Biden now says he told Obama to ‘trust your instincts’ about Osama Bin Laden raid in backtrack from ‘don’t go’ advice
JOE Biden has backtracked about advising Barack Obama to wait on raiding Osama bin Laden's compound because he was worried about failing.
According to book, "weighed in against the raid" in May 2011, in which were sent from Afghanistan to to carry out the mission.
Obama said that his then-vice president suggested he took more time to make a decision on the "Operation Neptune" raid, telling him, "Don’t go".
But the President-elect has now appeared to recall a different version of events, referring to a private conversation with Obama where he urged him to "trust your instincts".
Speaking in 's new documentary, President in Waiting, Biden recalled how top advisers to Obama were debating whether their intelligence was strong enough to attack – as it would involve violating Pakistan’s sovereignty.
The question was whether helicopters should complete one more pass over the al-Qaeda leader's secret compound in Abbottabad, a town 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, before the Seals swooped.
He said: "When it came time to go or not go, the president went around the room. I think there were 17 people around the table ... and [he] said, 'what do you think we should do?'
"I said, ‘President, I think you should wait and pass again’ – knowing that if you make a lower pass, they might observe it and he would run away."
But later Biden claimed to have taken Obama aside.
I said to him, 'President, follow your instincts about this.'
Joe Biden, President-elect
He said: "There is a private discussion. And I said to him, President, follow your instincts about this."
Biden added: "Had this decision been wrong, had he not been there or had it failed, I doubt the 17 people around that table would've said, ‘I told him he should go.'"
have used it in attack ads against him.
Some ads claimed that Biden opposed the raid altogether, which according to both Biden and Obama, is not true.
'CONCERNS ABOUT FAILURE CONSEQUENCES'
Obama wrote in his memoir that Biden was concerned about "the enormous consequences of failure if the raid were to not be successful.
Biden said Obama "should defer any decision until the intelligence community was more certain that bin Laden was in the compound."
The raid ended up being a success, and the Navy Seal team killed bin Laden – founder of – on May 2, 2011, years after he masterminded the on the .
In his memoir, Obama wrote: "As had been true in every major decision I’d made as president.
"I appreciated Joe’s willingness to buck the prevailing mood and ask tough questions, often in the interest of giving me the space I needed for my own internal deliberations."
Obama said that "as the helicopters took off" following the successful operation, "Joe placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed."
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"‘Congratulations, boss,’" Obama said Biden told him.
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Biden has been attacked in the political world for his advice for the former president.
Earlier this year, – claimed that he didn’t tell Obama not to go for the raid to take out bin Laden.
