pictures of the shuttle. and we will go to cnn presents, "inside the mission: getting bin laden" as you look at these live pictures. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com his was no ordinary fugitive and this was no ordinary hunt. >> there's only one way to find him, through the couriers. >> reporter: following the trail would take years. >> not brick by brick but pebble by pebble. >> the decision was risky. >> one of his aides started to repeat again, we have option a and b and he interrupted and said, we're going in. >> reporter: the chance of

failure, high. >> would rather die than be captured. >> at the end of the day it was a leap of faith. >> reporter: friday, april 29th, just after 8:20 a.m., the mission begins. the president gives the go. >> the president, after a long night's sleep, he basically came in and immediately told his staff you have the green light. let's go. >> reporter: as president obama departs for the tornado-ravaged south, the u.s. military's best-kept secret is underway. >> the troops were ready and in place. the equipment was ready to go. the plan had been practiced again and again and again. >> reporter: america's most-wanted man may finally be

in reach, osama bin laden. the architect of 9/11 had eluded the world's most powerful nation for more than a decade. >> the trail was quite cold. >> reporter: former cia director michael hayden recalls the early misfires. >> most of what we had looked many more like elvis sightings rather than substantive intelligence. >> u.s. intelligence zeroed in on this compound. >> an unusual compound. unusual in security, unnushl the size and frankly unusual in its location. >> reporter: it's location, just over a mile from pakistan's premier military academy, north of islamabad. the compound was discovered after tracking down bin laden's trusted courier. >> one of my sources said to me, you know, one of the reason ares it was so interesting to us is we knew bin laden was in the construction business, and this was well constructed.

>> reporter: more clues begin to emerge from behind the 18-foot high walls. >> what they began to notice is the occupants burned their trash. they couldn't determine there was any internet access or telephone in this compound. >> there was a lack of things they did that was interesting. for a family that lived there for several years who never went to the movies or grocery shopping. >> reporter: to build a better case, cia director leon panetta looks for any guarantee bin laden is inside. >> problem was, we were never really certain whether or not bin laden was there. we noticed an sprij who was pacing in the courtyard had some of the appearances of it but we were never able to verify that, in fact, it was him. >> this was a circumstantial case. and i've heard a lot of percentages thrown around. some say 50/50. some say 60/40, whatever. certainly not 100% clear

identification of osama bin laden. >> reporter: there's no smoking gun. no photograph of bin laden, just a tall shadowy figure in a come nund arises suspicion. still the goods are good enough for panetta to make a case to the president. >> i think the argument was, this is the best chance we've ever had. the odds have never been higher and if we don't take this opportunity the odds may never be this good again. >> reporter: panetta tapped special operations commander vice admiral william mccrave on then to action an action plan. three options are put on the table. >> one was go in and bomb it, obliterate it. the problem with that is you probably wouldn't have a body left an you couldn't show evidence that osama bin laden was really there. the next option was to send in an unmanned drone with a

missile, a predator. >> reporter: both scenarios are ruled out for fear of collateral damage. leaving the riskiest game plan of all, a commando style assault. >> everything could have gone wrong but the reward was that if it worked they would come out with a body. they'd come out with the dna analysis. >> reporter: president obama shared what weighed on his mind a cbs interview on "60 minutes." >> these guys are going in the darkest of night and they don't know what they will find there. they don't know if the building is rigged. they don't know if there are explosives that are triggered by a particular door opening. so huge risks that these guys are taking. and, so, my number one concern was, if i send them in, can i get them out? >> reporter: those men, willing

to risk everything. navy s.e.a.l.s, known as team 6, a covert commando force hu-ya! >> made up of the military's best like former navy s.e.a.l. howard watts son. >> it is like being part of an elite football team that made it to the super bowl. >> reporter: his super bowl came in 19939 during a raid against a somali war lord, shot three times he nearly lost his right leg. >> i started to think then, i'm really not going to make it out of here. this is it. i'm going to die today. >> reporter: the battle better known as blackhawk down left 18 americans dead and scores wounded. a failure wattson says because the security of the mission was compromised. >> we were in there with the united nations and these guys did not know how to keep

operational security. >> reporter: painful memories of blackhawk down would trouble the president and his advisers. the decision is made to keep pakistan in the dark. >> to not tip them off in order to maintain the secrecy shows, number one, there's not a lot of trust between the u.s. and pakistan right now but number two, it showed this was an even bigger gamble. >> reporter: that april morning in alabama, surround by the wreckage of mother nature, president obama hides any sign of worry. >> he really kept a pretty good game face on to not let the public on at all that there was something cooking behind the scene. >> reporter: a high-risk plan is in motion but the ghost of tora bora will haunt the mission to get bin laden. are energy securiy and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create

