Both teams exited the helicopters to find a grim scene. The two Chinooks landed separately, one near each end of the convoy. The SEALs had no authority over the helicopter gunners. Survivors began to flee the wreckage, and over the radio, Hyder and his team heard the order that the convoy was now in a “free fire zone,” allowing the Chinooks’ gunners to fire at anyone deemed a threat, regardless of whether they were armed. The bombing stopped the convoy along a dry wadi, or ravine, with two of the trucks approximately a kilometre apart. “We said, ‘Let us set down and take a look at the convoy to determine if it’s al Qaeda.’ Instead, they dropped several bombs.” “The reason SEAL Team 6 exists is to avoid bombs and collateral damage,” said a retired SEAL Team 6 member who was on the mission. Inside the helicopters, some of the operators had pushed to hold off any air attack, arguing that they had plenty of time to intercept the convoy before it reached the Pakistani border. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. As the special operations helicopters approached the convoy from the north and west, air force jets dropped two bombs, halting the vehicles and killing several people instantly. The prominent mountain range often served as the last geographic refuge for retreating forces entering Pakistan. The mission was code-named Objective Bull.Īfghanistan’s Paktia province is about the size of New Hampshire, with 10,000-foot ridgelines and arid valleys with dried riverbeds below, nestled along the border with Pakistan’s tribal areas. The vehicles were headed east toward the Pakistani border, as if they were trying to escape. This was a crucial moment: kill bin Laden now and the war could be over after only six months. Although the video had revealed no weapons and the generals had only tenuous intelligence that the convoy was al Qaeda – just suspicions based on the colour of the man’s flowing white garb and the deference others showed him – they were nervous that bin Laden might get away again, as he had a few months earlier after the bombing of the Tora Bora mountains in December 2001. Vic Hyder and more than two dozen operators from SEAL Team 6 boarded two Chinook helicopters en route to eastern Afghanistan hoping that within hours, they would kill or capture Osama bin Laden.Įarlier that evening, general officers from the Joint Special Operations Command had scrambled the SEALs after watching a Predator drone video feed of a man they suspected was bin Laden set off in a convoy of three or four vehicles in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, where al Qaeda forces had fortified themselves. Chapter 1 reprinted with permission from The Intercept.

Navy seal commiting war crimes