Obama Played Cards During Bin Laden Raid? ‘We Played 15 Games Of Spades,' Former Aide Reggie Love Says [VIDEO]

Obama played cards during part of the raid in Pakistan by Navy SEALs that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, President Obama's former personal aide Reggie Love says during a forum hosted by the D.C.-based Artists & Athletes Alliance, held at the University of California Los Angeles last month.

"Most people were like down in the Situation Room and [President Obama] was like, 'I'm not going to be down there, I can't watch this entire thing,'" Love recalled of the May 2011 raid, The Daily Mail reports.

"We must have played 15 games of Spades," Love added.

Love said that he and the president were joined by White House photographer Pete Souza and Obama aide Marvin Nicholson, as they gathered in the private dining room to play a couple rounds of cards.

Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who was in the situation room that day, told NBC News that Obama was in the room during SEAL Team Six's raid, The Washington Post reports.

"He was in the room before they landed in and also in the (situation) room until after the (helicopters) were out of (Pakistan's) airspace," Leiter said. "He largely stuck around after that, although there were times he stepped out, but not for especially extended periods - except to work the speech."

Obama has previously said that he watched the raid in real time in the Situation Room with members of his national security team, The Daily Mail reports. It's not clear when he stepped away to play cards.

"This was the longest 40 minutes of my life," the president told NBC News a year after the raid, referring to the amount of time the Navy SEALs had to complete their mission after landing at the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Love left his position at the White House at the end of 2011 to complete his Master of Business Administration degree at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Love, 32, worked for Obama as a personal assistant since the president was a senator, according to The Daily Mail.

When Love was asked what he learned from his time working for the president, he said "The thing I learned the most from working with the president, I think, [is] empathy." 

Watch Love's comments here: