I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism

with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Gabriella Jones.

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.

Hello, good evening.

Ten years after the West first declared they wanted him dead or alive,

Osama bin Laden has been captured and killed.

Osama bin Laden was the man behind the devastating 9-11 terror attacks in the USA.

American intelligence agencies had been hunting him for 10 years.

Finally, they tracked him down to a compound in Abbottabad, a city in northern Pakistan.

Nicholas Rasmussen was working at the White House on the National Security Council staff,

a special assistant to President Obama and senior director for counterterrorism issues.

He was one of the people present in the White House Situation Room on the day of the raid.

In the particularly American context, there was, of course, a sense of justice attached to the

hunt for bin Laden. This was a person who needed to be held to account for masterminding

and orchestrating

the most devastating terrorist attack ever to occur on American soil.

Codenamed Operation Neptune Spear, the raid was carried out by a team of U.S. Navy Seals.

Nicholas had worked on the preparations alongside President Obama, the CIA,

...