Barack Obama and Admiral Bill McRaven

Ben Rhodes: Ten years ago this week, you were obviously in that final period of deciding what to do, of evaluating risk. Is there a moment or two that stands out in your head from that period? Barack Obama: When I look back, you know, with the benefit of ten years, what strikes me maybe is not a particular moment.

The number of people who operated at the very highest levels for a sustained period of time, that is something that I appreciate even more a decade later. It makes me appreciate how unfortunately rare that is, and it makes me wonder sometimes how we can duplicate that kind of mission orientation and focus in so many of the other challenges that our country has to meet.

Ben Rhodes: Admiral McRaven, in this same period of time leading up to the operation itself, President Obama has to make a decision, but things are shifting onto the shoulders of you and obviously the operators who are going to carry out the actual raid. How did you feel that transfer of responsibility as a part of this broader whole?

Admiral Bill McRaven: When I came in at the first meeting, I think it was in March, and the process allowed us to go from the macro: here are the options we're looking at, down to the micro, which was, okay, we're going to go with the raid, and then you asked all the right questions, the hard questions. But to me, it didn't end there.

The process was mission completion, bin Laden captured or dead, and the boys back home safely. And so I didn't feel that all of a sudden there was this historic shift and the responsibility now came to the military aspect of this. This was an entire process that everybody was part of.

I've said it before, but watching your leadership at the head of the table, I remember walking away going, "Man, you'd have think this guy had been in the military for 35 years," the way you commanded the room. Barack Obama: We ran a tight process because the stakes were so high. But after all the work we did, all the process that we went through, the one thing I've always emphasized was that there remained enormous uncertainty.

Admiral Bill McRaven: Absolutely. Barack Obama: There was uncertainty about whether it was actually bin Laden in Abbottabad, about what was the nature of the compound, how would the Pakistanis react if they found out. What gave me ultimately confidence to be able to make the decision, once you cut through all the other analysis, was here were a group of military personnel who operated at the highest levels doing things that no other organization or group of individuals really could carry out.

Ben Rhodes: So you make the decision, Mr. President, and then the day before the raid, you on a Saturday afternoon from the Oval Office, you called Admiral McRaven for one last conversation in which you wished him well, but also asked him to convey your appreciation to the members of the team. Why did you want to make that call? And what did you convey to Admiral McRaven and the team?