s.e.a.l. about how this mission was executed. rudy giuliani talks about the possibility of a new terror attack early tuesday may 3 rrd, 2011. welcome to "the welcome to "the early show" live pictures of the twin towers. the twin tower footprints in the middle of your screen, the centerpiece of the 9/11 memorial. good morning, i'm chris wragge, erica hill, a few miles south at ground zero above the scene for us right now. good morning, erica. >> good morning, as you mentioned, we're right above the scene that you just set for us ten years after 9/11. we want to look closer at what happened over the weekend in the killing of osama bin laden. president obama has decided to come here on thursday to mark the death of osama bin laden. this is after a rare bipartisan standing ovation at an event last night. when he comes here thursday, he'll be meeting with families of the victims of 9/11. bill plante has more for us this morning. good morning. >> good morning. good morning, erica. the president wants to mark the death of bin laden ten years with the meeting of the families on thursday at ground zero. last night, there was a dinner for members of both parties of congress here at the white house. there was a mood seldon seen. the president remarked on this feeling of national unity. he said he hoped it would continue. >> i know that unity we felt on 9/11 has frayed a little bit over the years and i have no illusions about the difficulties of the debates that we will have to be engaged in in the weeks and months to come. but i know there have been several moments like this during the course of this year that have brought us together as an american family, whether it was the tragedy in tucson or most recently our unified response to the terrible storms that have taken place in the south. last night was one of those moments. >> and the mood last night here in the white house was one very seldom seen. the president did get a standing ovation from members of both parties of congress. erica? >> bill, we're also learning a little bit more about the mood and about what happened at the white house on sunday as all of this is unfolding. talk us through some of that if you would. >> take a look at these pictures. they're extraordinary. these pictures are from inside the white house situation room on sunday afternoon as the operation was going down. they showed the president and his national security team watching the attack as it unfolded. remember, this mission was in the planning stages for months and mr. obama's top counterterrorism advisor john brennan said yesterday it lasted 40 minutes. each one of the minutes felt more like a day. one of the people in the room heard a commander on the scene in pakistan utter the words, geronomo, ekia. geronomo was the name for bin laden, ekia means enemy killed in action. we are also told at one point that the president watching what was unfolding said quietly, we got him. erica? >> the pictures tell quite a tale. bill plante at the white house. we'll speak to john brennan a little more about that meeting. detail this is morning about the top-secret operation that killed osama bin laden. national correspondent david martin was at the pentagon with the latest on that angle. we're learning that it was in fact a courier that led the u.s. intelligence to this compound as far back as august. but how were they able to track it? >> well, they got his nickname from their interrogation of the al qaeda operatives. and some of these were operatives like khalid sheikh mohammed held in the cia prisons where they were subjected to water boarding. first they got the nickname. then they were able about four years ago to get the real name and sometime after that, they got his cell phone number. they started to track the cell phone. he would turn off the cell phone anytime he got anywhere near the compound. so for some years, they were listening for this cell phone. and it never showed up in any place that would correlate with the compound. and then last summer, he made a mistake. he left the phone on and all it took was one phone call to give away the location of the compound. >> lucky for many folks, he did do that. so they had the compound but there were actually -- it seems as if few humans on the ground because they couldn't be too con speckus here. how did they determine it was osama bin laden that was, in fact, in the compound. >> just from the fortress-type nature of the compound, they were pretty sure that some important terrorist figure was living there. so then they put it under surveillance by satellite and they would see this man go out of the house and go around the courtyard as if it was his daily exercise. he looked to be a tall man. you couldn't tell from the photos if he was the exact same height as bin laden. it was part of this circumstantial case they were building. they watched the compound day after day until they could find three families, the courier's family, the brother's family, and the third family looked to be the same size as the family they thought bin laden was living with -- another piece of circumstantial evidence. there never was a smoking gun. it all led up to concluding that that is most likely bin laden's hiding place. >> thanks. david martin at the pentagon, thanks. john brennan was in the room with the president and other officials watching that mission unfold in real time. he joins us this morning from the white house. sir, good morning. >> good morning, erica. >> there have been a number of requests for proof of osama bin laden's death. you talked about potentially releasing that. where does that stand this morning? will we see any of that? >> we're still evaluating what information we're going to put out -- additional information. we have put out the results of the dna testing, the facial recognition. details about the raid itself, what we're doing now as far as the exploitation of materials that we found. so any type of a photographic or a video material that we have, we're looking at it carefully to put it out, to make sure it's in the right condition. and also to understand what the implications are of such relief. one of the things we have the responsibility to do is to make sure we take measures to guard against any type of adverse reaction to the news of bin laden's death. we've done that in a prudent way overseas and in the homeland here. so in the coming days, we'll continue to look at releasing additional information. >> it does sound like one of the considerations in terms of that release is, in fact, retaliation? >> i think alokay do qaeda has demonstrated it is intent on carrying out murderous attacks against men, women, and children. they may try to use the occasion of bin laden's demise to justify these attacks. what they want to do is make sure we proceed thoughtfully and fully knowing what the potential reaction might be. and take those measures that we can before releasing additional information. >> cbs news correspondent pat milton is reporting that this raid yields a huge amount of material, things like computer hard drives which could, of course, contain important intelligence information. do you have any sense at this point of