President Obama announced in a rare Sunday night televised statement to the nation that bin Laden, public enemy Number 1, was killed in a raid by Navy Seals in Abbotabad, a scenic military town just 100 miles away from the capital Islamabad.
"We will be true to the values that make us who we are," Obama said in a late night address Sunday. "And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done."
The United States first received a tip in August that the mastermind of the 9 / 11 terror attacks was hiding in a million-dollar mansion with 12 to 15 foot walls.
The evidence that bin Laden was hiding there was largely circumstantial and he had not been seen, sources told ABC News, and officials did not know where he may be in the sprawling compound that is located about 1,000 feet away from the Pakistan Military Academy.
In March, Obama authorized the development of a plan for the United States to bomb bin Laden's compound with two B2 stealth bombers dropping a few dozen 2,000-pound bombs, sources tell ABC News. But when the president heard the compound would be reduced to rubble, he changed his mind, because it would mean there would be no evidence to present to the world that the head founder and leader of al Qaeda was indeed dead. Plus, all 22 people in the compound including women and children and likely many neighbors would also be killed.
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