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like every single american airlines flight. orbitz doesn't have them. but you'll find all 3,400 of them at aa.com. every day. it was ten years ago that osama bin laden became america's worst enemy. >> there's an old poster out west that said, wanted dead or

alive. >> reporter: bin laden's base of operations is afghanistan. here, the fundamentalist taliban regime provides sanctuary. so, immediately after september 11th, small, u.s. commando teams began to work with local war lords who opposed the taliban to get bin laden. cia officer gary burnson is on the ground, helping to lead the mission. >> keep pushing people forward. keep taking ground and keep working with northern alliance or other tribal units to seizer to toir and to kill the enemy. >> reporter: concern that a large deployment of american troops would provoke a backlash, the americans are, in effect, out sourceing the hunt for bin

laden. using cases of cash. >> we paid the enemy off to get them to surrender at times. we used cash as an ally tool. it was quite effective. >> reporter: within weeks, afghanistan is falling. bin laden is on the run. east to the mountains, nestled among the 14,000-foot peaks, a complex of save r caves known as tora bora. >> it was an excellent place to hide because bin laden would spend many years living in and around the region. he had a house with a small rudiment tri swimming pool, a bakery, a whole setup there and a little mini jihadist king

dochl it was his country retreat. >> six years later, a journalist interviewed bin laden here, in a cave, turned in to a command center. >> he told me that he feels safe in this cave. he knows that area very well and he knows it is very difficult for anybody to come and follow him there. >> reporter: but now bin bib la is being followed. >> we paid a number of afghans. >> the journalists gather thoend mountainside there. >> reporter: tim lister was part of the cnn team covering the war. >> we outnumbered the u.s. personnel on the ground. >> reporter: the americans call for air strikes and they come with thundering force.

>> we brought in specter gunships that can put a bullet on every inch of a football field. >> the amount of ordinance that was dropped in the area over two weeks almost defies belief. the mountains were rearranged. >> reporter: the radio stripped from a dead al qaeda fighter, the americans hear bill bin laden trying to rally his men. >> we listen to him apologizing for having led them to this trap and where they were having air strikes called on them relentlessly. >> reporter: with bin laden in the cross hairs, burnson wants u.s. ground forces sent in to finish the job. >> in the first two or three days of december i would write a message back to washington, recommending the insertion of u.s. forces on the ground. i was looking for 600 to 800 rangers, roughly a battalion.

they never came. >> reporter: instead, the u.s. relies on its hired guns. >> it was not a professional military source by any stretch of the imagination, some took bribes to look the other way. >> reporter: out sourcing fails and bin latden vanished to the mountains. >> bin lad an 180 escape. >> the moral of the story is to capture someone as resourceful as bin laden who has so many local contacts and friends you have to do the job yourself. >> reporter: though he has disappeared, his threats continue. >> the fact he communicated through video and audiotapes, i don't think that is a sign of weakness. he had a choice which was to say

nothing and be relevant or to continue to say things publicly and stay relevant and he chose the latter. so his message continued to resonate, even when he was on the run. >> reporter: with a $25 million bounty on his head, bin laden is now the most wanted man on the planet. ttd# 1-800-345-2550 ttd# 1-800-345-2550 ttd# 1-800-345-2550 and talk to chuck about ttd# 1-800-345-2550 rolling over that old 401k.

>> in the years after tora bora, bin laden seems to have vanished, appearing only in video messages that mysteriously materialize, but leave no trace of his whereabouts. general michael hayden headed up the cia at the time. >> for most of my time in office, i would even publicly say the trail was quite cold. we didn't have a lot of evidence in which we had much confidence. >> reporter: tough interrogations of al qaeda detainees, some at secret prisons, begin to provide the clues that will lead to a compound in pakistan, the mansion hideout of osama bin laden. >> we began to focus, drill down on the courier network as

perhaps a way to chase after bin laden. we knew he was communicating. but we were convinced he could not be possibly be communicating electronically. otherwise we would have picked that up. so it had to be human to human contact, hence a courier system. >> among the people who detained soon after tora bora was abu ahmed al kuwaiti . he was not admitted to the united states. according to this interrogation log obtained by "time" magazine the would be 9/11 hijacker does not give up information easily to investigators at guantanamo bay. so they subject him to standing nude and to having pictures of scantily clad women hung around his neck. according to this fbi letter, they also make him endure months of intense isolation in a cell, always flooded with light.

