This morning President Obama heard the reports of Gadhafi’s death the same way we all did — from media reports coming from Libya.

By 10 a.m. ET, when the president began his daily intelligence briefing, White House officials were about 95 percent certain Gadhafi was dead, one senor official told ABC News.

Then they became even surer – “very, very confident” in his death, the official said – because of intelligence reports from reliable sources on the ground.

“There was reporting from variety of channels that all matched up,” a second White House official said.

Those reports were then complemented by intelligence officers taking the photos and videos of Gadhafi from today and matching them with pre-existing photos using “facial recognition technology” – the same technology used to confirm Osama bin Laden’s death.

That’s how the president became all but 100 percent certain Gadhafi had been killed.

“Unless we have his body or a DNA match, we’ll never be 100 percent positive,” the second White House official said.

-Jake Tapper