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Looking Back: How The World Quickly Learned About Bin Laden's Death

Iconic image: President Barack Obama and members of his national security team as they monitored the mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
Pete Souza
/
White House
Iconic image: President Barack Obama and members of his national security team as they monitored the mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

One year ago today, we learned that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had been located and killed by U.S. Navy SEALs at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

There's no shortage of stories and news related to that event, including these:

-- "After Bin Laden, Al-Qaida Still Present As Movement." (NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, on Morning Edition.)

-- Army's Combating Terrorism Center To Post Online Documents Seized From Bin Laden's Compound, Issue Short Report. (CTC)

-- "Bin Laden: Seized Documents Show Delusional Leader And Micromanager." (CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen.)

-- "Bin Laden's Last Stand: In Final Months, Terrorist Leader Worried About His Legacy." (The Washington Post)

We were thinking back about how the story unfolded a year go, and scanned over our live blogging that Sunday night and Monday morning. A few things of note about a night when the news moved very quickly:

-- It was around 10:30 p.m. ET last May 1 when word started to leak.

-- By 11:30 p.m. ET or so, a crowd was already gathering outside the White House; changing "USA!"

-- At 11:38 p.m. ET, President Obama confirmed the news. "Good evening," he began. "Tonight, I can report to the American peopleand to the world that the United States has conducted anoperation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of alQaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder ofthousands of innocent men, women, and children."

-- Just before midnight ET, former President George W. Bush issued a statement saying, in part, that "this momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001."

-- It was around 3:15 a.m. ET, May 2, when we learned that bin Laden's body had already been buried at sea.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.