at some point, he starts talking. >> as far as we can tell, from look at the detainee assessments that were published by wikileaks, he mentioned quite a lot of names and one of those he mentioned was this gentleman, abu ahmed al kuwaiti who, it turns out was a courier. >> reporter: a courier who had been with osama bin laden at tora bora. a tantalizing tidbit, but is it the one nugget out of thousands that's worth pursuing? >> you could sense the trail getting warmer. >> reporter: hayden credits the enhanced interrogation techniques or eits. >> we actually found out the eits were productive. look, honest men can differ as to whether or not they want their country doing them. i understand that. that's an honorable position, but a lot of folks like to make the argument, i don't want you doing it and it didn't work. i have not met anyone who's

actually been involved in this program who would say this didn't work. >> reporter: amid much controversy, water boarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were banned by president obama shortly after he took office. but the story of the trail that led to bin laden has reopened the debate. steven kleinman is an experienced military interrogator. >> i have spent 27 years now, all in human intelligence related activities. most on active duty in the air force and the remander in the air force reserve. to get information on a consistent reliable basis, coercion is not the way to go. >> given how much we learned from detainees in the first three or four years after 9/11 it is hard to conceive of an operation like the one that happened a couple of weeks ago taking place without relying on information that we got from this program. >> i have a number of colleagues

from the fbi and the military who had more direct access to what was going on with those interrogations than i who suggest that coercion was not involved. >> reporter: whatever techniques the interrogators are using, they are finally taking the first steps along the path that will take them to osama bin laden's front door. >> what they had was not the courier's name, but a nickname. and it took them a couple more years to try and figure out who this courier was, whether or not the courier was important or not important. one of the interesting things here is that they went to khalid shaikh mohammed and al libby, ka leeld shake mohammad had been water boarded

183 times. >> they asked him what he knows about the courier. >> and khalid shaikh mohammed was completely dismissive, completely dismissive of who this person wud was and said, not important. and it was the lie, as my source said, that was alerting. the lie of khalid shaikh mohammed the lie of al libby, those two men lying about this courier made them understand that, in fact, the courier was actually important because they knew from other sources that the courier had been a protege of ksm. and he made it believe he didn't know who it was. so bingo, right? so then they had to go about finding him. >> reporter: investigators established the courier's name and begin to monitor his family's phone calls and e-mails. >> once they have established

one cell phone call, then it was a question of making inquiries at the ground level, listening for any further calls. they were beginning to close in on him at this stage. what we believe happened is that abu ahmed al kuwaiti was tracked to a particular vehicle and once they found that vehicle, perhaps, in the environment, there was a question of waiting to see where he went. >> last august, august of 2010, they finally had the courier lead them to the compound. and my source said to me, one of my sources said to me, when we got a picture of that compound, we said, wow. this is different. >> reporter: despite constant surveillance, there's never 100% certainty that osama bin laden is inside. but back in the united states, an elite force has begun to trade for a top-secret mission,

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i'm don lemon. here's the headlines this hour. new video in to cnn this hour. two gates were open doubling the amount of water pouring in to the basin. it is too late for some

residents in saint francisville. the water was so much higher than anyone had seen before. a man in charge of hundreds of billions of the world's money is sitting in a new york city jail cell on attempted rape charges. dominique strauss-kahn is accused of sexually assaulting a maid at a luxury hotel where he was staying near times square. dominique strauss-kahn is the head of the international monetary fund, an organization that oversees the world economy. his attorneys say he will plead not guilty when he is arraigned this evening. those are the headlines this hour. we return now to "inside the mission: getting bin laden." >> osama bin laden has survived attack, eluded detection, and hidden away for ten years.

