The Story Behind Pete Souza’s Bin Laden Raid Photograph and Hillary Clinton’s Famous Reaction
(This is the story behind the photograph, a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
For 40 minutes, Pete Souza photographed from one spot.
He was inside the White House Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. The room was so small and crowded that Souza had to quickly choose where to stand, knowing he would not be able to move once the operation began. From there, he photographed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the national security team as they followed the raid in real time.
He made around 100 photographs.
The next day, Souza helped select just one photograph from the raid to release to the public. He believed it showed the tension everyone in the room was feeling, but much of the attention soon turned to one small detail: Hillary Clinton’s hand covering her mouth. Other photographs showed men in the room making similar gestures, but those photographs remained unseen.
This is the story of how Souza made and chose the photograph that came to represent those 40 minutes.
On May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama and members of his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room. A team of U.S. special forces was carrying out a raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.
White House photographer Pete Souza knew that a special forces mission would take place that day, but he did not know its purpose until a meeting earlier that afternoon.
“I knew there was some special forces mission taking place that day in advance. I didn’t know exactly what it was. Earlier that afternoon, maybe three hours before that picture was taken, he had his first meeting in the Situation Room, which is when I learned exactly what was taking place, the specifics. And so I knew this was going to be a historic day.”
Once the helicopters crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistani airspace, Obama returned to the Situation Room. Despite its name, the Situation Room is not a single room, but a group of conference rooms inside the White House. The communications link for the raid had been set up in one of the smallest rooms.
Obama went inside to follow the operation in real time. Souza followed with his cameras.
The room was already crowded. There was little space to stand and almost no possibility of moving once everyone was inside. Souza immediately understood that he had to choose where to position himself before the room filled.
“I had to make a split-second decision on which side of the room to go on because I knew that room was so tight that once I got in, I was not going to be able to move around. It was that tight. Literally, people were touching each other’s bodies.”
He chose one side of the room and stayed there for the next 40 minutes.
People stood directly beside him. Others sat only a short distance away. Souza could change lenses, but he could not change his position. Instead of searching the room for different angles, he had to work with what was visible from the small space he had chosen.
“So I just made a gut decision and went to that side of the room. And I stayed in that position for 40 minutes, basically, as the raid took place. I used a variety of lenses, but that’s where I stayed. I tried to be as invisible as possible.”
Being invisible had been central to Souza’s work around Obama. In this room, it became especially important. Everyone was watching the operation. Souza wanted to photograph their reactions without becoming another presence they had to think about.
Years later, Hillary Clinton spoke about the photograph and said that she had not even noticed Souza was there.
“I remember her saying in one interview that she didn’t even realize I was in the room, which tells you that was good. That’s what I try to do, just be invisible.”
For all the tension inside the room, Souza photographed carefully. During the 40 minutes of the raid, he made around 100 photographs. For a professional photographer working through such an event, he did not consider that a large number.
“We were in that room for 40 minutes. I didn’t make that many pictures. I probably made maybe 100, which to the layperson sounds like a lot. But for a professional photographer, 100 pictures is not that much in 40 minutes.”
There was no immediate moment when Souza knew he had made the photograph that would become famous. The raid ended, but his working day did not. Obama continued with meetings in and around the Situation Room, and Souza continued photographing. It was almost midnight when the president announced that bin Laden had been killed.
Only the following day did Souza begin discussing whether photographs from the day should be released.
He and a photo editor selected around seven images. Just one showed the officials during the raid itself.
There was a problem.
A classified document could be seen on the table in front of Clinton. Before the photograph could be released, Souza showed it to senior officials. They agreed that the image should be made public, but the document could not remain visible. The classified area was blurred, and Souza noted the alteration in the caption.
“Everybody thought we should make that picture public, but we couldn’t do it unless we blurred out the document. So that was the one and only time we ever did something like that.”
Obama himself did not see the photograph before its release. The next day, it appeared on newspaper front pages around the world.
Attention quickly centred on one detail: Clinton’s hand covering her mouth.
Television commentators discussed the gesture, sometimes connecting it to the fact that Clinton was one of only two women in the room. Souza had not thought about it that way when choosing the photograph. Other frames from the same sequence showed Defense Secretary Robert Gates or Vice President Joe Biden making similar gestures.
For Souza, the reason for choosing this frame was simpler. Out of everything he photographed during those 40 minutes, it showed the feeling inside the room most clearly.
“I’m convinced to this day that we picked the best one. I think it’s the best picture that really shows the tension that was in that room.”
The strength of the photograph comes from several people reacting at once. Obama sits forward in his chair, his face fixed on something outside the frame. Clinton has one hand over her mouth. Around them, military officers and government officials stare in the same direction. Almost nobody seems aware of the camera.
Souza had spent 40 minutes confined to one position, unable to move through the room or search for another viewpoint. The photograph came from accepting that limitation, watching the people in front of him, and waiting for their expressions and gestures to come together.
“When you look through the pictures, it’s like, that’s the one. There’s no question that that picture, to me, showed what everybody was feeling in that room.”
The other photographs from those 40 minutes remain unavailable to the public. The National Archives later released photographs from the rest of the day following a Freedom of Information Act request from The Washington Post, but not the roughly 100 frames made inside this room. The classified document remains visible in them, and the National Archives will not alter the files by blurring it.
For now, the public knows the sequence mainly through the single frame Souza and the White House selected the following day.
Sometimes photographs of history are made like this. Souza did not know exactly where the most important moment would happen, and once he entered the room, he could not change his position. He made a quick decision about where to stand, stayed there for 40 minutes, and tried to disappear.
The decisive choice came later, when he looked back through what he had seen.
“I’m convinced to this day that we picked the best one.”
For 40 minutes, Pete Souza photographed from one spot. He was inside the White House Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Story Behind The Photograph