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Report: Obama Lied About Bin Laden Raid

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Photo Credit: The Hill

Photo Credit: The Hill

An expose published on Sunday alleges that President Obama deceived Americans with his narrative of the 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Author Seymour M. Hersh accuses Obama of rushing to take credit for the al Qaeda leader’s death.

This decision, Hersh argues in the London Review of Books, forced the military and intelligence communities to scramble and then corroborate the president’s version of events.

“High-level lying nonetheless remains the modus operandi of U.S. policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no,” Hersh wrote of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

Hersh based his report on a single, anonymous source. This individual, he said, is a “retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abottabad.” (Read more from “Report: Obama Lied About Bin Laden Raid” HERE)

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WATCH: The Reason the Navy SEAL Who Killed bin Laden Decided to Speak Out

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For the man who shot and killed the most wanted terrorist in the world, opening up to the world about the night Osama bin Laden died was about closure.

In a highly anticipated Fox News special focused on him, former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill spoke of the responsibility he thought he had to tell the story of the bin Laden raid. . .

Read more from this story HERE.

Naval Special Warfare Leadership Responds to ‘The Shooter’ and Mark Owen

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SEAL-nsw-warcom-losey-brianThe senior leadership of the Navy’s SEAL community—the commander and force master chief of Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC)—have officially, and preemptively, responded to the upcoming Fox News appearance on November 11 and 12 of a former SEAL Team Six member, labeled in an Esquire Magazine article as ‘The Shooter,’ who appeared in the press claiming to have been the operator who shot Usama Bin Ladin in the 2011 raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader.

In a letter signed by both the senior commander and enlisted man of Naval Special Warfare Command, the SEAL leadership emphasized that the majority of SEALs spend each day living up to the label “quiet professionals.” Unspoken is the implication that the former SEAL, who is in fact, former Red Squadron SEAL Robert O’Neill, is seeking notoriety for his own story.

The two SEAL leaders go on to point out that members of the Naval Special Warfare community not only serve alongside other U.S. military members, but also other U.S. government agencies and foreign allies. “Little individual credit” is ever given, according to the letter, due to the “nature of our profession.” The two also point out the years of hard work that go into operations like the one that targeted Bin Ladin, seemingly defying one or two individual shooters’ claims on the glory and fame that result from the success of such a mission.

The point they make is that it took so much more than the final trigger pull to kill Bin Ladin, so why should one SEAL assume the moniker, “The One Who Killed bin Ladin?”

Read more from this story HERE.

Despite Pentagon Objections, Fox News Will Air Interview With SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesInsiders at Fox News Channel said Friday that a two-day documentary featuring an interview with the Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden will air as scheduled despite objections from the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that a show called The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden hosted by Washington correspondentPeter Doocy was scheduled for Nov. 11 and Nov. 12, but on Friday the Pentagon toldBusiness Insider that the SEALs and former SEALs who were participants do not have permission to discuss the classified 2011 mission.

The government has never identified the Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, though they were profiled in the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty, which was controversial for its insinuation that waterboarding was an effective tool in gathering intelligence.

Read more from this story HERE.

Clinton on Sept. 10, 2001: I Could Have Killed bin Laden but 'I Didn't' (+audio)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Former President Bill Clinton, mere hours before the 9/11 terror attack, openly acknowledged that he turned down a chance to kill Usama bin Laden, according to a newly released recording.

The former president can be heard admitting this in a speech to Australian business leaders on Sept. 10, 2001.

Until now, Clinton’s eerie words had not been made public. But a businessman who had access to the nearly 13-year-old recording handed it over to Sky News Australia, which broadcast it in a report Monday.

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Usama bin Laden — he’s a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once,” Clinton said on the recording.

Read more from this story HERE.

NYT Story Prompted Clinton to Question CIA's Info On bin Laden, According to Newly Released Memo

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

When a New York Times article cast doubt on the accusation Usama bin Laden had a hand in the 1998 bombings of African embassies, President Clinton questioned his own CIA, according to a note he scrawled to his national security adviser.

The memo, part of a 1,000-page release of documents Friday afternoon by the National Archives, was written after the president apparently read an article in the self-professed “paper of record” casting doubt on the U.S. Justice Department’s case that the Al Qaeda mastermind was involved in the Aug. 7, 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Some 224 people were killed in the twin attacks, including 12 Americans.

Two months later, a federal grand jury in New York indicted bin Laden and 20 others for participating in a terrorist plot to kill Americans. But the Times article, entitled “U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof bin Laden Directed Attacks,” and written the following April, raised doubts about bin Laden’s involvement, at least with Clinton.

