Disclaimer. This episode contains strong language throughout.

This is True Spies. The podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.

Week by week you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in.

True Spies. You'll meet the people who live life undercover.

What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position?

This is True Spies. There's no debate that the best moment that came to potentially kill Penladen was when he was on a hunting trip.

And so there was a great debate between the White House led by Richard Clark who was the counterterrorism coordinator and Michael Schoer on the other side saying, look we should take the shot.

I'm Sophia DiMartino and this is True Spies from Spicecape Studios.

The Penladen files part two. Take the shot.

February 1999. A Sama bin Laden is already responsible for attacks on US targets in Africa which killed over 200 people.

American intelligence has been tracking him for nearly three years now and this hunting trip is their best opportunity so far to take him out.

They went out to a remote part of Kandahari Desert and Penlad visited the hunting camp and was there for a week.

A furious debate rages in the White House. Is it worth the risk?

Penladen isn't there alone after all. Should they take the shot or outsource the assassination to the locals?

There's the option of well what if we ask one of the you know local groups that are still fighting the Taliban from the North in particular.

What if they should go in and try to render Penladen to justice?

In this the second part of our examination of how a Sama bin Laden became the world's most infamous terrorist.

Will hear more about the opportunities America had to take him out and prevent the biggest attack on US soil and why they weren't taken.

We have to remember we weren't in a war on terror at that time that is in a way declaring war on another country.

We'll get inside the mind of the world's most wanted man. What was he thinking? How did he operate?

And how was he perceived?

You know there were a bunch of polls and it showed that in countries around the Middle East that Penladen was regarded as sort of a heroic figure, a sort of robinhood figure of the pie paper of Jihad.

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