There’s Just One Problem with Those Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories
Without a shred of evidence, without contradicting a word that I wrote, Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times Magazine this week suggests that the “irresistible story” that I told about the killing of Osama bin Laden in my 2012 book, The Finish (excerpted in Vanity Fair), might well have been a fabrication—“another example of American mythmaking.” He presents an alternative version of the story written by Seymour Hersh as, effectively, a rival account, one that raises serious doubts about mine, which is all but dubbed “the official version.” It’s not meant kindly.
Mahler’s think piece about the iffiness of reporting and the hazards of trying to shape history into a narrative is a great gift to conspiratorial thinkers everywhere. It’s not often that the most distinguished journalistic institution in America wades so fully into the crackpot world of Internet theorizing, where all information, no matter its source, is weightless and equal. Mahler is careful not to side with either Hersh or me, but allows that “Hersh’s version doesn’t require us to believe in the possibility of a government-wide conspiracy.”
In fact, that’s exactly what it does.
Hersh’s story, based on two unnamed sources: Bin Laden was being sheltered in Abbottabad by the Pakistani government. His whereabouts were reported to the U.S. government by a Pakistani source. The Pakistani government confirmed bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound and allowed the SEAL team to raid it and kill him; the team later tossed his dismembered body from a helicopter. The Obama administration then concocted an elaborate lie, which they successfully peddled to a gullible American press (primarily, me).
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden-capture-conspiracy
My story, based on on-the-record interviews with primary sources: Osama bin Laden was traced to a compound in Abbottabad by a decade-long international intelligence effort by the C.I.A. and the military. While keeping the suspicion a secret from the Pakistani government, the C.I.A. tried for months without success to confirm with certainty that bin Laden was hiding in the compound. After weighing various alternatives, President Obama launched a very risky secret raid into Pakistan. A SEAL team successfully evaded Pakistani defenses to raid the compound, kill bin Laden, and fly his body out for burial at sea.
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embellishment or self-serving fudging of the facts. So why should we think there is anything hinky about throwing the body of the most wanted man in the world out of a helicopter into the ocean. It sounds perfectly normal to me.
