concern. we make it clear again tonight that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people the united states will find you and take you out. a lot went into the drone strike and a lot may follow from it. we begin tonight with new details how it all came together and with chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. anderson, remarkable details coming out from a senior administration official tonight which speaks to a months long intelligence operation preceding this strike from a drone on saturday. we re told the president was first alerted to his presence in kabul in april, the start of april this year. but that had followed months where u.s. intelligence agencies had been tracking him, that he had moved to kabul ostensibly it seems to stay with family there, a downtown villa. in the course of those months cia and other intelligence agencies developed patterns of his and his family s behavior with intention of filing an
understood how high the stakes were for them because the whole notion of the doha agreements is predicated on this idea that afghanistan couldn t become a safe haven again. and yet here we are having this conversation in the wake of this momentous event. one official telling cnn they know senior taliban figures were not only away of his presence in this area because this area should be absolutely impossible him living there without them being aware of it, but they also took steps in the aftermath of the strike to try to conseal the fact he was there, to try to restrict access to the house where the strike took place and also to relocate his family. and so you re talking about the senior leadership of the islamic emerate of afghanistan, of taliban held afghanistan literally collaborating with al-qaeda after promising that they would not do that.
taliban? these were meant to be u.s./taliban with karzai not participating. it s a mess. it s important, though, to getting us out of afghanistan. what happens from here? well, i think in successful talks you have to have situation at least on one track it may not be visible where everyone in those talks want something they re not getting. does the taliban want something they re not getting. does karzai have something? the answer to both those questions is, yes, probably. on the surface level, there is going to be a lot of staging and posturing. the taliban raised the flag, called themselves the islamic emerate of afghanistan. all in the last past years in the rule of law and the government that was established. the constitution of afghanistan that exists and, to my mind, you know, i don t want to minimize what happened, but those are negotiation as ploy and john kerry who is really throwing a lot of effort in this needs to be careful, as well, of falling into this. you are going to