but finally, u.s. intelligence believes they've found him. now, it will take an ambitious plan to get bin laden. it will take some of the best of the american military. it will take the navy s.e.a.l.s. >> they are very highly trained. they do a lot of very tough jobs around the world. these are the commandos. these are the ones that were going to kick down the door, take osama bin laden, dead or alive, and get the job done. >> reporter: for an elite unit, a special kind of sailor. >> the heart and soul of the navy s.e.a.l. is somebody who is committed to their country and their teammates. >> i think it is somebody who want tobs part of the best. i want to really do something special and that is the s.e.a.l. motto, you want to be special,

prove it. >> reporter: proving it means, surviving a training program so long, and so tough that most don't make it. they call it -- >> basic underwater s.e.a.l. school. it all starts there. my class started around 126 or 130 and graduated 22 to 25. >> hu-ya! >> every day begins with physical training, miles of swimming, running, hundreds of situps, pushups, all before the day's real work begins. even more important, than preparing the body is preparing the mind. case and point, an exercise called drown proofing. >> candidates hands are tied behind their back and feet in

the water and you better remain calm. control your breathing and heart rate. they tell you day one at buds, mental toughness, not physical toughness. what is between the ears that keeps the body going. >> reporter: then comes hell week. six days, little sleep. submerged in frigid water, or running hundreds of miles. >> the important thing to remember about that 200 miles, you are running that 200 miles with a boat on your head. you have to paddle out in those boats, dump the boats over and right them. paddle back in, tons of paddling, tons of swimming. >> reporter: even the toughest are pushed to their limit. >> i always get asked did you ever think of quitting. i've never spoke to anyone the teams that said at one point they didn't think of it. the difference is, just like going to battle, controlling

your fear, i you don't quit. >> reporter: for months after hell week the training continues until these sailors become navy s.e.a.l.s. >> that sequence of developing confidence is part of s.e.a.l. training. >> reporter: ryan was a s.e.a.l. team commander. >> that's why at the end, they are tough guys. when they go toe-to-toe against somebody there's an absolute belief they will win. failure isn't an option and guys will not give up, ever, ever. >> reporter: that's why when the target is osama bin laden, the president turns to the navy s.e.a.l.s and a special unit, s.e.a.l. team 6. wadsson and zinki were both members. >> s.e.a.l. team 6 is a different unit than the rest of the s.e.a.l. teams and as much as they concentrate primarily on one thing, counterterrorism, hostage rescue. >> it is the nation's 911, our

nation's best, that is trained and equipped, superbly led to do the missions that are strategic importance worldwide. that's a big responsibility. >> reporter: how do you prepare to go get bin laden? practice. >> perpetwul chaining all the time. america should be proud of these guys. when they get up in the morning they start training and they never quit training because the training is forever. >> reporter: for this mission, an extraordinary step, training on an actual model of the compound. navy s.e.a.l.s hope for the best but prepare for the worst. . >> they what if it to death. it is called the murder board. you take things and you basically had so many contingencies, so many what ifs that you kill the plan.

>> reporter: there's plenty in this operation that could go wrong. >> they haven't been to osama bin laden's compound. they had no idea what they would find. would there be booby traps? how would they get through the compound walls? how would they kick down the doors? how would they even find osama bin laden in this compound? >> reporter: the training complete, the plan prepared. finally it's go time! >> for every s.e.a.l. on the ground there was 50 to 100 to 200 people that were supporting the mission in some capacity. and you are afternooned. you board the helicopter, your adrenaline is rushing and also the sequence of events. you have rehearsed it. it is not your first rodeo. >> reporter: for s.e.a.l. team 6 total focus. howard wadson remembers. >> i would say a prayer for me

and my teammates and the next thing in my mind is paying attention to right now. double checking everything, have i gone over this in my mind enough and then going out, taking my place on that bird and going systemically through that same mental checklist until the job is over. >> reporter: on their minds, the mission, but on their shoulders a president's legacy. and a nation's grief. st: does ? sfx: buck's blustery exhale. host: could switching to geico 15% or more on car insurance? host: does it take two to tango? ♪

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[ applause ] >> the president of the united states. [ applause ] >> saturday, april 30th, 2011. >> it's wonderful to be here at the white house correspondents dinner. just in case there are any lingering questions, tonight, for the first time, i'm releasing my official birth video. [ laughter ] >> reporter: but behind the laughter, it is a defining

moment for obama's presidency. >> little did we know what he knew, which was that we were just a few hours away from killing osama bin laden. >> reporter: just hours earlier, the president made a final phone call to vice admiral mcraven. >> it was dramatic because the president basically said god speed. we've given all we can to get the job done. now it's up to you and your men. >> reporter: 7,000 miles away, at a u.s. military base in afghanistan, a handful of america's elite commandos are gearing up for the most important mission of their lives -- capturing or killing osama bin laden. under the cover of darkness, in the early-morning hours of monday, may 2nd, two u.s.

