Role in your book. You challenge every detail, the official narrative and media reports. Can you start by summarizing briefly what you found in this piece . The one reality is the president did authorize the execution, if you will will, of bin laden and the seal carried it out. It was done in a resort town about 5060 miles uphill from the capitol. It is a place that in the summer, if you have been in the summer, it gets to 120. So it is called the Marthas Vineyard of pakistan. Where the rich and the generals and senior officials go. After that, what i describe as the lewis carol story because the white house said this was all done. He had gone there last time we heard about him we were looking in the torah bora area. The hindu kush mountains. We are still in the war, 15 years later, but that is another question. There is no end because it is the same policy. Bin laden, the president of the United States, barack obama followed the cheneybush policy too much. The white house story is that oh, my, god we had wonderful couriers. People in the basement were tracking them. And bin laden once he left torah bora he was the energetting energe energe en energetic and then with the use of torture, waterboarding, if anybody saw the movie generated from this, dark 30 i think it is called, it begins with the torture. Enhanced interrogation, waterboarding, we got the evidence we wanted and got bin laden but we didnt tell the pakistanis and went in my ourselves. Two choppers evaded the radar of pakistan, went in did the mission, killed the guy. And in the next story he had an ak47 when they confronted bin laden and in order to protect themselves the seals had to shoot him in a room on a compound there. We fled out and we had a chopper that was blew up it was an accident crash landing. Since the 22 squads, actually four squads of six, and this navy seals, even though they havent been on water in years, they still move in groups of six which is how many fit into a dinghy. A nice touch. The seals are going crazy with the idea of not going into the water anymore and many leave because that is what not they were trained to do. The seals went in and had to kill them. A rescue chopper came in which was a twin engine chopper, i for got the name of it. It is carrying 55 passengers and travels is 110 Miles Per Hour at most. They took it ought because they didnt have the black hawk and flew out without being on the radar. He was killed and the war on terror was over. I was happy tee see him. In the next week, it is what happens when you get a story like this. The white house controls the narrative. They are being begged for briefings. They had a recount he didnt have an ak47 and then there was a huge fire shot and lots of people were killed. If you remember, his wives and children were taken away and we will interrogate them. That never happened. They were flown out a month or so later back to saudi arabia. All of the stories design grai d disintegrated. One of the stories was they brought a dog in and when the chopper crashed they had to blow it up and if neighbors came, in this elegant area of pakistan, a resort area. If people came to wonder what was going on the dog was put outside to tell them to stay away. I remember thinking we have a dog that barks in the local language. There was no story that would not go. The Fire Department in this area, which is very skilled, the police department, didnt show up at all. Even though the time of the mission which was supposed to be 20 ended up being 40 because the seals had to fly in a rescue chopper without the pakistani knowledge. It is such a bad story. Let me just tell you a few things. One of my complaints chronically, when i speak to schools and i speak more in europe on Investigative Journalism than here. But the annual meetings of the investigative reporting group, i speak to a lot of schools and the first thing i always say is you have to read before you write. We know that been lad n works for us. In the early 80s we decided we are going to have a proxy war with the russians in afghanistan. And sheldon floyd, and we were going to help fight the war and win the war. And we began paying a lot of money to the Pakistani Intelligence Service which has now become one of the great top services of all time. The pakistani isi is like the egyptian military. They have great investment, own things, buy property in australia, they are building a huge housing complex. They are big, tough and very skilled. We know that. We brought that in to help us fight the taliban and other groups. Help us win the war against the russians. The grid was put up and with the russians moved in the indians moved in. They setup consulates. One of things he did and it was reported in the press, they invaded some of the consulates and began killing pakistani diplomats and even hanging some. By 85 when they were active, helping us beat the russians and drive them out, the indians just delivered them. We build a sophis sophisticated 3d radar system and between the two areas there is one or two flights a week now and it is about an hour flight. 350 miles or so. My god, you had to do was look up the kind of radar system they had and the basic story our two black hall helicopters could evade radar was ludicrous. Host what you said in the article and the book, let me suggest things, it wasnt really an intelligence that led to where bin laden was but it was a tip from a pakistan officer. We took the pakistani and said we know where he is or you co p cooperate or else. They cleared the deck, we moved into pakistan ooknowing knowing they were standing down in and around the skies and compound of pakistan. There was no fight. Just one guy when was obliterated by the fire. They let us setup a command center in a nearby pakistani facility to guide the operation. Is that about right . Perfect summary. The man that walked in, i could be less coy about him now because the pakistanis know who he is. He was a colonel in army intelligence. There were 25 million on the table. We offered that much money. He came in 2010 and to show you how naive i am, i made a point