NPR had an interview with Schmidle recently: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/01/138884570/details-of-the-bin-laden-raid-recounted-by-the-seals
It's the newsstand date, which means "display this mag until august 8" - basically an anachronism in the internet age, like the debt ceiling or newt gingrich.
here's the New Yorker article link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle?printable=true Truly amazing.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44137555/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/#.Tkgk72HSzHo Report: Pakistan gave China access to 'stealth' chopper in bin Laden raid Chinese military allowed to take photographs, samples of aircraft's 'skin', despite CIA objections, Financial Times reports ISLAMABAD — Pakistan gave China access to the previously unknown "stealth" helicopter that crashed during the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May despite explicit requests from the CIA not to, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The revelation, if confirmed, is likely to further shake the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, which has been improving slightly after hitting its lowest point in decades following the May 2 bin Laden raid. During the raid, one of two modified Blackhawk helicopters, believed to employ unknown stealth capability, malfunctioned and crashed, forcing the commandos to abandon it. "The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," the paper quoted a person "in intelligence circles" as saying. Pakistan, which enjoys a close relationship with China, allowed Chinese intelligence officials to take pictures of the crashed chopper as well as take samples of its special "skin" that allowed the American raid to evade Pakistani radar, the newspaper reported. No one from the Pakistani army was available for comment, but the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan's top spy agency, denied the report. The paper said Pakistan's top general, chief of army staff Ashfaq Kayani, denied that China had been given access. Story: US forces kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan The surviving tail section, photos of which were widely distributed on the Internet, was returned to the United States following a trip by U.S. Senator John Kerry in May, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy told Reuters. Shortly after the raid, Pakistan hinted that it might give China access to the downed chopper, given its fury over the raid, which it considers a grevious violation of its sovereignty. "We had explicitly asked the Pakistanis in the immediate aftermath of the raid not to let anyone have access to the damaged remains of the helicopter," the Financial Times quoted the source as saying. In an incident such as the helicopter crash, it is standard American procedure to destroy sophisticated technology such as encrypted communications and navigation computers. Frustrations and displeasure Pakistan is a strategic ally to the United States but the relationship has been on a downward spiral since the killing of the al-Qaida leader in the raid by U.S. forces. Islamabad was not informed in advance and responded by cutting back on U.S. trainers in the country and placing limits on CIA activities there. The fact that the al-Qaida chief lived for years near the Pakistani army's main academy in the northwestern garrison town of Abbottabad reinforced suspicions in Washington about Islamabad's reliability in the war against militant Islamists. There are also growing frustrations with Pakistan over its reluctance to mount offensives against militant factions in the northwest who are fighting U.S.-led foreign forces across the border in Afghanistan. In a show of displeasure over Pakistan's cutback in U.S. trainers, its limits on visas for U.S. personnel and other bilateral irritants, the United States recently suspended about a third of its $2.7 billion annual defense aid to Pakistan. Despite this, both sides have tried to prevent a breakdown of relations. The head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, visited the United States last month for talks with U.S. government and intelligence officials, which both sides said went well. Despite the billions in aid, Pakistan still considers China a more reliable ally than the United States. China is a major investor in predominantly Muslim Pakistan in areas such as telecommunications, ports and infrastructure. The countries are linked by a Chinese-built road pushed through Pakistan's northern mountains. Trade with Pakistan is worth almost $9 billion a year for Pakistan, and China is its top arms supplier. In the wake of attacks that left 11 people dead in the China's western region of Xinjiang in late July, Pakistan quickly dispatched Lieutenant-General Pasha to Beijing. (Writing and additional reporting by Chris Allbritton; Editing by Rosalind Russell)
Interesting read from Salon on the NewYorker piece cited above and raved about. Worth some time and thought, IMO. Excerpt:
So much for liltexx's slobbering about "Obama had to be pulled off a golf course". Handwritten bin Laden raid memo documents Obama’s order: ‘Proceed with the assault’ Osama bin Laden didn't know it, but when then-CIA Director Leon Panetta jotted down this "memo for the record" on his official stationery, the world's most wanted fugitive had just days left to live. The document is part of Time magazine's package of stories on the one-year anniversary of the Navy SEAL raid that killed the al-Qaida chief in his hideout in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad. The magazine helpfully transcribed Panetta's scrawled message to historians: Received phone call from (National Security Adviser) Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault. The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven's hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 a.m. PDF of memo
For those of who weren't involved in this thread, or those of who don't constantly search for material that contradict other's posts...what was the original statement by tex? I thought it was common knowledge that Obama watched the whole thing go down and even spoke to the men carrying out the mission.
Thank you Mr President! Sharp Decline in Terror Attacks After Bin Laden Death "The loss of bin Laden and these other key operatives puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse," the report stated.
Makes all those people saying bin laden was just a "boogeyman" and going after him was just a waste of time and money look pretty silly now...
First, you'd have to be commander- in-chief. Second, you'd need balls as big as church bells to risk your entire administration on the mission's success. (imagine the chaos if it had failed)
you and I could have pulled the trigger...if trained. That is not at all the point, the mission would not have went down had the president not decided to pursue, and decided to proceed with the mission.
