Peter King’s Take

[Geee]

National Review:


‘I almost missed the call,” says Rep. Peter King of New York, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “For some reason, I had left my phone on vibrate, so I didn’t hear it. Then, about ten minutes after 10 p.m., I saw the red light blinking.”

King grabbed his BlackBerry. The first message was from Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “Leiter left me a number at the White House, but he does not work there,” he recalls. “I thought it was for some broom closet.”


Around 10:15 p.m. Sunday, King punched the number into his phone. The line rang eleven times. “Bin Laden was the farthest thing from my mind,” he says. Then he heard a voice crackle: It was the White House Situation Room.
“Pretty quickly, Leiter told me that we had killed bin Laden,” King says. “But it really didn’t hit me. I was thinking Qaddafi, or somebody coming across the border. Bin Laden was so far off my radar screen.”

“Maybe my mind is getting slower,” King chuckles. “It took me a few seconds to process the news. At any briefing that I have been to, we have been told that we do not know where he is, that he could be anywhere.”