of early in the piece writing he went directly to our station chief. A confidant guy named john bank and what i did in the article was i wrote that bank was there because he had been mentioned earlier because there was a flap involving the cia and his name was mentioned which is illegal. I mention him by name for the simple reason i thought the way you could go after me in the story, it was a long story, 10,000 words and checked carefully. Just as careful as when i worked for the new york review. I knew it would jeopardize. I thought the way i could bow hurt is if they could convince john pank who had a reputation. They Pay Attention to the fact of who wasnt talking about it. One guy was directly involved. The other point is the critical point here is when all of this is being planned and we confronted the pack tany we were enraged at them. The whole point was they were going to look the other way. We would take them out. We had to take the buddy out and we will not talk about it and then we agreed the president would announce we had a drone raid. We do it all the time in the afghan side and we hit a wooden house with the hell fire mission and did after action look and pound the long, tall guy there. Bin laden is 64. We did dna and got him. That would have been just as good. But that night, and i remember this was it was a sunday night in washington, and by 7 308 00 there were reports the president has a special announcement to make. He didnt go public until three hours after the first word. There was political pressure on him not to wait. They have been reappointed or allowed to stay. He was very close to the bush family. He thought we should bomb the place and not jeopardize the seals. Because if something went wrong and they were captured they were basically committing a war crime. They went into a country without notice to the authorities and that is theoretically what happened. Here is what the issue was for gates and me as a journalist. What is so important about pakistan . Why spend so much time cozying up to the generals who run it . When i wrote about this in 2009 they have more than a hundred Nuclear Weapons and we worry about that. There is a huge muslim fundamentalist population there and the reason the pakistanis never said anything about them. The oso found them in 06 which may not be correct. It might be earlier. The pakistanis kept them secretly because the public would go nuts. The public loved bin laden. 50 or 40 of the country saw him as a hero. As long as they had bin laden they could tell the alqaeda groups and the taliban groups in pakistan and afghanistan we got your guy. Pay more attention to us. The second argument is the Saudi Arabians paid him a lot of money. He came from a wealthy family, construction family, not royal but major constructionists in building buildings. Nobody wanted an american int r intear interrogation team. What we did for them. Want a nuke helicopter . Yeah. Want to go play golf with Jack Nicholson . We will fix it up. We did that stuff because we wanted them to trust uzenough to let us know where the bombs were. It was a cat and mouse going on. We didnt tell them what they planneded and they didnt tell us anything. The fear was some of the bombs, were they in igloos or under the ground, some were hidden in the tall grass on the run way. When the president decided to violate the agreement he is jeopardizing relationships until today among the pakistani leadership about being hung out to dry. If they were holding captive and protecting him and using him to their advantage they have a lot to answer for. Your story has been disparaged against. But there were other folks like nbc and others that confirmed details of what you reported. Are you surprised there has been so littleal followup . So few journalists have picked up one or two piece and tried to confirm or disprove what you wrote. Are you concerned or surprised by that . When i was at the New York Times for 78 years i was their lead Investigative Reporter winning prizes about writing about watergate and the cia in germany and domestic spying. If somebody said there was a great story published by the New York Times i want you to follow it and i would say i dont follow others i do my own. It is a bitchy business. A lot of the times reporters dont want to follow someone elses story. Here is what got me. Within a week of the story, one of those reporters who doesnt like to follow other stories and this reporter was asked about my story and they said there was five or six publications and i dont know where that is but that part of the story doesnt work. In the 60s i was getting onthejob training and if anybody broke a good story they would wake me up at 11 00. I thought the kid was lying about everything. He later talked about a wonderful movie by a great moviemaker. Anyway, i would call up sand an that tells you how bitchy the business is. This book came out in london at the same time and i went for a few days for a big event. In my case, within the Senior Editor of the newspaper there, we had a lot of people there, i turned tables on him after a few minutes. I asked him, i said you guys are clos closer, you go to indiana and you are more sophisticated. And he said yes. And i said what did you think . And he said well, we had meetings we concludes was impossible for the pakistani isi because a bottom bot is in the center of the secret base you mentioned earlier but the secrec base we worked with the Pakistani Intelligence Service and a base in which the pakistanis train the guards for the nuclear arsenal. Two reactors. Pakistan has a plutonium reactor. If you draw a circle, it was clear he had no internet, electronic connection. He was completely isolated. With woe landed our guys walked into a business by an isi official. We had a blow and he was a pr prisoner of war not of love. There has been a lot of criticism, too, of the story. Not just lack of followup but i looked at a few quotes. It is fate moon landing. This is called a salon of nonsense. The salon and political box weighed in and the Washington Post talked about being too kind and