How Joe Biden and his team decided to kill the world's most wanted terrorist
CNN
Before he gave the order to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, President Joe Biden wanted to intimately understand where the al Qaeda leader was hiding.
The US drone strike that killed Zawahiri on his balcony in downtown Kabul was the product of months of highly secret planning by Biden and a tight circle of his senior advisers. Among the preparations was a small-scale model of Zawahiri's safe house, constructed by intelligence officials and placed inside the White House Situation Room for Biden to examine as he debated his options.
For Biden, the opportunity to take out the world's most wanted terrorist, one of the masterminds of the September, 11, 2001, attacks, was fraught with the risk of accidentally killing civilians in the Afghan capital — just as a US drone strike did 11 months ago during the chaotic US military withdrawal from the country.
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