How President Obama Announced Osama Bin Laden's Death to the World

You couldn't have staged this more dramatically: on a Sunday night, rumors swirl that Osama Bin Laden was dead.

This is the most wanted man in the world. The leader of al-Queda, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, the global face of terror.

The United States of America has been hunting Bin Laden since 1998, and his elusiveness helped burnish his myth and legend. If the most powerful nation on the planet can't find a single man, is it really that powerful?

CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the old workhorses of the network news all pounce on the rumors, which seem far different than previous theories and whispers that Bin Laden was dead, which had all proved to be untrue.

But on that Sunday -- May 1, 2011 -- the White House announced that the president would be making a special statement regarding a national security event. And the news channels did something quite unusual. They stayed on the air and talked about the issue until the president finally did come on and give a speech to the nation, and the world, explaining what happened.

President Barack Obama said intelligence that a team of special forces soldiers had travelled by helicopter into Abbottadad, Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden, who was living in a fortress-like mansion surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire.

Obama said Bin Laden had been traced to the mansion through a courier that he used to deliver messages to his followers and the media, and that they had had this location under watch for months until they were sure that a high-value target was there.

Certainly, Obama didn't intend for this event to be a massive PR coup. But it is -- for America, for those fighting terrorism and for Obama's re-election campaign.

The killing of Bin Laden in this manner was completely unexpected. He was thought to be hiding in a cave, roughing it, living simply. He was living in a mansion.

He was thought to be in Afghanistan, or in the lawless regions along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Instead, he was in the middle of Pakistan, in a posh neighborhood not far from Pakistan's version of West Point.

The press and public expected America -- if it did kill Bin Laden -- to do it from the air, probably with a Predator drone strike. In fact, Obama's military advisors suggested a similar plan, to bomb the mansion in Abbottadad using B-2 stealth bombers and 2,000-pound bombs.

Obama rejected this plan and asked for special forces instead. Despite one of the helicopters crashing, not a single member of SEAL Team Six was killed.

Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others watched the mission unfold, live, from the White House situation room.

You couldn't write a better script if you hired the best minds of Hollywood.

As the news spread, people ran outside the White House to sing the national anthem, wave flags and chant, "U-S-A." New Yorkers congregated at Ground Zero and spontaneous celebrations broke out all over -- on college campuses, at a Mets game, near military bases.

I don't think Obama's media staff intended any of this. They did the mission when the conditions were right and announced Bin Laden's death once the DNA and other evidence confirmed that it was him.

Yet the circumstances of the events made this an amazing case. The president of the United States is constantly in the news. That's not unusual.

What made this announcement so momentous was the build-up to the speech and the nature of the speech itself: Obama speaking directly to the camera, no questions, no audience, no pomp and circumstances.

It was a remarkable job, not just the events of that day, but the fact that Obama's national security team did not leak even a hint of this to the press. That's amazing discipline. All it would have taken is one person to let slip to a husband or wife that yeah, we know where Bin Laden is hiding and the rumor could have been halfway across Washington D.C. the next day.

This was a masterful job of not only finding and killing Bin Laden, but announcing it to the world in a dramatic fashion without coming across as boastful or satisfied. Obama was somber, respectful and serious.

This wasn't a home run for Obama, his team and America's efforts to fight Al-Queda -- this was a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. The announcement was a crushing moral and public relations blow against the mystique of Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Queda network.