http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/20/politics/joe-biden-osama-bin-laden-raid/
Washington (CNN)
Vice President Joe Biden offered an account Tuesday of the decision to launch the raid that killed Osama bin Laden that differed from some of his previous retellings -- and from Hillary Clinton's.
His remarks come as he considers facing off against the former secretary of state in the 2016 presidential race, and they seem to signal that he sees his earlier stance on the raid as a potential liability.
At an event honoring former Vice President Walter Mondale, Biden said he had privately advised the President to pursue the raid on bin Laden's compound after initially advising a more cautious approach at a Cabinet meeting.
"We walked out of the room and walked upstairs," Biden said. "I told him my opinion: I thought he should go, but to follow his own instincts."
The new account is a significant departure from what he said at a Democratic retreat in January 2012.
"Mr. President, my suggestion is, 'Don't go,'" Biden said, according to an ABC News report from that time.
"'We have to do two more things to see if he's there,'" Biden recalled, though the story did not include what those two things were.
The Cabinet meeting Biden referred to has been described by several people in the administration, including President Barack Obama himself.
The President asked his closest advisers for input on how he should respond to intelligence that bin Laden was holed up in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan -- intelligence that was anything but certain.
The proposed raid by Navy SEALS was risky, particularly without notifying Pakistan of the plan.
"Those decisions are not always popular. Those decisions generally are not poll-tested," Obama told moderator Bob Schieffer in a 2012 presidential debate. "And even some in my own party, including my current vice president, had the same critique" about the risk of the operation as did some outsiders.
Clinton has also characterized Biden has having been openly skeptical in the meeting.
Tuesday's account is also a change from an account Biden gave on NBC's "Meet the Press" in May 2012, in which he described advising the President to follow his instincts but didn't explicitly advise him to "go" for it.
...Biden WHAT are you doing today?
First you have to say "I actually like Dick Cheney, for real ... I think hes a decent man." and "I don't consider Republicans enemies, they're friends."
And now this. Contradicting your own previous accounts, and seemingly even President Obama's previous account.