By Jessica Hopper, Subrata De and Tim Uehlinger
Rock Center

Originally published May 2, 2012.  An encore presentation of 'Inside the Situation Room' aired Dec. 27 at 10pm/9c on NBC.

President Barack Obama describes the killing of Osama bin Laden as the “most important single day” of his presidency and said that the decision to carry out the raid was one that he had to ultimately make alone.

“I did choose the risk,” the president said in an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams. “The reason I was willing to make that decision of sending in our SEALs to try to capture or kill bin Laden rather than to take some other options was ultimately because I had 100 percent faith in the Navy SEALs themselves.”

A year after the May 1, 2011, raid on bin Laden’s compound, Obama and several of the advisers who helped plan the operation, known as “Operation Neptune’s Spear,” spoke exclusively to NBC News, reflecting on the tense months spent planning and debating the feasibility of this daring raid. The interviews occurred before the president made an unannounced visit to Kabul on Tuesday, where he and President Hamid Karzai signed an agreement on the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

“This had to be such a close-held operation,” the president said. “There were only a handful of staff in the White House who knew about this.”

The president did not share news of the mission’s launch with his staff, or with the first lady.

“Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away,” Obama said. “We didn't know at that point whether there might be underground tunnels coming out of that compound that would allow him to escape.”

The killing of the 9/11 mastermind had been years in the making, a mission that Obama’s two predecessors had been unable accomplish. President Bill Clinton fired 75 cruise missiles trying to kill bin Laden while President George W. Bush was frustrated by the al-Qaeda leader’s ability to evade capture.

By Brian Brown, Ed Eaves, Andrew Hongo, and Jacob Pearson
Rock Center

No one is more surprised at the success of the sweeping television drama Downton Abbey than its own creator and writer, Julian Fellowes.

“You really seem to kind of ring the bell once or twice in a career if you’re lucky, and it was extraordinary,” said Fellowes of the hit, which just received three nominations for the 2013 Golden Globe awards and was nominated 16 times for the latest Emmy Awards. Produced by Carnival, a British unit of NBCUniversal, the lavish series depicts the loves, tragedies, and schemes of early 20^th century British aristocracy—both above stairs and below.

Fellowes sat down with NBC’s Mary Carillo to talk about the inspiration for the series (which, believe it or not, came from an American protagonist); Fellowes’ own ascent to British nobility—through marriage—and the attendant privileges and responsibilities; and what he sees as the great equalizer in even the most hierarchical societies: love.

“[What] I like about love in the story is, love is an aspiration that is open to anyone,” said Fellowes. He later continued, “It doesn’t matter who you are, if you fall in love with someone then you’re sort of entitled.”

Fellowes recently signed on with NBC and Universal Television for his next major project—which again centers on the lives of the uber-wealthy, though this time on this side of the pond. He’s set to write and produce The Gilded Age, which takes audiences into the lives of the millionaire tycoons of late 19^th century New York.

“This was a vivid time,” said Fellowes in a press release from NBCUniversal, “with dizzying, brilliant ascents and calamitous falls, of record-breaking ostentation and savage rivalry; a time when money was king.”

The third season of Fellowes’ Downton Abbey premieres in the U.S. on January 6^th on Masterpiece Classic on PBS.

NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his crew believed they would not make it out of Syria alive during their five days of captivity, Engel said Thursday.

"There was no doubt that these were violent people and that they could have executed us at any time," Engel told NBC News' Savannah Guthrie in an interview Thursday night on "Rock Center."

Engel, 39, and his team disappeared shortly after crossing into northwest Syria from Turkey on Dec. 13. He and his team had already been captured as his last taped report from Aleppo was appearing on "NBC Nightly News" that evening. 

Rock Center

Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," talks to Rock Center Special Correspondent Chelsea Clinton about his views regarding love, compassion, acceptance and same-sex marriage.

In this exclusive online excerpt, Warren said that he does not favor the redefinition of marriage. "If you want to use another term, use another term," he told Clinton.

When asked how he felt about civil unions, Warren said, "Civil union might be a term they could use. Yeah, fine. I'm just opposed to redefining marriage."

