Who really killed bin Laden?
March 27, 2013 -- Updated 2246 GMT (0646
HKT)
Osama bin Laden was killed by a
team of U.S. SEALS on May 2, 2011, at a compound near Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Click through to see images of the compound where he spent the last days of his
life.
The
compound where Osama bin Laden was killed is guarded by Pakistani police on May
4, 2011.
A closer
view of one of the buildings in the compound is seen on May 7, 2011.
A general
view of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is seen on May 5, 2011.
A
demolition crew works to dismantle the compound on February 26, 2012.
A
Pakistani woman fills a container with water at the site of the demolished
compound on April 25, 2012.
Shakeel
Ahmad Yusufzai, a Pakistani contractor who worked to dismantle the compound,
walks through the rubble left behind from the demolition on May 1, 2012.
Contractor Yusufzai looks at a bathtub left over from the
demolition on May 1, 2012.
Children
play cricket near the site of the demolished compound.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Peter Bergen: Member of SEAL Team 6 disputes Esquire account of bin Laden raid
- He says there are doubts about the story the "shooter" told to Esquire
- Bergen: Killing was team effort, may not have been connected to bin Laden gun in the room
Editor's note: Peter Bergen is
CNN's national security analyst, the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to
Abbottabad" and a director at the New America Foundation.
(CNN) -- In February, Esquire magazine published a lengthy profile of "The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden." The
story did not identify the killer by his real name, referring to him only as "the Shooter."
The Shooter told Esquire he
encountered al Qaeda's leader face-to-face in the top-floor bedroom of the
compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he'd been hiding for more than five
years.
The Shooter said the al Qaeda
leader was standing up and had a gun "within reach" and it was only then that
the Shooter fired two shots into bin Laden's forehead, killing him. That account
was in conflict with the narrative from another raid participant in a wildly
successful book, "No Easy Day."
Peter Bergen
Now, another member of the
secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed the bin Laden raid, tells CNN the story of
the Shooter as presented in Esquire is false. According to this serving SEAL
Team 6 operator, the story is "complete B-S."
SEAL Team 6 operators are now in
"serious lockdown" when it comes to "talking to anybody" about the bin Laden
raid and say they have been frustrated to see what they consider to be the
inaccurate story in Esquire receive considerable play without a response. Phil
Bronstein, who wrote the 15,000-word piece about the Shooter for Esquire,
was booked on CNN, Fox and many other TV networks after his story came out.
Twenty-three SEALs and their
interpreter launched the assault on the bin Laden compound just after midnight
on the morning of May 2, 2011. They shot and killed bin Laden's two bodyguards,
one of bin Laden's sons and the wife of one of the bodyguards, and wounded two
other women.
SEALs' accounts
differ
Who really killed bin
Laden?
Reported bin Laden killer
speaks out
2011: 3 of bin Laden's wives
identified
The first three SEALs to make it
to the top floor of the compound were "the point man," "the Shooter" profiled by
Esquire, and Matt
Bissonette, the SEAL who wrote "No Easy Day" under the pseudonym Mark
Owen.
What actually happened the night
of the raid, according to the SEAL Team 6 operator who I interviewed, is that
the "point man" ran up the stairs to the top floor and shot bin Laden in the
head when he saw what looked like bin Laden poking his head out of his bedroom
door. The shot gravely wounded al Qaeda's leader.
Having taken down bin Laden, the
point man proceeded to rush two women he found in the bedroom, gathering them in
his arms to absorb the explosion in case they were wearing suicide vests,
something that was a real concern of those who planned the raid.
Two more SEALs then entered bin
Laden's bedroom and, seeing that the al Qaeda leader was lying mortally wounded
on the floor, finished him off with shots to the chest.
This account of bin Laden's
demise is considerably less heroic than the Shooter's version in Esquire, in
which he says he shot bin Laden while he was standing up and only after he saw
that the al Qaeda leader had a gun within reach.
The SEAL Team 6 operator who
spoke to me says there is no way the Shooter could have seen a gun in bin
Laden's reach because the two guns that were found in the bedroom after the
shooting were only discovered after a thorough search and were sitting on a high
shelf above the frame of the door that opened to the room.
The SEAL operator also points
out there was a discussion before the raid in which the assault team was told
"don't shoot the guy (bin Laden) in the face unless you have to" because the CIA
would need to analyze good pictures of bin Laden's face for its facial
recognition experts to work effectively. Yet the Shooter in the Esquire story
says he shot bin Laden on purpose twice in the forehead.