military blackhawks with 25 navy s.e.a.l.s descend on the compound, believed to be hiding the world's most wanted terrorist. >> you have endorphins released. you have adrenaline being released. if you control the fear you fight. >> reporter: an intense mission with no room for error. but as the s.e.a.l.s close in on theirer target. >> something went wrong. one of the helicopters lost lift and crashed. the whole plan had been they would rope down from helicopters hovering overhead. it doesn't work anymore. the s.e.a.l.s on that helicopter had to get out and assault the compound from the ground. >> reporter: now the second chopper shifts gears and lands outside of the compound. the s.e.a.l.s have to breach the outer wall. >> i'm sure that the folks monitoring the operation had their hearts in their throats when that happened. >> reporter: president obama and hi his national security team are following the mission in

realtime from the white house situation room. for 25 anxious minutes, there are no updates from the ground. the president and his staff w t wait. >> the minutes passed like days. but it was clearly very tense. a lot of people holding their breath and a fair degree of silence as it progressed. >> reporter: from the ground, the teams approached the buildings, ready for battle. former s.e.a.l. howard wssdin knows what it is like. >> the heart will be quicker, breathe fathser. >> they encounter enemy fire and kill a man who turns out to be the courier, abu ahmed al kuwaiti . the s.e.a.l.s move through the main house. >> you come through the door and don't know what's on the other side. you don't know what they are holding, if they are good guys, bad guys, how the room is set up. >> these navy s.e.a.l.s didn't

know whether there was going to be some sort of booby trap, whether or not there would be suicide vests, whether or not they would walk in essentially to a killing field. >> reporter: inside the house, they confront and kill the courier's wife and brother and one of bin laden's sons. and then they climb to the third floor, where they come face-to-face with the target they came for. >> bin laden knows they are coming, sticks his head out in the hallway. there's a first shot. it misses. that would be a very tough shot to take. remember, it's night time. it is night vision goggles the s.e.a.l.s are wearing. things are loud and confused but then bin laden goes back in the room by all accounts. within seconds the s.e.a.l.s kick down the door. >> bin laden's wife rush ares them and they shoot her in the leg. then they go for bin laden. >> first shot is to his chest,

he moves back from the impact and they shoot him very quickly above the left eye in the forehead. this is the classic double tap. two rapid nearly simultaneous shots. the target is dead. he falls to the floor. >> reporter: in the situation room, the president's team is still holding their breath. >> nobody knows what's going on until admiral mcraven is able to report back to washington that they have gotten him. that they have bin laden and he's dead. >> reporter: but it's not over yet. >> nobody takes an easy breath until the helicopters are back, everybody's back home and everyone is accounted for. >> reporter: at the compound, the s.e.a.l.s move quickly out of the house, taking with them a tretz yo-- a treasure trove of data and bin laden's body. they destroy a helicopter top

disable its cutting edge technology. 30 minutes lair the s.e.a.l.s are gone before pakistani fighter jets can scramble to reach them. >> i have never been on an op that went that smoothly or heard of an op that went that smoothly. nobody was injured or killed and they achieved all of their objectives. >> the risks are unimaginable. everything could have gone wrong but the reward was that if it worked they would come out with a body, they'd come out with the intelligence on the ground that they gathered up, the computers, the dvds, the thumb drives, all the things that would have been destroyed in a bombing or missile attack and show the world. >> reporter: bin laden's body is flown to the uss karl vincent. following islamic tradition, within 12 hours the body is washed, wrapped in a white cloth and buried at sea. at 11:35 p.m. eastern time on sunday night, president obama speaks to the nation, delivering the news americans have waited a

decade to hear. >> tonight, i can report to the american people and to the world this that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda. >> reporter: a risky decision, a daring mission and soon the world would see bin laden as they never seen him before. uilds network all across america. we're adding new cell sites... increasing network capacity, and investing billions of dollars to improve your wireless network experience. from a single phone call to the most advanced data download, we're covering more people in more places than ever before in an effort to give you the best network possible. at&t. rethink possible.

