Raid on bin Laden gets Biden makeover

Vice President Joe Biden

The May 2, 2011, raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden just got a Biden-friendly makeover.

Vice President Joe Biden's altered history of advice to President Obama prior to the historic SEAL Team 6 mission coincides with reports he will enter the 2016 presidential race.

"[CIA Director] Panetta said go, [Defense Secretary] Bob Gates said don’t go. ... There was a third option, which I didn't really think we should do. I said, 'Well, I think we should make one more pass with another [drone] to see if it is [bin Laden],'" Biden said Tuesday at a Washington event honoring former Vice President Walter Mondale, Business Insider reported. "And the reason I did that is I didn't want to take a position to go, if that was not what [Obama] was going to do."

Biden then said he and Obama held a private discussion.

"So as we walked out of the room, and walked upstairs, I told him my opinion. I thought he should go, but to follow his instincts," said Biden.

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The vice president's new version of events differs from what he told lawmakers in 2012.

"Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go," Biden told Democrats at a Cambridge, Maryland, retreat, the New York Times reported Jan. 30, 2012.

Biden's remarks also differ from his potential rival for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton told CNN moderator Anderson Cooper Oct. 13 during the Democrats' first presidential debate from Las Vegas, Nevada, that she was one of a "few advisers" who gave a definitive answer on the bin Laden raid, the Hill reported Tuesday.

The former secretary of state also noted Biden's reluctance to use SEAL Team 6 that night in her 2014 book "Hard Choices."

"I respected Bob [Gates] and Joe [Biden]'s concerns about the risks of a raid, but I came to the conclusion that the intelligence was convincing and the risks were outweighed by the benefits of success. We just had to make sure it worked," Clinton wrote, CNN reported.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to get involved when pressed by reporters on Tuesday.

"I am going to leave the dissection and the oral history of those days to those who were actually there. I don't have any new insight to share with you about the president's recollection of those events," Earnest said.