The day members of SEAL Team Six stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed the terrorist mastermind, President Barack Obama at one point left the Situation Room to play cards, according to the president’s body man at the time.
It was not clear from Reggie Love’s brief remarks last month at what point or for how long the president left the room during the day-long operation.
NBC News National Security analyst Michael Leiter, who was also in the room during the operation, said the president did leave at several points but was present during the raid itself.
In an interview with NBC News a year after the raid, Obama described the secretive assault as “the longest 40 minutes of my life.”
Love recounted the day during a public affairs forum at UCLA of the story, telling the moderator, “most people were like down in the Situation Room, but he [the president] was like, ‘I’m not, I can’t, I’m not going to be down there, I can’t watch this entire thing, just, so he, myself, Pete Souza, the White House photographer, Marvin, we played, we must have played 15 hands, 15 games of spades.”
The president and his team, including Love, spent the entire Sunday of the raid at the White House, the former body man said.
NBC News reached out to a number of White House officials regarding Love’s remarks. They declined to comment.
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