failure, high. would rather die than be captured. at the end of the day it was a leap of faith. reporter: friday, april 29th, just after 8:20 a.m., the mission begins. the president gives the go. the president, after a long night s sleep, he basically came in and immediately told his staff you have 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 underway. 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 we had looked many more like elvis sightings rather than substantive intelligence. u.s. intelligence zeroed in on this co
certainly not 100% clear identification of osama bin laden. reporter: there s no smoking gun. no photograph of bin laden, just a tall shadowy figure in a come nund arises suspicion. still the goods are good enough for panetta to make a case to the president. i think the argument was, this is the best chance we ve ever had. the odds have never been higher and if we don t take this opportunity the odds may never be this good again. reporter: panetta tapped special operations commander vice admiral william mccrave on then to action an action plan. three options are put on the table. one was go in and bomb it, obliterate it. the problem with that is you probably wouldn t have a body left an you couldn t show evidence that osama bin laden was really there. the next option was to send in