speak with someone the U.S. had wiretapped. The CIA then tracked al-Kuwaiti back to the walled compound in a township near Islamabad.
The base was bigger than those nearby, and thither were no phone lines or Internet cables running to it. But other than that, it didn't stand out in the neighborhood, where residents tend to be very spiritual and envious of their privacy. The walls are mold-stained, there are trees in the garden and the windows are hidden. Once, when a woman involved in a polio vaccine drive turned up at the driveway, the men at the gate took the vaccine, apparently to dispense to the 23 children at the compound, and told her to go away.
The Pakistani government has denied suggestions that its security forces knew anything about bin Laden's hideout or failed to spot suspicious signs. But in the closed-door briefing for lawmakers Tuesday, Panetta said, "Pakistan was involved or incompetent," a U.S. official said, speaking on consideration of anonymity to discourse the private briefing.
Pakistan formally criticized the raid Tuesday, calling it an "unauthorized unilateral action." While the statement suggested further strain in U.S. relations with an important but at times unreliable counterterrorism ally, Pakistan is improbable to make much public hold for criticizing the successful mission.
Though Monday's pre-dawn raid on that compound was a major counterterrorism victory, there had been no guaranty of success. Government analysts suspected bin Laden was sustenance there but could never raise it. Satellite surveillance provided the military with images to design its strike but never captured a figure of bin Laden on the property.
With no authority that bin Laden would be there, sending troops into Pakistan was a wild call. The SEALs could force a colonial and see no terrorists at all, leaving Pakistan furious about a U.S. military incursion. Or the Pakistani military, not realizing what was passing on, could transmit its own air power to approach the Seal team.
"What if you go low and you're in a firefight and the Pakistanis show up and begin firing?" Panetta said in an audience with Time. "How do you push your way out?"
With officials at the CIA and the White House watching on television monitors, tensions increased when one of the two Black Hawk helicopters lowered into the colonial and, beneath a moonless sky, fell heavily to the ground. Officials believe that was due to higher-than-expected air temperature that interfered with the chopper's ability to hover - an aeronautical condition known as "hot and high."
Photos released by the White House appearance the chairman and internal security team watching tensely as events unfolded. The CIA director said neither he nor Obama saw bin Laden shot.
The SEALs all got out of the downed helicopter and proceeded into the compound. As they swept through the property, they handcuffed those they encountered with plastic zip ties and pressed on in pursuance of their target, code-named Geronimo. Many SEAL team members carry helmet-mounted cameras, but the video beamed back to Washington did not read the fateful encounter with bin Laden, officials said.
That news came from the SEALs on the ground: "Geronimo EKIA" - enemy killed in action.
The CIA's makeshift command center erupted in applause as the SEALs helicoptered to safety.
Now, the agency's attention turns to finding the word in the computer files, flash drives, DVDs and documents hauled out of the compound. All of that is in Washington and the analysis has begun. The SEALs also confiscated phone numbers from bin Laden's body, and those might allow new leads for investigators. If the intelligence provides the form of insight about al-Qaida operations that officials hope, the U.S. could deliver follow-up strikes against al-Qaida's remaining leaders.
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Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier, Donna Cassata, Alan Fram, , Darlene Superville, Ben Feller, Erica Werner, Pauline Jelinek, Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington, Chris Brummitt in Islamabad and Nahal Toosi and Zarar Khan in Abbottabad contributed to this report.
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