how it was conceived and executed and rudy giuliani talks about the possibility of a new terror attack, early this tuesday, may 3, 2011. captioning funded by cbs 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 here. 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. a move seldom seen and the president remarked on this feeling of national unity and 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 of the debates that we'll have to be engage 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 is 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 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. the president watching what was unfolding said quietly, we got him. erica. >> the pictures tell quite a tale. joe planet 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. he had the compound. but there were actually -- it seems as if you know few humans are on the ground because they couldn't be too conspicuous here. how did they determine it was osama bin laden. 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 acircumstantial 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. 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. good morning. >> good morning, erica. >> has there been a number of requests for proof of osama bin laden's death? we know there are photos even some video. 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 look at releasing additional information. >> it does sound like one of the considerations in terms of that release is in fact retaliation? >> i think its intent is carrying out murderous attacks on men, women, and children. they may try to use 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 that 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 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? oh. >> i think everybody in that room who was involved in putting this operation together and supporting the president when he made the decision to go forward with it they understood the different phase 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 were 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. an intense time an intense period of time and we were holding our breaths, but ultimately it came out very well and the individuals who perform in this flawlessly. >> john brennan, thank you for your time this morning. >> thank you. >> 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 the very late epps. 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 they have access to the house, the alleys are filled with neighbors gawking because they can't believe they were living next to the world's most wanted man. we heard from president sardari today. he says 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? >> there could. there was a smallish situation yesterday by a radical islamist 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. there are questions on which side pakistan is really on. get more on this from lara logan in washington for us this morning. good morning. billions of dollars flow to pakistan annually. is the 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 looks like american taxpayers they will be asking the obvious questions, 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 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 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. he said his country has been helpful in counterterrorism intelligence. is anyone buying that? >> this is an argument they made successfully in the last ten years. the reason they're able to get away with so much. pakistanis killed a large number. 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. the group that threatens the pakistani government. the other groups that threaten the united states' interest like taliban, connie brothers from eastern afghanistan, the militant group formed by pakistan to fight against india over kashmir. these groups that are responsible. 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 going to do everything that count. and they're going to say this. they've been caught with their pants down here. they're in hot water. they 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. what folks can expect today as a thunderstorm continues to move to a eastern direction. roanoke, baltimore, portions of new york state seeing severe weather. wind gusts of 450 to 60 miles per hour. we don't want to rule out the possibility of a storm system. this storm system sits over here in the next 24 hours. we're looking at the rain. stretches pretty far. some folks could see three to four inches of rain. all of a sudden that if you think of all of the flooding we're looking at in the past 48 hours, some areas seeing five inches of rain. the ohio river and the mississippi river are keeping an eye on the 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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