White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Feb. 2 that the raid was planned last November -- under the Obama administration -- and that the goal of the mission was to get information.

But neither is true, NPR's Tom Bowman reports.

Rather, the specific place of this eventual raid was identified in November as one to focus on. (Other potential places were also identified.)

"The goal of the raid was intelligence-gathering," Spicer said Tuesday, "and that's what we received, and that's what we got. That's why we can deem it a success."

But the U.S. would not send in SEAL Team Six, the premiere anti-terrorist commandos, to pick up some cellphones and computers, a U.S. official told Bowman.

Part of the effort was to get top al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, leaders. While more than a dozen militants were killed, a top target, Qassim al-Rimi, either slipped away or was not at the location.

Rimi is the leader of AQAP, seen as a top recruiter and the third-most-dangerous terrorist in the world. Bowman confirmed that Rimi was "one of the objectives," along with disrupting planning and plotting, in addition to collecting material.

What's more, a U.S. official expressed concern that Trump made the decision over dinner. This should have been decided with rigorous debate in the Situation Room, the official said.

Many remember the iconic photo released by the White House of former President Obama surrounded by advisers during the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. The concern with the Yemen raid is the impression that this decision was made too cavalierly.