Bin Laden’s code name was "Geronimo" - Geronimo EKIA - Operation Geronimo

Bin Laden’s code name "Geronimo" - Geronimo EKIA

The New York Times is simply indispensable on big events like this. There's plenty of essential reading on their site, including an authoritative and dramatic account of the story behind the U.S mission. It includes this vignette of the crucial moment, from the Situation Room:

The code name for Bin Laden was “Geronimo.” The president and his advisers watched Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, on a video screen, narrating from his agency’s headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan.

“They’ve reached the target,” he said.
Minutes passed.

“We have a visual on Geronimo,” he said.
A few minutes later: “Geronimo EKIA.”

Enemy Killed In Action. There was silence in the Situation Room.
Finally, the president spoke up.

“We got him.”

The only thing I would caution here is that the story will be based on briefings from the White House, whose aim is to burnish the president's image. It may well be, for instance, that in reality that moment played out like this:

A few minutes later: “Geronimo EKIA.”

Enemy Killed In Action. There was silence in the Situation Room.

Finally, the president spoke up.

“What's 'EKIA'?”

Mission Osama executed by Operation Geronimo

'Operation Geronimo' that killed Osama bin Laden was executed by a 79-member US commando team that raced into Abbottabad from a base in Jalalabad in Afghanistan on a moonless night before Pakistani authorities could sense a breach of their territory and react possibly violently.
By the time, Pakistani military was scrambling forces in response to the incursion into their territory everything was over.
"Thankfully, there was no engagement with the Pakistani forces," John Brennan, President Barack Obama's Adviser on counter-terrorism, said on the 40-minute operation in the small hours of Monday not far away from Pakistan's capital Islamabad.
On Sunday, the White House officials cancelled all public tours of the West Wing Area in the President's House so that unsuspecting terrorists wouldn't run into security officials moving in and out of the situation room, from where the run-up to the operation was being monitored. 

A little after 2 pm (local time), CIA chief Leon Panetta detailed the operation to the group headed by the President in the situation room for the last time. Within an hour, he declared: "They (the team) have crossed into Pakistan."
The aim was to get in and get out of Pakistan, across the border in Afghanistan, before their breach can be detected by Pakistani authorities.
The US Naval Seals team stormed into the million-dollar mansion where Osama was living and a fire-fight broke out with the terrorists inside.
The commandos found bin Laden on the third floor wearing salwar kameez and US officials said he put up a fight before he was shot above the left eye near the end of the operation.

Osama Bin Laden was not Geronimo

Since President Barack Obama ordered the successful nail-biting “dead or alive” "surgical strike" on the highly fortified compound of Osama Bin Laden in the affluent, 400,000 people, Pakistani neighborhood of Abbottabad, more and more information are becoming available as to exactly what when down.

One of thing that is now known is that Bin Laden's code name was Geronimo. As a matter of fact, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team were viewing a live feed or updates on the mission against Bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011, one official reportedly heard a commander on the scene in Osama's mansion say, "Geronimo E-KIA." That meant, Geronimo the code name for Bin Laden; and E-KIA which is "enemy killed in action."

Who was the real Geronimo and why the code name Geronimo?

There are no comparisons whatsoever between the real Geronimo and the most despicable terrorist of all time – Bin Laden. 

 

Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache freedom fighter who fought against the invasion of his homeland by suppressive foreigners. He was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against Mexico and the United States for their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades during the Apache Wars. The U.S government at the time had ordered the military to pursue, subdue, and return Geronimo to the U.S., dead or alive.

According to Wikipedia,

On March 6, 1858, a company of 400 Mexican soldiers from Sonora led by Colonel José María Carrasco attacked Geronimo's camp outside Janos while the men were in town trading. Among those killed were Geronimo's wife, his children, and his mother. His chief, Mangas Coloradas, sent him to Cochise's band for help in revenge against the Mexicans. It was the Mexicans who named him Geronimo. This appellation stemmed from a battle in which, ignoring a deadly hail of bullets, he repeatedly attacked Mexican soldiers with a knife, causing them to utter appeals to Saint Jerome ("Jeronimo!"). The name stuck.