It turns out, Obama himself, three times according to this article:
Obama “did not know of the raid in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, until after the helicopters with SEAL Team 6 had crossed into Pakistani airspace.”
The source said Obama was notified “at the golf course … which is why he was sitting in the strange sitting position in the picture that documented the White House operations room event.”
The source told Stand Up America that Panetta “was the key player who organized and supported this daring raid.”
“He signed the ‘execute orders’ with only a few people aware: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Adm. Bill Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus.”
The source explained the White House “was closed out of the decision because the president, through Valerie Jarrett, had turned down two or three other earlier proposals.”
Panetta, Vallely’s source reported, “and his covert planning team were extremely frustrated at all the denials, so saw the opportunity slipping away, as implausible as it seems.”
The report said Panetta convinced his other principals to make the decision and received their full-fledged support but the president, according to the official, “remained clueless on the mission.”
“This tremendously serious and sensitive information was relayed by a source who has been very frustrated with the continued dishonesty within the White House,” Vallely reported.
Vallely, who served in Vietnam and retired in 1991 from the U.S. Army as deputy commanding general for the Pacific, previously has called for “We the People” to stop the nation’s “progressive socialist, treasonous death march.”
He graduated from West Point and was commissioned in the Army in 1961. He served in theaters in Europe and the Pacific Rim and saw two tours of combat duty in Vietnam.
CBS has reported that “Obama’s decision to send operatives after Osama bin Laden” was described by White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan as “one of the most gutsiest calls of any president.”
However, the Mail Online in London reported a book by Richared Miniter documented that three “kill” missions were canceled by Obama in January, February and March of 2011.
The SEAL mission was in May 2011.
Miniter reported it was Jarrett who kept urging Obama to cancel plans to get bin Laden.