A U.S. official familiar with
the details of the raid said the SEAL Team 6 operator's version is in line with
what happened. That account "has it right in my view," the official said.
The SEAL Team 6 operator also
tells CNN that the Shooter was "thrown off" the Red Squadron, the core of the
SEAL Team 6 group that carried out the bin Laden raid, because he was bragging
about his role in the raid in bars around Virginia Beach, Virginia, where SEAL
Team 6 is based. In the Esquire article, the Shooter complains he is receiving
no pension, since he left the military four years before the minimum 20 years
required to be eligible.
CNN spoke with Bronstein, the
Esquire writer, who says he passed on CNN's written questions about the
Shooter's role in the raid to his story's main character. The Shooter has not
responded to those questions, and Bronstein declined to be interviewed
on-the-record for this story.
Stephanie Tuck, a spokeswoman
for Esquire, said via e-mail the magazine stands by its story.
"The Esquire article, 'The
Shooter: The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden,' in the March 2013 issue, is based
on information from numerous sources, including members of SEAL Team 6 and the
Shooter himself, as well as detailed descriptions of mission debriefs."
More questions were raised about
the Esquire story's version of events Monday on SOFREP, a website that covers
the Special Operations community. The queries came from former Navy SEAL Brandon
Webb in a posting entitled, "Esquire Is Screwed: Duped By Fake UBL 'Shooter.'"
According to present and former
members of SEAL Team 6, the "point man" who fired the shot that likely mortally
wounded bin Laden will never "in a million years" speak publicly about his role
in the raid, and they lauded his courageous decision to throw himself on the two
women in bin Laden's room.
The new account of the bin Laden
raid provided by the serving SEAL Team 6 operator is essentially the same as in
Bissonnette's "No Easy Day." Bissonnette says he was one of the first to run
into the bedroom and he saw that the point man's shots had mortally wounded bin
Laden. Bissonette says he then shot the dying al Qaeda leader as he lay on
the floor.
Present and former members of
SEAL Team 6 say they regard Bissonnette as more credible than the Shooter.
Balanced against that, according
to a story filed by CNN's Barbara Starr last year, after the publication of "No
Easy Day," the head of U.S. special operations, Adm. William McRaven, contacted
members of the Navy SEAL team that killed bin Laden. According to Pentagon
officials, the SEALs said bin Laden was standing in his bedroom when he was shot
and they believed that he posed a threat because there were weapons in the room.
This account tends to bolster the story the Shooter told Esquire.
In a
previous CNN.com story about the Esquire profile, I noted that I was the
only outside observer allowed to tour bin Laden's Abbottabad compound before it
was demolished in late February 2012.
During that tour, I looked
around the bedroom where bin Laden was killed. The Pakistani military officers
who were guiding me pointed out a patch of dark, dried blood on the low ceiling
of bin Laden's bedroom. This patch of congealed blood seems to be consistent
with the Shooter's story that he fired two shots at the forehead of a
"surprisingly tall terrorist" while he was standing up. At the time, the precise
location of bin Laden when he was shot was not a matter of dispute.
But the blood patch could also
be consistent with the account that it was the "point man" who first shot bin
Laden. The point man is 5 feet 6 inches tall and was shooting upward at a tall
man as he poked his head out of his bedroom.
The compound is, of course, now
gone, so it is no longer possible to reconstruct what happened the night of the
raid based on forensic evidence, although it is possible the Abbottabad
Commission, a panel that was appointed by the Pakistani government to look into
the raid, could shed some light on this question should its findings ever be
publicly released.
Finally, by all accounts, it was
a confusing situation the night of the raid. One of the SEAL team's helicopters
had crashed and there was a firefight with one of bin Laden's bodyguards. All
the electricity in the compound and the surrounding neighborhood was off on a
moonless night and the SEALs were all wearing night vision goggles, which only
allowed them limited vision.
What seems incontrovertible is
that the point man, the Shooter and Bissonnette were the first three SEALs to
assault bin Laden's bedroom. But to determine exactly which of them killed the
al Qaeda leader may never be possible.
What is certain is that it was a
team effort.
Five days after the bin Laden
raid, members of the SEAL team who carried out the mission briefed President
Barack Obama. According to those in the room, the SEAL team commander explained
to the president, "If you took one person out of the puzzle, we wouldn't have
the competence to do the job we did; everybody's vital. It's not about the guy
who pulled the trigger to kill bin Laden, it's about what we all did
together."
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