how active osama bin laden was leading up to his death? >> i think that the information was that he was in the compound for the past five or six years and he had virtually no interaction with others outside of that compound. but yet he seemed to be very active inside the compound. we know he released videos and audios. we know he was in contact with some senior al qaeda officials. so what we're trying to do now is understand what he had been involved in in the last several years, exploit the information we were able to get in the compound, and take that information and continue to efforts to destroy al qaeda. you are looking at the plan information but people as well. >> you watched all of this unfold. i believe at one point you said the minutes ticked by like days. what was it like to be in that room? >> well, i think everybody in that room who was involved in putting this operation together and supporting the president when he made his decision to go forward with it, they understood the different phases of the operation. they were looking to ensure that the phases were unfolding as planned. we were concerned about some type of reaction on the ground, if there was going to be extended fire fights or people were going to come from inside the compound. we were hoping to move forward and get people out. the president was concerned with the safety of those who took the compound. so it was a very tense time, a very intense period of time and we were holding our breaths. ultimately, it came out very well and the individuals who were involved in this performed flawlessly. >> john brennan, thank you for your time this morning. >> thank you. >> chris, back over to you. thank you. we want to go to abbottabad, pakistan where osama bin laden was found and killed. elizabeth palmer just came back from visiting the hideout there. she joins us with the very latest. elizabeth, good morning. >> hi, there. we've just come back from the house which is some distance behind me in a rural area, a suburb that's still almost farmland. and the house that is being described as not really. an enormous wall around it with barbed wire. the neighbors say they were discrete, hardly talked to anybody at all. now that the pakistani army has allowed access to the house, the alleys around it were filled with neighbors gauking. they can't believe they were living next to the world's most wanted man. we finally heard from president zardari. he underlined that pakistan had no part in the capture of bin laden. it's an embarrassment for him. because here in abbottabad, there are 140,000 people retired or on active duty. he was literally living under their noses. >> is there a concern that the situation on the ground could ignite at any point? >> reporter: well, it could. there are many sympathizers of osama bin laden. there was small demonstration yesterday by a radical is la mist group. all of the embassies are closed. the u.s. embassy is closed and the government is braced for attacks. but, so far, there hasn't been any extra violence. chris? >> elizabeth palmer in abbottabad, pakistan for us. thank you. even before the killing of osama bin laden, the u.s. and pakistan had a rocky relationship. what happens now with so many questions about which side pakistan is really on. let's get more from cbs chief foreign force upon dent, lar ra logan. good morning. billions of dollars flow to pakistan annually. as far as u.s. pakistani relations, is the u.s. taxpayer getting their money's worth? >> doesn't look like that way, does it? when the world's most wanted man is living in the arms of the military and the intelligence services, it certainly would look to american taxpayers, how can we be funding pakistan when people like osama bin laden are given shelter on their soil? what's interesting about this, chris, is that for years this has been a broadly accepted fact. and now that you see the reality that osama bin laden literally was in pakistani soil and not just in hardship living in a cave living on nuts and berries, he was living comfortably in what is known as the keenest city in pakistan after the capital. the americans are not getting a good return on their investment and the pakistanis have some explaining to do. >> i want to talk to you about this op-ed from the president of pakistan. elizabeth palmer made mention of it. in this op ed, he said he country has been helpful in counterterrorism, intelligence. is anyone buying that? >> this is an argument they made successfully for the last ten years. it is the reason the u.s. has allowed them to get away with so much. the truth of it is, yes, there are pakistanis civilians that have been killed, a large number and pakistani security forces. but that's going after the terrorist groups that have devoted themselves to getting rid of the pakistani government and changing the situation inside of pakistan. in other words, the group that threatens the pakistani government. the other groups that threaten the united states interest, like the afghan taliban, the taconi brothers from eastern afghanistan and the militant group formed by pakistan to fight against india over kashmir these groups that are responsible. if you walk in arlington cemetery past the fresh graves of american soldiers coming back from the field over there, pakistan has some of the blood on its hands. they need to answer for that. for too long, the u.s. has stood back saying we fear the breakup of pakistan. pakistan is doing everything they can. clearly they're not doing everything they can. and, more importantly, they're not doing the things that count. president zardari and others, of course, they are going to say this. they have been caught with their pants down. they are in hot water. know know it. as diplomatic as the u.s. has been publicly, you can bet it's been a different story behind the scenes. >> lara logan in washington for us. thank you. switching gears, marisol castro joins us with weather on this tuesday morning. good morning, chris, good morning to you at home. we want to show you some thunderstorms that folks can expect today as the storm system continues to move in an eastward direction from roanoke to baltimore. even portions of new york state expected to see some of the severe thanks so much. now over to chris and erica. >> mari, thanks. still ahead this morning, a closer look at the elite navy s.e.a.l.s who raided osama bin laden's hideout. what it takes to prepare for a mission. and al qaeda's shake-up. who becomes it most wanted terrorist. who to ask now and if osama bin laden's band still has a future. this is "the early show" on cbs. anyone with high cholesterol may be at increased risk of heart attack. diet and exercise weren't enough for me. i stopped kidding myself. i've been eating healthier, exercising more, and now i'm also taking lipitor. if you've been kidding yourself about high cholesterol...stop. 80% of people who have had heart attacks have high cholesterol. lipitor is a cholesterol lowering medication, fda approved to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in patients who have heart disease or risk factors for heart disease. 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