because of the resistance that they met. since everyone here was given realtime information, was the decision to shoot and kill one that was done there by that unit or was there consultation was there information flowing back and forth and it was directed that, yes, go for the kill at that point? operation was run from the ground or certainly not from the white house, and at the point i think mr. brennan described this yesterday at the briefing or perhaps on television or maybe in both places, that at that point the folks in the situation room were observers and listeners to an operation that obviously had been carefully thought out, meticulously prepared for. the decision to go was the president s and obviously was a very weighty decision. once it began, however, obviously it was up to those who were taking the action to
realtime information for a variety of reasons. those meetings take place in the situation room for a reason. those rooms there are for secure communications. so i can t get more specific than that. i think it s been said so i can say that leon panetta, the director of the central intelligence agency was on a screen and communicating with those in the situation room and the president, so he was present in that room in that sense as well. so they were [ inaudible ]. we were receiving realtime minute-by-minute updates on excuse me, on the operation taking place in pakistan at that moment. but they were receiving a lot of information at once. okay. so brennan in his briefing yesterday made a couple of, i guess, misstatements or statements that later appear to be somewhat incorrect such as that the wife was shielding bin laden and it turned out it wasn t the wife and there may
examples large and small of bp s lack of transparency. the bottom line, we have a right to know. for months, we ve wondered why, even on critically important operations, we aren t getting realtime information, or realtime explanations. when nasa launches a space shuttle, there s an announcer explaining what is happening second by second. when bp launches an operation, silence. we have a right to know. about three weeks ago, bp sounded like they were going to change. bob dudley the guy who replaced tony hayward as the public face of the company said this we have had a camera there looking at the oil spill that s coming out of the well from the beginning. they re done with there s about 14 robots down there, sometimes they move off, there s others in place. there s maintenance that needs to be done. we ve had well operations where i m sure some very strange things are happening on the screen and people can t follow it. we talked about that. so in the coming weeks, as we do addition
operations we aren t getting realtime information, or realtime explanations. when nasa launches a space shuttle, there s an announcer explaining what is happening second by second. when bp launches an operation, silence. we have a right to know. about three weeks ago, bp sounded like they were going to change. bob dudley the guy who replaced tony hayward said this we have had a camera there looking at the oil spill that s coming out of the well from the beginning. they re done with there s about 14 robots down there, sometimes they move off, there s others in place. we ve had well operations where i m sure some very strange things are happening on the screen and people can t follow it. we talked about that. so in the coming weeks, as we do additional things around that well head and change the flow. we are going to try to put in there sort of a bubble caption of what people are seeing, how they see it, we ve been talking
that bp spilled no the gulf of mexico, the fine is $3.5 billion. if it was 60,000 barrels per day, that would be $18 billion. so this is no small matter. if it is possible to measure the containme containment, to measure the oil flow with precision, then absolutely it should be done. bp spokesman. i want to talk to you about transparency. all along, we ve been suggesting and frustrated at the lack of realtime information that comes out of bp. they put out press releases hours after something has happened, sometimes 16 hours in the case of the top kill operation which they had stopped, didn t tell anybody about it for 16 hours in terms of the american public. a spokesman for bp yesterday evening said don t expect us to keep you informed every step of the way. we ll let you know if something has changed. but basically saying, it s not