Good to see people still trying to downplay Obama's crucial role in the matter. Fact is that other presidents wanted Osama, and couldn't get him or didn't give the order. The fact is that top military minds who were in the meeting were against the order. The fact is that when Carter gave the order to send in a military team after the hostages in Iran, we saw what the risks were and how his handling of the Iran hostage crisis is looked at today. So the risks of failure were huge. Sorry, giddy, it wasn't just a simple matter of saying sure let's send in SEAL team 6. There were other options, and plans, and great risks involved. But only one Commander in Chief had what it took to do it, and it was a success. Nobody is denying the heroic mission and contribution of the SEALS. Not one person. Yet you, and others do as much as you can to deny the contribution of the President. We see who looks petty in this case, in addition to just having it wrong.
Having it wrong? BTW, way to "spike the ball" and undercut the effectiveness of intel gathered. At least two sides to every story: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/29/gutsy-call/ "The Obama administration and his re-election campaign will spend today and the rest of the week reminding everyone that Barack Obama is the President who killed Osama bin Laden. And that’s certainly true; it was a year ago this week that US special forces stormed bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad and shot the al-Qaeda leader to death, and also captured a trove of intelligence. If the Obama campaign sticks to just those facts, they’ll stay on solid ground, although it’s still a big question as to whether anyone will cast a vote based on that singular event. The ball-spiking got off to a bad start, though, when the Obama campaign claimed that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have the killer instinct to make that kind of a call — a weird claim in and of itself. Team Obama has already painted Romney as a heartless executive who didn’t hesitate to fire people and, er, execute poorly-performing companies as a Bain executive. What exactly would keep Romney from taking a risk with a terrorist mastermind in his crosshairs? The attack was an overreach, and an opening for critics to challenge Obama’s actual role in the mission — and when Time Magazine published the mission orders from Leon Panetta to Admiral William H. McRaven, commander of US Special Operations Command, Big Peace pounced: The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the “timing, operational decision making and control” are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus. The memo is crystal clear on that point. It says that the decision has been made based solely on the “risk profile presented to the President.” If any other risks – no matter how minute – arose, they were “to be brought back to the President for his consideration.” This is ludicrous. It is wiggle room. It was Obama’s way of carving out space for himself in case the mission went bad. If it did, he’d say that there were additional risks of which he hadn’t been informed; he’d been kept in the dark by his military leaders. Finally, the memo is unclear on just what the mission is. Was it to capture Bin Laden or to kill him? The White House itself was unable to decide what the mission was in the hours after the Bin Laden kill, and actually switched its language. The memo shows why: McRaven was instructed to “get” Bin Laden, whatever that meant. President Obama made the right call to give the green light to the mission. But he did it in a way that he could shift the blame if things went wrong. Typical Obama. And typical of him to claim full credit for it, when he didn’t do anything but give a vague nod, while putting his top military officials at risk of taking the hit in case of a bad turn. Here’s the memo that conveyed the green light: Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault. The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am. I think that the interpretation from Big Peace is perhaps a little overblown, too. The decision to assault the compound was based on the risk profile from Panetta and McRaven. A risk profile would normally cover a range of possibilities, along with the countermeasures the military planned to negate or minimize them. If that changed, then any President would want to make sure that the decision got some reconsideration, especially since the mission involved invading a nominal ally and conducting a military operation just a couple of miles from one of their premier military academies. If there were no changes, then McRaven needed to have the authority to determine timing and hold operational control of the mission. McRaven couldn’t consult Obama and his team on constantly-shifting but manageable conditions on a moment-to-moment basis if anyone expected the raid to succeed. That’s not a setup for a patsy; it’s operational reality. Besides, if the mission had gone badly, Obama couldn’t have escaped the failure, even if this was some sort of attempt to make McRaven a fall guy. Ask Jimmy Carter how well that worked with Operation Eagle Claw in April 1980, 32 years ago, almost to the day, or for that matter, George W. Bush about Tora Bora, an incident used by Obama in the 2008 election. Biden was right that a big failure at Abbottabad would have had big negative consequences for Obama. On the other hand, had Obama not made the call to conduct this mission and missed his chance at bin Laden, that would also have had large negative consequences for Obama, had that refusal gotten out, and arguably larger than a failed attempt would bring. I don’t want to take away from the difficult circumstances of this decision — the aftermath of the successful mission with Pakistan shows the dangerous context of that call — but in the end, very few American Presidents would have passed up the opportunity to “get” bin Laden in this precise set of circumstances, whatever “get” meant. It was the right call, but I don’t think it was as “gutsy” as the White House wants to portray it, nor do I think that these operational orders show an attempt to hide from the consequences of failure. Obama’s order produced a successful result and America finally brought justice to Osama bin Laden. He’s entitled to claim credit for that decision in his re-election effort, but let’s not make it more — or less — than the American victory that it represented."
I said nothing about pulling any triggers. My comment was about "assenting" to the mission. So all three of us could/would have done that: you, FB and me! What an unlikely trio...
