More Details of the Role of McLean's Secret Neighbors in the Bin Laden Raid

An article in this week's The New Yorker magazine on the Osama bin Laden raid gives the most detailed picture to of the role that McLean's secret neighbors played in this operation and of the operation itself.

"It's a detailed account of the planning for the operation — much of the information has not been previously disclosed — and a play by play of the night the al-Qaida leader was killed," according to an NPR interview with the writer Nicholas Schmidle. The account is based on the recollections of the Navy SEAL members who participated in the raid, NPR said.

The New Yorker notes these McLean connections:

Leon Panetta: The director of the CIA until July 1, when he became the secretary of Defense. In August 2010, Panetta told President Obama that CIA analysts had reason to believe that bin Laden’s courier — and potentially bin Laden — was in the large, concrete compound in Abbottabad.

Vice-Adm. Bill McRaven: The SEAL in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command, whom Panetta contacted in late 2010, after receiving an order from the president “to begin exploring options for a military strike on the compound.”

“Brian”: A JSOC official and former Team Six deputy commander with “the all-American look of a high-school quarterback,” whom McRaven asked to put together a raid plan. In February 2011, Brian “moved into an unmarked office on the first floor of the CIA’s printing plant, in Langley,” and began work with “half a dozen JSOC officers.” They “were formally attached to the Pakistan/Afghanistan department of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, but in practice they operated on their own.”

The Daily Mail reported: "Yet despite how close it came to ending in disaster after the first Black Hawk crash-landed, insiders describe it as a straightforward raid, and one the highly-trained Navy SEALs were more than used to carrying out.

"One said: 'This wasn’t a hard op. It would be like hitting a target in McLean [the upscale Virginia suburb of Washington D.C.]'"