Well, you better question Leon Panetta then. It was his memo that disclosed this. Here ya go:
"A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that
the president's celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a
responsibility-escape clause: "The timing, operational decision making and
control are in Admiral McRaven's hands. The approval is provided on the risk
profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back
to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin
Laden and if he is not there, to get out."
Who wrote this? It wasn't Panetta. And it doesn't say what you want it to say.
Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm.
McRaven's, not the president's. Moreover, the president does not seem to have
addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence
value...
Not according to this anonymous persons reconstruction of Leon Panetta's comments. But surely you don't think that sparse fabrication is the whole story.
—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only
that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had
been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That
disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the
opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast.
The only reliable weapon that any administration has against the current
threat to this country is intelligence. Every operation like the one against bin
Laden (or the one that ended the career of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen and
al Qaeda propagandist killed in a drone attack last September) dips into the
reservoir of available intelligence. Refilling that reservoir apparently is of
no importance to an administration that, after an order signed by the president
on his second day in office, has no classified interrogation program—and whose
priorities are apparent from its swift decision to reopen investigations of CIA
operators for alleged abuses in connection with the classified interrogation
program that once did exist.
While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president,
consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission
accomplished by SEAL Team 6:
"I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or
capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader
effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community
I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And
finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. .
. . Today, at my direction . . ."
Pick a few phrases here and there out of context and ignore the rest and you can make a damning case against just about anything. Exactly how would you have him answer those questions? Not included here were many comments on the great job the seals did.
That seems a jarring formulation coming from a man who, when first elected,
was asked which president he would model himself on and replied, Lincoln.
