May 5 2011
The White House has revised its version of what happened during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s home in several significant ways since its first briefings.
It says the mistakes and contradictions are simply down to “the fog of war”. Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday: “We provided a great deal of information with great haste in order to inform you … and obviously some of the information came in piece by piece and is being reviewed and updated and elaborated on.”
Here are the main points of difference:
Osama bin Laden was armed and died in a firefight after resisting
A senior Pentagon official told reporters on Monday in a background briefing that the American team engaged in a firefight and Bin Laden did resist, giving the strong impression he was armed and may have been shooting.
“He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in,” said John Brennan, White House security adviser. “And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know … The president put a premium on making sure that our personnel were protected and we were not going to give Bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces. He was engaged and he was killed in the process.
“The concern was that Bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation. Indeed he did. It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight.”
How the story changed
Carney said on camera at a White House briefing on Tuesday that Bin Laden had not been armed. “On the first floor of Bin Laden’s building, two al-Qaida couriers were killed, along with a woman who was killed in crossfire,” he said. “Bin Laden and his family were found on the second and third floor of the building. There was concern that Bin Laden would oppose the capture operation – operation rather, and, indeed, he did resist. In the room with Bin Laden, a woman – Bin Laden’s – a woman, rather, Bin Laden’s wife, rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”
When pressed on the nature of Bin Laden’s resistance, Carney said: “I think resistance does not require a firearm.” He declined to elaborate on what other form it had taken.
Al-Arabiya, a Middle East news channel, reported that it had been told by a Pakistani security that Bin Laden’s 12-year-old daughter told Pakistani investigators the US forces captured her father alive but shot him dead in front of family members. An official of the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, told the Guardian she saw her father killed but did not suggest he had been captured at that point.
Osama Bin Laden used women as human shields, including his wife who was killed in the process.
Brennan said on Monday: “There was family at that compound and there was a female who was in fact in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a shield to shield Bin Laden from the incoming fire.”
He added: “I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.”
A journalist asked if the woman was his wife. Brennan replied: “That’s my understanding. It was one of them … She served as a shield … when there was the opportunity to get to Bin Laden she was positioned in a way that indicated that she was being used as a shield – whether or not Bin Laden or the son, or whatever, put her there, or she put herself there.”
The story was partially backed up by an off the record Pentagon briefing at which reporters were told by a senior defence official that Bin Laden and some other male combatants “certainly did use women as shields”.
But the official said the woman who was with Bin Laden was injured and not killed. The woman who ended up being killed had been used as a shield by “a military age male” who was firing from behind her, they said.
How the story changed
The president’s spokesman on Tuesday corrected Brennan, saying: “In the room with Bin Laden, a woman – Bin Laden’s – a woman, rather, Bin Laden’s wife, rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed.”
Bin Laden had been ‘living high on the hog’
Defence officials briefed reporters on Monday that Bin Laden’s compound was worth $1m and was in stark contrast to the “much more dire conditions” endured by his “terrorist colleagues” and speculated on what they might be thinking “when they see that their leader was living, relatively speaking, high on the hog”.
How the story changed
Local estimates suggest the house is worth $250,000. Footage from inside the compound shows little sign of luxury. Cooking equipment was shown on the floor, the decor seemed shabby, medicines were left on a shelf with no cabinet and the pantry seemed rudimentary. The paint was peeling outside the building and there was no sign of airconditioning.
Bin Laden’s son Khalid was killed in the raid
Brennan told reporters: “Bin Laden died, the two al-Qaida facilitators – the brothers, who were the courier and his brother in the compound; Bin Laden’s son Khalid; and the woman, presumed to be his wife, who was shielding Bin Laden.”
How the story changed
The name of the son was changed to Hamza in the transcript.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and senior White House officials watched the raid unfold live on monitors
Brennan said on Monday: “We were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation from its commencement to its time on target to the extraction of the remains and to then the egress off of the target… we were able to monitor the situation in real time and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation. I’m not going to go into details about what type of visuals we had or what type of feeds that were there, but it was – it gave us the ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis.”
How the story changed
Carney said on Tuesday the updates were “minute-by-minute” and “they were looking at and listening to those updates”. CIA director Leon Panetta told PBS on Tuesday: “Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on.”