Click here to watch the online exclusive interview with Pastor Rick Warren discussing same-sex marriage.

Rock Center 

At the Newtown General Store in Connecticut, Pete Leone has been inundated with calls from around the country, including one from Elizabeth Glass of Annapolis, Maryland.

The mother of a student in first grade, Glass called to offer a gift of coffee to Newtown residents. Her call is part of a massive, unexpected wave of goodwill that began online last weekend with a simple idea: "Imagine if we all committed 20 acts of kindness to honor the lost children of Newtown."

NBC News National and International Correspondent Ann Curry sent the message on Twitter and Facebook. The idea, which invites everyone to carry out acts of kindness for anyone, anywhere, has evolved into a viral effort known as "26 Acts of Kindness" on Facebook and #26Acts and #20Acts on Twitter in honor of the students and faculty who died at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Are You In? Read stories from people who have joined the "26 Acts" movement

NBC News

Since Sunday, more than 167,000 messages have been shared on the social media sites. Some messages were sent from supporters in foreign countries including Australia, Russia, Finland, Austria and Afghanistan.

Nearly one million hits have been registered on an NBC News web page which shared information and stories about acts of kindness.

On Wednesday a group of women in Westchester County, New York, turned their Christmas gathering into a "26 Acts" vigil and fundraiser.

"I have three daughters and it affected our whole family. We're all grieving together," said Janice Giardina, one of the organizers.

Turning their grief into action felt like a way to break through their darkness.

"There are simple things, you don't need money to do them, but just be kind and do them," Stacy Geisinger said.

By Chelsea Clinton
Rock Center Special Correspondent

When I heard Dr. Mark Hyman remark in January 2012 that Rev. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church congregation had lost collectively more than 250,000 pounds in a year, I thought I must have heard him incorrectly. Or, I thought there must be tens of thousands of people participating to make the math work.  When I learned that, yes, there were more than 10,000 people participating, but not tens of thousands, that the average weight loss was an astonishing 20 pounds, with some people losing more than 100 pounds, and that people were keeping the weight off, I knew there was something special about what Warren had created with Dr. Hyman, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Daniel Amen. Their creation has been dubbed "The Daniel Plan."  It’s clearly not another diet fad.             

Rick Warren first came into my life when I read “The Purpose Driven Life” the year it came out – which was also the year after I graduated from college.  Given the time in my life, it’s not surprising in hindsight that some of the book’s teachings appealed to me.  That’s probably a pretty common story. There are arguably as many transitions in life as there are years.   Warren estimates that 1 in 5 Americans have read his most famous book.  Given that more than 3 out of 5 Americans are currently overweight or obese, The Daniel Plan could have an even wider reach.      

Click here for recipes and more on The Daniel Plan     

Much of the plan would be familiar to anyone who’s ever been on a diet or thought about going on one – eat lots of fruits, vegetables and lean proteins, don’t eat too much sugar or red meat and exercise.  When I asked Saddleback congregants and Daniel Plan participants whether they had previously ignored a doctor’s advice to lose weight, one answer echoed: yes.  When I asked the same group whether they signed up to The Daniel Plan because it was their minister and church asking them to get healthy, they all answered with some variation of: yes, the church was already the center of my life, it should be the center of my health too.

Rock Center

Chances are if you’ve walked by an airport newsstand, watched a movie trailer or picked up a major newspaper in the last 20 years, you’ve stepped into James Patterson’s world. It’s hard to avoid.

The 65-year-old crime and thriller author has written 106 books, sold more than 260 million copies and boasts 76 bestsellers, a Guinness World Record.  His characters and franchises have become household names- Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, The Women’s Murder Club, Private. 

“Somebody says you’re lucky if you find something you like to do and then it’s a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it,” Patterson told Harry Smith in an interview airing Thursday, Dec. 20 at 10pm/9CT on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

A glimpse inside the inner sanctum of Patterson’s office reveals shelves stacked with paper. They are manuscripts in progress with everything from screenplays to a Christmas themed Alex Cross book to his latest passion, writing children’s books.

