Obama: Divided counsel on commando raid

President Barack Obama faced sharply divided counsel and, in his mind, barely better-than-even odds of success when he ordered the May 1 commando raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the president said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Obama acknowledged having only circumstantial evidence placing bin Laden at the Abbottabad compound. There had not been a single photograph or confirmed sighting of the man, he said, and he worried that the Navy SEALs would find only a "prince from Dubai" instead of the terrorist mastermind responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"At the end of the day, this was still a 55-45 situation," Obama told CBS's "60 Minutes" in his first broadcast interview since bin Laden's death. "I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been some significant consequences."

Obama, in his most revelatory comments about his thinking in the days before the raid, said he weighed the risks and judged that he should proceed with what was, by all accounts, the most promising opportunity to capture or kill bin Laden in nearly a decade. In doing so, he rejected the advice of a substantial number of his national security advisers, who worried that the plan to send ground troops deep into Pakistan was too risky, he said.

"I concluded it was worth it," Obama said. "We have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al-Qaida, ever since 2001. And I said to myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly disabling al-Qaida, then it was worth both the political risks as well as the risks to our men, after a pursuit that cost billions of dollars and stretched for nearly a decade."

The president gave the order to strike on the morning of Friday, April 29, a day after his top security advisers hashed over the arguments and counter-arguments in a meeting in the White House Situation Room.

Obama said his advisers expressed doubts -- some of which he also shared -- and security officials pored over possible scenarios and studied a model replica of bin Laden's compound that had been brought to the White House.

Over the following two days, Obama proceeded with previously scheduled duties, including a tour of tornado-ravaged Southern states and a televised appearance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, while continuing to ponder the gravity of the events he had placed in motion.

"The vast majority of my most senior aides did not know that we were doing this," Obama said. "There were times where you wanted to go around and talk this through with some more folks. And that just wasn't an option. And during the course of the weekend, you know, there was no doubt that this was weighing on me."

Only after the SEAL team landed in Afghanistan were U.S. officials convinced that they had indeed succeeded, he said. Obama described walking out of the Situation Room and telling aides, "We got him."