Bin Laden’s Death ‘Defining Moment’ as U.S. Says Risk Remains

President Barack Obama declared the world a “better place” one day after announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, even as the U.S. and its allies were on guard against possible retaliation by al-Qaeda sympathizers.
Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, called the death of the world’s most hunted terrorist a “defining moment” in the struggle against terrorism. Still, the administration warned that al-Qaeda continues to pose a threat and the U.S. issued travel alerts for Americans abroad, while potential U.S. targets were placed on alert.
“We’re hoping to bury the rest of al-Qaeda along with bin Laden,” Brennan said at a briefing yesterday. “This does not mean that we are putting down our guard as far as al-Qaeda is concerned. It may be a mortally wounded tiger that still has some life in it, and it’s dangerous, and we need to keep up the pressure.”
Bin Laden was killed May 1 by U.S. commandos in a raid in Pakistan almost 10 years after orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in which terrorists hijacked four commercial airlines, flying two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York and one into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. The fourth plane crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after the passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. Almost 3,000 people were killed.

‘Good Day’

“I think we can all agree this is a good day for America,” Obama said yesterday. “Our country has kept its commitment to see that justice is done. The world is safer, it is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden.”
Cheering crowds gathered spontaneously outside the White House in Washington and at the World Trade Center site in New York when word of bin Laden’s death was announced. Obama plans to go to New York on May 5 to meet with families of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, an administration official said.
Obama also spoke yesterday with seven world leaders about the killing of bin Laden and the continued fight against terrorism, including U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, according to a White House statement.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.2 percent to 1,361.22 at 4 p.m. in New York, reversing an early advance. Oil for June delivery fell 41 cents to settle at $113.52 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Next In Line

With bin Laden dead, U.S. counterterrorism officials will turn their attention to potential successors, such as Ayman al- Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s’s No. 2 leader. Another possible candidate is Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been tied to several terrorist attacks, including the incident in which a Nigerian is suspected of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane in 2009.
Zawahiri, who teamed with bin Laden in the 1980s in the fight against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan, may be even more difficult to find, since he is known for blending in with the masses in Pakistan. The U.S. is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to his apprehension or conviction.
U.S. and other Western officials emphasized that the danger from terrorism hasn’t diminished -- and it may increase as extremists are prodded to action by bin Laden’s death.
“Though bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is not,” CIA director Leon Panetta, who oversaw the mission to kill bin Laden, said yesterday in a statement sent to agency employees. “The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him, and we must -- and will -- remain vigilant and resolute.”

Direct Threat

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, while calling the killing of bin Laden “a significant success,” said in a statement from alliance headquarters in Brussels that “terrorism continues to pose a direct threat to our security.”
The State Department issued an alert to U.S. citizens traveling or living abroad about potential anti-American violence as a result of the raid.
Security was heightened across the U.S. and at government installations worldwide. Protection around the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, was increased, with police and paramilitary forces taking positions and setting up check posts outside the building.
In the nation’s capital, riders on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or Metro, saw more uniformed officers yesterday. Transit police, along with other law enforcement in the area, have increased security “as a precautionary measure related to the death of bin Laden,” Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said in a recorded voice message.

Police Presence

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered increased police presence in the subway system during the morning rush hour and directed all officers to “remain alert,” said Paul Browne, a spokesman for the department.
Brennan and other administration officials yesterday drew a more complete picture of the 40-minute raid on bin Laden’s Pakistan compound by a U.S. special forces team. They described an almost 10-year hunt for bin Laden that broke when they tracked a trusted al-Qaeda courier to a compound in Abbottabad, a small city that is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the capital, Islamabad, and is home to a number of retired Pakistani military officers as well as the country’s military academy.

Planning the Raid

Once additional intelligence indicated a high likelihood that bin Laden might be at the compound, Obama and his national security team met repeatedly to plan the U.S. action.
And even though he lacked specific and definitive intelligence placing the al-Qaeda leader in the house, the president gave the final go-ahead the morning of April 29.
The president monitored the operation in real time with his advisers from the White House Situation Room on May 1. Brennan described it as an “anxiety-filled” period, where the “minutes passed like days.” Obama was told of the initial identification just after 7 p.m. Sunday night and later was shown a photograph of the scene, an administration official said.
“We got him,” Obama said, according to Brennan.
To contact the reporter on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net