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Vice President Joe Biden (Evan Vucci, AP)
Vice President Biden has revised his account of his advice to President Obama on the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
While Biden reiterated that he suggested in front of Cabinet officials<span style="color: Red;">*</span>that Obama wait, on Tuesday Biden added another element to the story: Privately, he told Obama to move forward.
“As we walked out of the room and walked upstairs, I told him my opinion, that I thought he should go but follow his own instincts,” Biden said during remarks at the “Walter Mondale: Living Legacy” forum.
The comment followed an account by Mondale of how he would only disagree with President Jimmy Carter in private during his tenure as vice president. Biden agreed and said that advice from Mondale came in “extremely handy” during the decision process leading to the May 2011 raid by U.S. Navy SEALS on bin Laden’s compound.
Biden said he was part of a small group that knew as early as August 2010 that bin Laden may be hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan. When Obama asked Cabinet officials for their advice, only two were definitive. Then-CIA Director Leon Panetta said to go ahead with the raid, while then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates advised against it, Biden said.
“Others were 59-41,” he said. “Some ended up saying ‘go,’ but it was such a close call.’”
Biden repeated his previous statement that he advised during that meeting against immediate action and added that he said, “I think we should make one more pass” with a drone to ensure bin Laden was there.
But this time, Biden said he actually didn’t want to take a public position that ran afoul of the president’s wishes.
“It would have been a mistake,” Biden said. “Imagine if I had said in front of everyone, ‘don’t go, or go’ and his decision was a different decision. It undercuts that relationship. I never on a difficult issue, never say what I think, finally, until I go up in the Oval with him alone.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he was not in the Situation Room at the time and couldn’t shed any additional light on what advice Biden gave.
<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“There have already been books that have been written about this. I’m confident there will be more,” Earnest said. “I will leave the dissection and the oral history of those days to those who were actually there.”
After the forum, former White House chief of staff Bill Daley backed up Biden’s account, telling reporters in the audience, “I was in the room and I saw him walk out with the president.”
“His explanation of that is absolutely on point,” Daley said, according to a tweet from Paul Kane of The Washington Post.
In January 2012, Biden told Democratic members of Congress during a retreat that his advice was “don’t go” and “We have to do two more things to see if he’s there.” He then<span style="color: Red;">*</span>ended the story there, citing the situation as an example of Obama’s strength as a leader.
Later, Biden referenced his private conversation with Obama during a May 2012 interview on Meet the Press, saying<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“I knew he was going to go.”
“He looked at me again, and I said ‘Follow your instincts, Mr. President,'” Biden said.
Biden’s account of the Cabinet meeting, in which Panetta was the only official to green-light the raid,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>may<span style="color: Red;">*</span>conflict with the account by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was then serving as secretary of State.
In her book Hard Choices, Clinton wrote that she respected Biden’s and Gates’ concerns about the risks of a raid. She said she laid out the risks for Obama, but she concluded the raid was worth it.
“I thought we should go for it,” she wrote.
Biden, who is considering a presidential run, made other statements during the Tuesday forum that could be perceived as digs<span style="color: Red;">*</span>at Clinton, including his reference to his relationship with Republicans. During the first Democratic debate on Oct. 13, Clinton listed Republicans among the enemies she’s most proud of making.
“Whenever there’s a problem, I get sent to the Hill, which, by the way, is a useful use of my time because I really respect the members up there, and I still have a lot of Republican friends,” said Biden, who represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years before becoming vice president.
“I don’t think my chief enemy is the Republican party,” he said. “This is a matter of making things work.”
Biden also said the administration has had two “great” secretaries of state.
“But when I go, they know I am speaking for the president,” he said.
Contributing: Gregory Korte
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