Osama Bin Laden, Raids | featured news

A firsthand account of the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden contradicts previous accounts by administration officials, raising questions as to whether the terror mastermind presented a clear threat when SEALs first fired upon him.

The Navy SEAL who wrote about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden under a pseudonym is Matt Bissonnette, who retired from the Navy last summer. Bissonnette was first identified by Fox News. One current and one former U.S. military official confirmed the name, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss military personnel matters. The book, "No Easy Day," is scheduled to be released Sept. 11, with the author listed under the pseudonym of Mark Owen. Penguin Group (USA)'s Dutton imprint, the publisher, asked news organizations Thursday to withhold his identity.

U.S. officials on Wednesday defended a tactic used by the CIA to attempt to verify the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden — the covert creation of a vaccine program in Abbottabad, the town in Pakistan where he was later killed in a U.S. raid.

As the story of the raid continues to unfold, new information from the cache of computers seized from the bin Laden compound emerges.