Click here to read an excerpt of James Patterson's upcoming book, "Private Berlin."

The author is one of the most prolific of our time and has done it in a way that’s garnered criticism from his literary rivals. Patterson often works with co-authors.  By the end of this year, he will publish 13 books, most of them written with co-authors. Some critics say that Patterson is less of a writer and more of an assembly line. Patterson defended his work.

“You’ve been in my office, it ain’t a factory.  It is an artist studio.  I’m deeply involved.  I’m doing this thing seven days a week,” Patterson said. “Nobody looks at Mercedes and goes, ‘It’s an assembly line.’  They go, ‘It’s a Mercedes,’ you know? And I think the books are good reads.”

Patterson said that he usually does an initial outline of a story and a co-author will take a stab at a first draft. Then, armed with a sharpened, yellow pencil, Patterson fine tunes the draft into what he hopes is a page turner.

“People are looking for entertainment, that’s what I try to do.  I don’t consider myself to be a super serious writer, but I think I do write entertaining books,” he said.  “I think there are a limited number of things that really are consistently entertaining and I think my books are consistently entertaining so people read them a lot.” 

Of his millions of readers, 70 percent of them are women, he says. Traces of his hometown, Newburgh, N.Y., can be found in his work.  Patterson returns there to visit and has named characters after childhood friends.

By Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News
AURORA, Colo. -- Petra Anderson tried to run in the parking lot away from the movie theater, but she just felt herself falling forward.

Anderson, 22, didn't realize that she’d been shot in the head, though she knew a gunman had opened fire on the theater she was in to watch the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” on July 20. She saw the first flash from the shotgun, and later heard the shots, people running and the screams.

As she fled with the help of a friend and bystanders, who picked her up and carried her to an ambulance, one thought kept her going: She needed to stay alive to help her mom, Kim, who was in the last stages of terminal breast cancer.

“I’m thinking all these things, like OK, I hope mom is asleep because she needs to sleep. This is a terrible thing that’s happened, and she’ll find out about it, but you know, she just has to be OK so that she can go … for her treatment,” Anderson told NBC News and the network’s “Rock Center” in her first interviews after the July 20 shooting at her hometown movie theater that left 12 people dead.

Anderson, an aspiring music professor, was rushed to The Medical Center of Aurora, where a neurosurgeon determined that the path the shotgun pellet took missed the brain's many blood vessels and key sections controlling vital functions, saving her life and sparing her from severe injury.

The pellet entered the left side of her nose, broke through the front of her skull and passed through her brain before lodging in the back of her head. She also had been hit twice in the arm.

Anderson was among the dozens of moviegoers hurt in the attack, some with life-long injuries and others with minor wounds. But her case was unique, one of her doctors said just after the shooting.

By Tracy Connor, NBC News

Embattled U.N. envoy Susan Rice is dropping out of the running to be the next secretary of state after months of criticism over her Benghazi comments.

“Today, I made the decision that it was the best thing for our country, for the American people that I not continue to be considered by the president for nomination of secretary of state,” Rice told NBC’s Brian Williams.

“I didn’t want to see a confirmation process that was very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive because there are so many things we need to get done as a country and the first several months of a second term president’s agenda is really the opportunity to get the crucial things done.”

Rice noted that President Obama’s second-term agenda included “comprehensive immigration reform, balanced deficit reduction, job creation.”

She added, “And to the extent that my nomination could have delayed or distracted or deflected or maybe even some of these priorities impossible to achieve, I didn’t want that and I much prefer to keep doing what I’m doing which is a job I love at the United Nations.”

The full interview with Rice will air on tonight’s “Rock Center With Brian Williams” at 10p/9c. Excerpts will also be broadcast on Nightly News at 6:30 pm ET.

Obama said in a statement that he accepted her decision and regretted “the unfair and misleading attacks” on Rice, who was considered a front-runner to replace Hillary Clinton as the nation’s top foreign policy official.

Criticism over remarks
Rice has been under intense fire from Republicans for initially characterizing the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as a spur-of-the-moment response to a crude anti-Muslim film.