act, which is another vote imminent as, the 11th hour gets underway on this monday night win. good evening once again, i m stephanie ruhle, and while this is the eve of yet another crucial set of primaries which has 99 days to go until the midterm elections we begin this evening s broadcast with major news in the still ongoing war on terror president biden made it official in just a few hours ago. on saturday, and my direction, the united states successfully concluded an airstrike in kabul, afghanistan, that killed the emir of al-qaeda. we ayman al-zawahiri, after carefully clinton s interim clear evidence of his location, i authorize a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once for all. this mission was carefully, planned vigorously minimize the risk of harm to other civilians. we make it clear again tonight, that no matter how long it takes no matter where you hide if you are a threat to our people united states will find you and take you out.
zawhahiri is stomach churning.ch he was the ideological master behind behind the turn of al qaeda andnd groups like that toward indiscriminate mass murder of civilians anywhere, including muslims, all in the name of islamic piety and how he got there, we now, looking back at it, it seems like a straight shot, but if he dropped in at any time of his biography, you wouldn t have known, trained as a doctor, as a surgeon, a respected family in egypt, born and raised in cairo. by the time he was 15 years old he was a committed radical who wantedic to impose islamic theecacy by force all of 15 yearsfo old. when islamic militant disassassinate egypt s president anwar sadat at a military parade in 1981, he was one of hundreds ofe islamic radicals who was tried and imprisoned and tortured for years in egyptian prisons. while there he became an informant, supplying information on hisin comrades, and released fromra prison in egypt in 1948 d even more radical than when he had gone in an
we should have been for you in a few minutes. this is the kind of thing that a president, any president, would usually be monitoring while it s in progress from the oval office, from the white house situation room. that was impossible as we learn more about this raid because the president is quarantining. he got covid. this is something that was in progress while he has been isolating. we know that about 30 minutes, because of the covid, he s going to be speaking from the blue room balcony. it s not something we usually see from this president. mrs. oh leader who about a year ago argued limits to what was widely considered at the time a hasty withdrawal from afghanistan. it was never going to be pretty but that the u.s. was going to figure out how to go and kill terrorists without an afghanistan base. this drone strike, if confirmed, as we can for more details, it appears to prove the president correct in that regard but remember. this is a leader, when he was vp, and all som
important moment for the u.s. to tell viewers what you are learning. this is about to be a major announcement that we hear directly from president biden. we expect that president biden will be addressing the nation around 7:30 tonight. is senior administration official told us this was a counterterrorism operation of a significant al qaeda target. we are learning this was in fact, ayman al-zawahri. the senior official also noted that the successful operation did not result in any civilian casualties. keep in mind, this comes about one year after the u.s. withdrew fully from afghanistan. of the last military plane leaving afghanistan in august of last year. this will raise questions that perhaps, the president, himself, will address on how the operations were conducted, given no u.s. military prison in afghanistan. also, what the assurances are that we hear from the president, himself, on the note that there was no civilian casualties. the president has been isolating becaus
concern. we make it clear again tonight that 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. a lot went into the drone strike and a lot may follow from it. we begin tonight with new details how it all came together and with chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. anderson, remarkable details coming out from a senior administration official tonight which speaks to a months long intelligence operation preceding this strike from a drone on saturday. we re told the president was first alerted to his presence in kabul in april, the start of april this year. but that had followed months where u.s. intelligence agencies had been tracking him, that he had moved to kabul ostensibly it seems to stay with family there, a downtown villa. in the course of those months cia and other intelligence agencies developed patterns of his and his family s behavior with intention of filing an