Richard Engel Quotes

When the president went around the table to the country's national security leadership, Hillary was clear: We have to go get bin Laden. And our Special Operations Forces did just that.

As tragic as Benghazi was, its importance pales next to killing Osama bin Laden.

I don't think there's any question that America is safer as a result of the bin Laden operation.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

The best day was when we got bin Laden.

The administration asserts that two thirds or three quarters of al-Qaeda’s managers have been captured or killed, and that al-Qaeda must therefore be on the ropes. Why spend vast sums defending against it?

On September 4, 2001, the Principals Committee met in the White House Situation Room. CIA Director George Tenet and the DOD leadership both spoke out against the use of armed Predators tp get bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership. They were not overruled [by President George W. Bush]. A week later we were attacked [on September 11].

In short, the hunt for bin Laden could not have been accomplished without every form of American intelligence-gathering.

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.

After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to say which element of the U.S. military had participated in the assault. Until Vice President Joe Biden decided to talk about it on national television, that is.

I think soon after I became director of the CIA - President Obama pulled me into the Oval Office and said: 'Look, I just want you to know that your top priority is to go after Osama bin Laden.'

As we have all said, we understand that electronic surveillance is a vital tool in the war on terror. We all want to know when Osama bin Laden is calling: when he is calling, who he is calling, and what he is saying.

I mean the fact is that some of this information that we have found out that led to Usama bin Laden actually came from these enhanced interrogation techniques.

I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.

The U.S., often in secret, carries out counterterrorism missions all the time, with drones in places like Yemen and Somalia.

We can fight the War on Terrorism in other places around the world or we can fight it here in America. The right choice is to fight those terrorists where they are.

A campaign against terrorism requires checks on ”over stretch” and a viable exit strategy.

Your first priority is to go after bin Laden.

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault....The direction is to go in and get Bin Ladin and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McCraven at approximately 10:45 AM.

If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then, I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

As I have said for two years now, when Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords who a week earlier were fighting against us.

There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him.

We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

Obama killed Osama. Yes, President Barack Obama gets to crow about the killing of Osama bin Laden.