The Mission to Get Bin Laden
COSTELLO: Forty-five minutes past the hour. Checking our top stories: New information about the former lab technician accused of infecting patients with hepatitis C. An Arizona hospital fired David Kwiatkowski two years ago after he tested positive for cocaine and marijuana. He is charged with infecting 30 patients at a hospital and possibly thousands more across eight states. In Money news, Ford is recalling more than 400,000 Escape crossover SUVs because of a problem with the cruise control cable. The cable can get stuck when the gas pedal is pressed almost all the way down, causing unintended acceleration. The recall affects 2001 through 2004 model Escapes with V-6 engines and cruise control. In weather news, clean up is underway in the Northeast following powerful storms blamed for at least two deaths. Elmira, New York and Brookville, Pennsylvania also reporting possible tornadoes touching down. The storm snapped trees and power lines leaving hundreds of thousands of customers from New York to Ohio without power. The mission to get Osama bin Laden is said to have been one of the greatest intelligence feats in U.S. military history. And now we're hearing from one of the men in charge. Admiral William McRaven the commander of U.S. Special Operations talked with CNN's Wolf Blitzer in his first interview since that raid. He says the overall mission involved many different agencies, all of them playing key roles to get Osama bin Laden.</s>ADM. WILLIAM MCRAVEN, COMMANDER U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Well, first, I will tell you that it was a long process to get there. And -- and our piece of it, the military piece, of kind of what I look at as kind of three components, was probably the easiest aspect of the entire raid. The two other pieces of this were the CIA's role. And I think when the history is finally written and -- and outlined and exposed on how the CIA determined that bin Laden was there, it will be one of the great intelligence operations in the history of intelligence organizations. And a tremendous amount of that credit goes to Director Leon Panetta at the time because he built the right team. He had the right people. He made some very gutsy calls. And he was not concerned about who got the credit. And so when you take a look at how he built that team, which was a military and intelligence team, tremendous amount of credit goes to the agency. And the other piece of this really is the President and his national security team. I've made it very clear to people, again -- the military piece of this, we did I think 11 other raids that evening in Afghanistan. Now, I don't want to diminish the nature of this raid. It was a little bit more sporting.</s>COSTELLO: He was a charming guy. We also learned that sometimes difficult to get all the answers we want from people who are in the military, but Wolf Blitzer gave it the old college try on just what exactly the mission was. Listen.</s>WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, "THE SITUATION ROOM": You didn't have 100 percent knowledge. The President didn't have 100 percent knowledge that bin Laden was holed up in that compound. Did you have 80 percent, 50 percent? Give me a ballpark. How -- how -- how confident were you that a tall guy was hiding out in that compound?</s>MCRAVEN: Well, again, I'm not going to address the tactical piece of that. Suffice to say we were not sure he was there. And again, that gets back to some tough decisions that were made. My job was to get him if he was there. If he wasn't there, we would know that pretty quickly, and our intent was to get up and get out.</s>BLITZER: I suspect you're not going to want to answer this question, but I'll ask it anyhow. And as the Admiral and I know, we just spent some quality time together, this is the United States of America. We can ask the questions. He doesn't have to answer them. But we can ask the questions. And I think it's an important question that, at least I have always been very, very curious about. Was the mission to capture bin Laden, or was the mission to kill bin Laden?</s>MCRAVEN: You know, it's a great question. I'm not going to answer it.</s>BLITZER: All right. But there were contingencies this guy would be brought out in a helicopter and brought somewhere?</s>MCRAVEN: Do they teach you this, to do the end around (ph) when the first question doesn't work?</s>BLITZER: Yes just trying to make sure, you know. You don't want to discuss that?</s>MCRAVEN: No.</s>COSTELLO: I'm telling you I watched the whole interview. It was unbelievable. If you want to see more, CNN.com is the place to go. And Wolf, you did a great job. And wow. Could a Swiss tennis star have a home-court advantage in the Olympics? Quite possibly, if your name is Roger Federer and you're playing at Wimbledon.