failure high. s.e.a.l.s would rather die than be captured. at the end of the day it was a leap of faith. reporter: friday, april 29, just after 8:20 a.m., the mission begins. the president gives the go. the president, after a long night s sleep, basically came in and immediately told the staff, you ve got the green light. let s go. reporter: as president obama departs for the tornado-ravaged south, the u.s. military s best-kept secret is under way. the troops were ready and in place. the equipment was ready to go. the plan had been practiced again and again and again. reporter: america s most wanted man may finally be in reach. osama bin laden. the architect of 9/11 had eluded the world s most powerful nation for more than a decade. the trail was quite cold. reporter: former cia director michael hayden recalls the early misfires. most of what he had looked more like elvis sightings than intelligence. reporter: the trail caught fire last august when u
the situation room. the white house is calling it the most classified operation in many, many years. he was effectively hiding in plain sight. we ve been able to get inside the walled compound where osama bin laden lived and died. we re hearing new details about his final minutes. let s go to nic robertson who is in abbottabad, pakistan. you spent all days around bin laden s compound there. what struck you the most? reporter: tlp wasn t a huge amount of destruction. the three story concrete with rebar rods, doesn t show many signs of bullet holes or explosions. the compound next to it where they burnt the trash, the women did the cooking and the washing, that area you can see where the burn marks, scorch marks from where the helicopter was burnt inside of there. but for the most part, the buildings look very much in tact. what about the neighbors, the people that you ve been speaking to in abbottabad? what are they saying about the fact that bin laden was living pre