Adm. William McRaven – Liberty Blitzkrieg

I’ve highlighted the bizarre opacity and intentional official obfuscation regarding the details of the Osama bin Laden raid on many occasions. My most recent post on the topic was published last summer with the article: U.S. Government’s Secret Move to Hide Files on the Osama Bin Laden Raid. I started out that post writing:

The Osama Bin Laden raid was suspect from the very beginning. Not only were key initial descriptions of the assault completely incorrect (such as him being armed and his wife being killed), but the manner in which his body was rapidly tossed into the ocean was beyond bizarre. I mean, Tony Soprano keeps a body longer than that.

I also pointed out what the AP had to say on the matter:

In the days after bin Laden’s death, the White House provided conflicting versions of events, falsely saying bin Laden was armed and even firing at the SEALs, misidentifying which of bin Laden’s sons was killed and incorrectly saying bin Laden’s wife died in the shootout. Obama’s press secretary attributed the errors to the “fog of combat.”

Well an already strange story has gotten even stranger. We now know, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, that the U.S. military ordered the destruction of all the bin Laden photos as soon as it got wind that the media had requested them.

Repeat after me: Most. Transparent. Ever.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A newly-released email shows that 11 days after the killing of terror leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, the U.S. military’s top special operations officer ordered subordinates to destroy any photographs of the al-Qaida founder’s corpse or turn them over to the CIA.

The email was obtained under a freedom of information request by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch. The document, released Monday by the group, shows that Adm. William McRaven, who heads the U.S. Special Operations Command, told military officers on May 13, 2011 that photos of bin Laden’s remains should have been sent to the CIA or already destroyed. Bin Laden was killed by a special operations team in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.

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Well it seems the “most transparent administration ever” has made sure that the American public never receives any information beyond the propaganda of Zero Dark Thirty. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the Freedom of Information Act.

But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn’t find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and could represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny.

McRaven’s directive sent the only copies of the military’s records about its daring raid to the CIA, which has special authority to prevent the release of “operational files” in ways that can’t effectively be challenged in federal court. The Defense Department can prevent the release of its own military files, too, citing risks to national security. But that can be contested in court, and a judge can compel the Pentagon to turn over non-sensitive portions of records.

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