wanted terror list with the word deceased. good evening, gentlemen. appreciate you joining us. alex, what are you learning about this mission and how it went down? this was a remarkable and complex mission. we got a lot of details from a senior administration official who spoke with reporters before president biden spoke with the nation. april president biden was briefed on the fact al-zawahiri was believed to be in the afghan capital of kabul living in that city and living there he was told with family members, his wife, his daughter, his grandchildren. now the intelligence community believed he never left the house, it was only his family members who went out and his wife and daughter used what this administration official called a terrorism trade craft to make sure they weren t tracked or detected. they failed on that front because patterns were detected and, in fact, al-zawahiri went on to be seen on the balcony of this safe house. a priority of president biden we are t
safe house. the president stressed his death sends a message. 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. administration is now warning that the taliban could face consequences for harboring al say al-zawahri. president biden meeting the situation room discussing the operation to kill al-zawahri. let s bring in john harwood at the white house. this was in the works for months and months, remarkable intelligence gathering operation given it had to be taking place largely from outside the country since the u.s. doesn t have boots on the ground there. tell us what you re learning. reporter: meticulous plan very tightly held. it began when they began to point tort ayman al c-zawahri being in kawabul. he was known to be there in april. they began to build a profile of his movements and how they could strike him. you saw the photo from july when they finally had taken to biden
Than that. Kim jong un has departed from his grandfather and his father, who wanted Nuclear Weapons to preserve the regime. Kim jong un has come to a different calculation. Therefore, his strategy is different. He believes the only way to preserve the regime theres only one country that would change it. The United States. The only way to stop the United States from doing that hes paranoid about the United States you have to hold the American People at risk. Thats why we have this accelerated program of Ballistic Missile development and intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that have the capability to deliver nuclear warhead. Furthermore, he strategizes this way, once he achieves that capability in his mind the United States will acquiesce and accept that capability much as the United States accepted the development of Nuclear Weapons h as the United States 40 years ago except to china developing
its unfortunate this rhetoric is going back i think we should stay out of the Rhetoric Busine
al-zawahiri. saturday night eastern time, sunday morning kabul time, an unmanned aerial vehicle, a drone, fired two hellfire missiles at the building where al-zawahiri was living. he was on the balcony at the time. he was killed and no one else we are told by the administration was hurt, just a remarkably precise strike against the most wanted terrorist in the world. let s talk about some of that intelligence. what kind of intelligence would president biden have needed to ultimately give this operation the green light? we need a don lemon special on this. let me talk about different categories of intelligence. the first is human intelligence. know the bin laden raid, you have a courier or someone in the organization that can identify where your target is. you might have on the ground intelligence including in a place like kabul. you ve got overhead intelligence. once you identify a potential target again remember the bin
director of intelligence during the operation that killed osama bin laden. as you look at the intelligence that went into this, the months that went into this and even the detail in both cases the u.s. intel community built a scale model the bin laden compound in 2011 and in this case the house in kabul where czazawahri was staying. does this remind you of the operation back in 2011? well, yes, jim, it does. although, the nature of the operation obviously different but it does remind me a good bit of that. one comment i would make is vice president biden was a skeptic about the intelligence we had, which was turned out to be a good bit skimpier apparently