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[ cheers and applause ] >> reporter: ground zero, may 2, 2011. >> we got him! >> usa! usa! ♪ god bless america >> reporter: almost a decade earlier, the site of unspeakable tragedy. now, a place of celebration. osama bin laden is dead. it is a scene that plays out in cities across the u.s. and around the world. >> you can understand that people are ready to celebrate that he's gone. it's what they have been waiting for ten years. >> it's a completely different feel. >> reporter: cnn's nic robertson is one of the first reporters to arrive in abbottabad.

>> there was a lot of surprise. they knew about the helicopters coming in. they'd heard the helicopters and they'd seen the flames, heard the explosions, heard the gunfire. gone to their roofs to look at what was happening. but it was all sort of too unreal for them, if you will, that this most wanted terrorist was living right under their noses. >> the road goes long and straight toward the mountains -- >> reporter: on the streets of this town, 70 miles from the capitol, the mystery of where the world's most wanted terrorist was hiding out begins to unfold. >> it was up there on the second and third floor where bin laden was killed. two shots -- one to the head, one to the chest. it's becoming already a tourist attraction in and of ifgts. look at the people gathered here now. >> reporter: this small resort town is a far cry from the remote mountains or primitive caves that many imagined as bin laden's hideout. >> he couldn't have been hiding in any more plain sight than

this. around three sides of the compound, a farmer's field. cabbage here, potatoes there, marijuana plants right up to the side of the compound in plain sight. the farmers were working the fields and he was just over the wall. >> and this is a very beautiful area. >> reporter: a former pakistani government official lived there in the '80s, before bin laden arrived. >> so people come there for tourism also. i have very good memories of the area, but i do remember that as soon as you start going close to the military academy, it's like pakistan's west point. then there are check posts and the surrounding area is also, if not cordoned off, at least watched very carefully. >> reporter: the location was likely a strategic move by osama bin laden. >> one pakistani said to me, there's darkness in the shadow next to the candle. what he means is, that if you're

next to a military base and you're hiding there, that's the last place people are going to look for you. in that way it seems that bin laden was smart, choosing this city because it wasn't associated with terrorist activity. >> he knew that the area closer to any military installation will at least be saved from the cia drone attacks. >> reporter: at the compound, there's evidence bin laden was not expecting trouble. >> i was surprised at the lack of intensity of gun battle. i think it tells us that bin laden had grown safe. that's why we didn't see the signs of a mass struggle. that's why navy s.e.a.l.s were able to take down the courier, the courier's brother, bin laden's son and get to him in the room without huge signs of a struggle. without having to blast their way through walls to get to bin laden, sort of in a super secure room. >> he was living with his wives, maybe two or three, seven or

eight children. this is not a sign of someone who's hiding and running away and really scared. this is someone who's having a comfortable life. >> reporter: suggesting bin laden had help in pakistan -- a point not lost on president obama as he told cbs's "60 minutes." >> we think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin laden inside of pakistan. but we don't know who or what that support network was. >> reporter: the pakistani government vehemently denies any role. >> allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd. we emphatically reject such accusations. >> reporter: the white house and the world may find answers in the mother lode the navy s.e.a.l.s carried with them from the compound. ten hard drives, five computers, more than a hundred storage devices, even bin laden's diary.

we already know there are details of a possible attack on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 as well as plans to strike washington, new york, chicago and los angeles. >> i think this is as significant as the death of bin laden, what's found with him. it's really a treasure trove. sdpt fact the president made the digs to go in and not bomb the place which means we'll have a rich amount of data coming out of there which will make people safer and give us a better sense of what was happening internally with al qaeda. >> reporter: released already -- this video. >> one of him watching tv looking like this old guy monitoring his own image. kind of a very unheroic look. a great piece of american propaganda to put that out there to undercut bin laden's heroic image. >> reporter: an old man reliving his early fame, perhaps afraid he had become irrelevant. >> i think bin laden must have

been looking at the advance of the arabs in the middle east with a mixture of glee and despair. glee because this is what he wanted -- the overthrow of the regime. authoritarian regimes. despair because it had nothing to do with him. what's striking, there's not a single protester in cairo, benghazi or libya carrying a picture of bin laden. the arab spring shows their ideologies are irrelevant and bin laden's death shows their leader is now dead. >> reporter: will bin laden's number two, ayman al zawahiri step into his shoes? few al qaeda observers think he's capable of it. >> if al zawarihiri took over, that's a good for the united states and the civilized world. he would probably drive what remains of the group into the ground. >> reporter: bin laden's message of jihad and hate may outlive him and continue to fan the embers of al qaeda. but the long hunt for n