firing their media guy. What is this all about . Why was there so much not just failure to follow up but this kind of nastiness of accusing you of being a conspiracy person . What is that about . Guest well, most of my stories have a lot of criticism. When i did the abu grave story it was there. But the original stories, tthe New York Times late december, the Washington Post took three months to see that wasnt right. There were not files. The cia was not keeping files on americans and all of that stuff eventually tex eventually you tell me. I dont want to describe what that is about. It is obvious what it is in some cases. I have been doing this a long time and writing stories that should have been written much earlier. Part of that, in the base of mike boden, he wrote black hawk down and he is a good friend. I quote him because you have to go something, first. In the cia when you have a walkin, that manner, you protect the walky. Here you have in the basement of the intelligence bureau, a bunch of people working on tracking couriers. If you Pay Attention to the Intelligence Committee which last you if you remember, they published a major report on terror and torture. If you remember the report it was 6,000 passengers. Only 500 pages were cleared and published. If you read them, as i did, there was a section on couriers and described how the cia was trying to track them and couldnt get anywhere. Couldnt make any sense. The names we have problems with e and a in the name. They are spelled differently in the west. We said it was impossible to track. According to the cia, the briefs, not so much in the initial statements but a day or two later, senior officials and they can get the counter twim and they gave the briefing and talked about tracking them by cure areas and all got into the torture business. Gates fought bitterly against it saying dont start lying about torture because the cia is worried about the congressional hearings and may be legal finding on what they did. The cia was killing people. They tortured people and they bled to death or whatever. In some cases there were murders and no justice. So you had that issue. You were trying to justify using couriers and you had to contradict the earlier stories about this guy being isolated. They talked about him watching pornography and you could say anything you wanted in the first few days. Everything was taken down. The people doing the courier tracking were told you help us find them. You want them to think so because reporters can talk to them and they can be convinced they had. You dont tell them about a walkin. You tell nobody about that. That sa that is a secret even inside the agency. The other element is bowden wrote a piece called a ticktock piece. He wrote a piece about the operation for vanity fair. In it he included a photograph of bin laden being buried at sea. I knew and liked park and didnt want to embarrass him. I knew a lot. I knew that bin laden was taken to the base in pakistan close to the hindu kush mountains. The Aircraft Carrier they needed was like 800 miles away in the indian sea. Secondly, i knew and not ways i want to disclose because i dont want navvy officers embarrassed but everything was reported and that Aircraft Carrier never turned around to pick anybody up. That is very important. They have to do that. There is no such report in the log. And the logs have sense been classified. The third thing is i didnt know their imam aboard an Aircraft Carrier ready to do an official muslim marriage. I knew it was impossible that happened. I called up mark, who was speaking at the university of delaware, and i said to mark, i am going to ask you a question to which i think the answer before i ask you is no. Here is the question did you actually see the photographs you described so vividly in the article . Long pause and he said no. I said how did you learn about them . J was given a briefing about them from somebody i trust. I said why didnt you say you had not seen them . Something to the effect we wished he had or the editor didnt want it. Anyway, so it happened theres a brook running and i remember they change the color of this. You can do that good so anyway, i dont know why people dont pay more attention to that stuff. Post go i found a quote from Hillary Clinton when she became secretary of state with her first visit to pakistan. The first part of 2009. And she said, this is a quote from her and that distant pakistan. I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where osama bin laden. She would not have said that i dont think in 2009 in pakistan if she didnt have some assurance from the Intelligence Community that in fact the pakistanis did know in 2009 exactly where he was. So there she is on record saying we heard this. After the raid in 2011, just two years later he said quote, theres absolutely no evidence that anyone at the highest levels of the packet any government mail. So in other words, she went back on what she said after the raid. I dont want to politics into this discussion, but what does that say about secretary clinton and do you think this is something she should be asked issues are never president . You know, its not going to be asked because it involves too much to know. It is complicated and politics is played out. Guest she said this once in two years later guest you have to be someone who buys into the question about what happens. Ill tell you something more. In his initial statement that i come in the president when he decided the political people oneout, he made a lot of assertion. I read a lot about it. I dont know whether he knew everything he was saying was untrue because the president sometimes get his speech and read the speech. He described bin laden as having been confronted with lack of democratic treasure trove of documents. When a maker carries, sometimes they say if they had time to carrier bags of books or is this most of the enlisted guys. Some of them arent sure very bright. I cant imagine that the seals are after hogmanay chopper crash being in a panic sitting there looking at the page say which one should i take fir