CIA chief Leon Panetta give his first interview since commanding the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. He tells TIME they feared Pakistan would undermine the operation, and tells reporter Massimo Calabresi, "It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission: They might alert the targets." Also, Panetta says a little more about data mining under way on hard drives and disks said to have been retrieved by Navy SEALs during the raid (previous BB post on that topic here):
The aftermath of the mission has been productive. The U.S. collected an "impressive amount" of material from bin Laden's compound, including computers and other electronics, Panetta says. Panetta has set up a task force to act on the fresh intelligence. Intelligence reporting suggests that one of bin Laden's wives who survived the attack has said the family had been living at the compound since 2005.
At top, the cover image of TIME's current issue. This is the fourth cover in TIME's history to feature the red "X," following Adolf Hitler (May 7, 1945), Saddam Hussein (April 21, 2003), and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (June 19, 2006).
Large size here.
