The killing of Osama Bin Laden
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2020
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The US tracked down the al Qaeda leader to a city in northern Pakistan in May 2011. Special operations troops were sent to capture or kill bin Laden in a top secret raid in the dead of night. The Americans didn't tell their Pakistani allies about the raid beforehand. Gabriela Jones has been speaking to Nicholas Rasmussen who was in the White House situation room with President Barack Obama and US military chiefs as the raid took place.
Photo: Osama bin Laden. Credit:AFP/Getty Images
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:31.0 | You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Gabriella Jones. |
| 0:40.0 | It was in May 2011 that US Special Forces killed the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, in a top secret raid in Pakistan. |
| 0:59.0 | Hello good evening. Ten years after the West first declared they wanted him dead or alive. Osama bin Laden has been captured and killed. |
| 1:02.0 | Osama bin Laden was the man behind the devastating 9-11 terror attacks in the USA. |
| 1:08.2 | American intelligence agencies had been hunting him for 10 years. Finally, they tracked him down to a compound in a botabad, a city in northern |
| 1:16.2 | Pakistan. Nicholas Rasmussen was working at the White House on the National Security Council |
| 1:21.5 | staff, a special assistant to President Obama and senior |
| 1:25.2 | director for counter-terrorism issues. |
| 1:27.6 | He was one of the people present in the White House Situation Room on the day of the raid. |
| 1:32.1 | In the particularly American context context there was of course a sense of justice |
| 1:36.0 | attached to the hunt for bin Laden. |
| 1:38.0 | This was a person who needed to be held to account for |
| 1:40.0 | masterminding and orchestrating the most devastating terrorist attack ever to occur on American soil. |
| 1:47.0 | Code named Operation Neptune Spear, the raid was carried out by a team of US Navy SEALs. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.