Mr. Donilon called the volume of data and intelligence confiscated during the raid the “equivalent to a small college library.” He also acknowledged that President Obama had received “divided counsel” over whether to carry out the mission — using the phrase on Fox and ABC.

“At the end of the day, we ask our president to make the decision,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

President Obama similarly addressed U.S. ties to Pakistan, saying officials “think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan.

“But we don't know who or what that support network was,” he said in remarks to be broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate.”

Mr. Donilon, in his series of appearances on the Sunday talk shows, underscored the delicate tightrope the Obama administration has been walking with Pakistan. While praising Pakistan for its role in fighting terrorism, Mr. Donilon called for an investigation into how Bin Laden had been concealed in the northwestern city of Abbottabad, just 35 miles from Islamabad, the country’s capital.

“That needs to be investigated, and the Pakistanis are investigating,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And, indeed, this has been, obviously, a very big set of questions in their country about what happened and how this came about.”

Pakistan took custody of Bin Laden’s family after the May 2 raid of his hide-out, in which the Qaeda leader and four others were killed. But the Foreign Ministry has thus far not given the C.I.A. access to the wives, according to The Associated Press.

The revelation that bin Laden had been hiding in a heavily populated area with strong military ties has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, with a growing number of officials in Washington questioning the Pakistani government’s credibility as a reliable ally against terrorism. Last week, some American officials expressed frustration with Pakistani military and intelligence officials for their refusal over the years to identify members of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, who were believed to have close ties to Bin Laden, and in particular, its S directorate, which has worked closely with militants since their fight against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.

Some in the Pakistani military, meanwhile, have criticized the breach by the United States of Pakistan’s airspace during the mission. Mr. Donilon told CNN that Washington had seen no evidence that the Pakistani government, military or intelligence community had abetted Bin Laden’s concealment.  Pakistan, he insisted, has been an important ally, noting that “more terrorists and extremists have been captured or killed in Pakistan’s soil than any other place in the world.”

But he did not rule out that the United States might proceed with another mission in Pakistan without notifying that country’s officials.

Asked on ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour” whether the United States would inform Pakistan if it decided to target Aymen al-Zawahri, the Egyptian surgeon considered the second in command in Al Qaeda, Mr. Donilon said it would depend on “the specifics of the operation.”

“This really wasn’t a matter of trusting or not trusting; it was a matter of operational security,” he said, referring to the secrecy surrounding the raid and the decision not to inform the Pakistani government.

But he called for Pakistani officials to provide the Obama administration with additional intelligence it might have gathered from the compound, while also granting access to Bin Laden’s three wives. While he declined to comment on the specifics of the raid, Mr. Donilon said that the world view was that the raid was justified.  “The messages that have come back to us from around the world, and I study this fairly closely, is that this was a just action, that in fact this was a just action against a man who had committed murder, not just in the United States but around the world.”

Mr. Donilon said  that the White House had put together a special task force to comb through the data and that it would work under Mr. Obama’s direction to pursue any leads the information yielded.

“The C.I.A. is describing it to us as the size of a small college library," he said in an interview with ABC News’ “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.” He would not say whether the data indicated any imminent threats to the United States.

Mr. Donilon said that Mr. Obama had received divided counsel ahead of the raid and had shown decisiveness under pressure.

“I wouldn’t call it dissension. I would call it a divided counsel — that people had, were in favor of, different options,” he said on ABC. He said that Mr. Obama had chaired five National Security Council meetings in six weeks before making his decision to raid the compound.