Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the Seal commandos went into the mission with only a 60- to 80-percent certainty that Bin Laden was in the compound. The commandos made the “split-second decision” to shoot him — the unarmed Qaeda founder had a rifle within reach, an American official said Wednesday — when they found him in his third-floor bedroom.

There was no debate among former Seal members that whoever had shot Bin Laden had done the right thing.

“It’s dark; there’s been a lot of bullets flying around, a lot of bodies dropping; your mission is to capture or kill Bin Laden; who knows what he’s got tucked in his shirt?” said Don Shipley, 49, a former Seal member who runs Extreme Seal Experience, a private training school in Chesapeake, Va.