meanwhile, al qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world. and so shortly after taking office, i directed leon panetta, the director of the cia, to make the killing or capture of bin laden the top priority of our war against al qaeda. even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat his network. then last august, after years of paintaking work by our intelligence community, i was briefed on a possible lead to bin laden. it was far from certain and it took many months to run this thread to ground. i met repeated with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin laden hiding within a compound deep inside pakistan. and finally last week, i determined that we had enough intelligence to take action and authorized an operation to get osama bin laden and bring him to