“Sandy, if this article is right, the CIA sure overstated its case to me — What are the facts?” Clinton wrote in pen.

Read more from this story HERE.

To Hunt Osama bin Laden, Satellites Watched Over Abbottabad, Pakistan, and Navy SEALs

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden was guided from space by a fleet of satellites, which aimed dozens of receivers over Pakistan to collect a torrent of electronic and signals intelligence as the mission unfolded, according to a top-secret U.S. intelligence document.

The National Security Agency also was able to penetrate guarded communications among al-Qaeda operatives by tracking calls from mobile phones identified by specific calling patterns, the document shows. Analysts from the CIA pinpointed the geographic location of one of the phones and linked it to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where other evidence suggested bin Laden was hiding.

The disclosures about the hunt for the elusive founder of al-Qaeda are contained in classified documents that detail the fiscal 2013 “black budget” for U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA and the CIA. The documents, provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, make only brief references to the bin Laden operation. But the mission is portrayed as a singular example of counterterrorism cooperation among the U.S. government’s numerous intelligence agencies.

Eight hours after the raid, according to the documents, a forensic intelligence laboratory run by the Defense Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan had analyzed DNA from bin Laden’s corpse and “provided a conclusive match” confirming his identity. The budget further reveals that satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office performed more than 387 “collects” of high-resolution and infrared images of the Abbottabad compound in the month before the raid — intelligence that was “critical to prepare for the mission and contributed to the decision to approve execution.”

Also playing a role in the search for bin Laden was an arm of the NSA known as the Tailored Access Operations group. Among other functions, the group specializes in surreptitiously installing spyware and tracking devices on targeted computers and mobile-phone networks.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unanswered Questions Plague Seal Team 6 Losses

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Photo Credit: WNDEveryone knows about the U.S. military’s SEAL Team Six and its involvement in the Pakistan raid that left terror leader Osama bin Laden dead – heck, Hollywood made a movie about the members after the Obama administration reportedly dished out classified information to those working on the production.

But there are many, many questions that remain unanswered about the brave Navy SEAL team members who put on the boots and weaponry and defended America and how they may have been used as political pawns in a White House campaign to “reach out and coddle Islamist fundamentalists.”

The new case has been launched by FreedomWatch’s Larry Klayman, whose complaint is on behalf of several families of Navy SEAL Team members who died when their helicopter was shot down by Taliban jihadists on Aug. 6, 2011, in Afghanistan…

Defendants in the case are Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who are accused of disclosing classified information about the team’s success in Pakistan and putting a “target on the backs” of the heroes and their families.

“Predictably, the Taliban retaliated by blasting the helicopter out of the air and killing all on board,” FreedomWatch said in its announcement about the case.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s CIA Director Leon Panetta Leaked Top Secret Info to bin Laden Filmmakers

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Photo Credit: Cliff Owen

The CIA’s inspector general has concluded that agency officials did not always follow rules for safeguarding sensitive information when they briefed Hollywood producers making a movie about the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to a lawmaker who was briefed on the watchdog’s findings.

In addition, the Pentagon’s inspector general has been accused of delaying a report that says then-CIA Director Leon E. Panetta disclosed top-secret information to the filmmakers at a June 2011 awards ceremony for the bin Laden raid’s participants.

News of the Obama administration’s security breaches comes as the Justice Department is defending its use of its subpoena power to monitor the telephone records of editors and reporters at The Associated Press and the personal emails of James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, during an investigation of administration leaks.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is holding a court-martial for an Army private who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks more than three years ago.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Administration to Blame for Jailing of Hero Bin Laden Doctor, Says Pakistani Report

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Photo Credit: Fox News

It was the Obama administration that sealed the fate of the Pakistani doctor jailed for helping nail Usama Bin Laden, by divulging key details after the fact and dooming any chance Shakil Afridi’s cover story could win his freedom, according to a confidential Pakistani report.

When former Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly acknowledged Afridi’s role in the ruse which helped the CIA pinpoint Bin Laden’s presence in an Abbottabad compound, any chance that Pakistani authorities could help him get out of the country vanished, according to what some have called Pakistan’s version of the 9/11 Commission, a 357-page report from an independent body set up to probe the aftermath of the 2011 raid by Navy SEALs in which the Al Qaeda leader was killed.

“The statement by the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was the CIA Director when May 2 happened, confirming the role of Dr. Afridi in making the U.S. assassination mission a success, rendered much of what Afridi told the Commission very questionable if not outright lies,” states the report, which has not been released, but which FoxNews.com has viewed.

Read more from this story HERE.