A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that more than 50 images of America's most-wanted terrorist will remain confidential — apparently because America's morbid, jingoistic fascination with the dead-body images, or conspiracy theories about them, aren't worth putting American lives at risk.
Remember 24-hours ago, when we told you that the official story of who shot Bin Laden had given way to a stupid media feud? We underestimated the situation. It's downright ridiculous at this point.
Now that CNN is challenging Esquire's story and Navy SEALs are continuing to stake their claims to the narrative, the shadowy, sometimes schizophrenic and increasingly desperate struggle to figure out what really happened in Abbottabad is starting to get a little bit dirty.
As the most high-profile al-Qaeda trial in New York City since 9/11 began with high tension, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith made his first appearance in a Manhattan courtroom Friday to face charges of conspiracy to kill Americans.
On Thursday morning, we learned that that the United States had successfully captured Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who's also al Qaeda's spokesman. You'll never guess where he's been hiding the past ten years.
U.S. officials have announced that a former spokesperson for al Qaeda — who also happens to be a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden &mdash has been captured overseas and is being brought to America to stand trial.
Perhaps having seen one too many second-tier Oscar contenders, the government may call a Navy SEAL from the Osama bin Laden raid into a strained effort to prove the most serious charge against Bradley Manning, that he "aided the enemy."
The Navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden "IS SCREWED" blares Esquire's new cover. But he's not quite as screwed as the much discussed story makes him out to be.
Phil Bronstein got the first interviews with the man who actually fired the bullets that killed Osama bin Laden — a man who would be considered a hero to most Americans, but whose story since leaving the Navy has not been a happy one.
Dana Milbank on kids being used in the gun debate, Fred Kaplan on Mali, Jonathan Mahler on Lance Armstrong, Slavoj Žižek on European elites, and Ricky Sekhon on playing bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
A conservative watchdog group says the U.S. government has provided no reason to block the photos' release. Whether the perceived threat to national security can convince the courts remains to be seen.
There's no better way to prop up the seriousness of threats to national security than to get Osama bin Laden involved. That's exactly what the prosecutors in the Bradley Manning case are doing.
We already knew that Zero Dark Thirty messed up a couple of details about the bin Laden raid, but now, some senators would like the filmmakers to know they're straight up "incorrect."
Last night, minutes before the world premier of the controversial new film SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden in Washington, D.C., director John Stockwell made a brief announcement to attendees: The facts in his film were not "confirmed or denied" by White House officials. When the movie's ending credits rolled down the screen 90-minutes later, that fact was abundantly clear.
If there's no such thing as bad publicity, the National Geographic Channel's decision to premiere an action film about the killing of Osama bin Laden two days before the election was a stroke of marketing genius.
During primetime on November 2nd, the National Geographic Channel will air the hotly anticipated SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden movie with a very special star: President Barack Obama.
We may know a little more about why former Navy SEAL author Matt Bisonnette rushed to publish his memoir No Easy Day before receiving Pentagon approval: to get his book out before Mark Bowden published his own big Osama bin Laden raid book.
One of the reasons U.S. Navy SEALs were able to so skillfully execute the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound last year was a CIA training facility in North Carolina that mirrored the architecture of bin Laden's actual compound in Pakistan.
In May, we speculated that staunch Democrat and Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was planning an October Surprise with the release of his special ops thriller SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden, a dramatization of the mission to kill al Qaeda's leader. Turns out, we were one month off: Weinstein is releasing his film two days before the election.
In a report that's frankly difficult to believe, Vanity Fair says President Obama intended to put Osama bin Laden on trial in federal court if the Al Qaeda leader had survived the Abbottabad raid last May.
There's no question the death of Osama bin Laden was great for President Obama's poll numbers—could it also be great for a Japanese camera-maker?
Dick Cheney picked the wrong day to criticize Barack Obama for not paying close enough attention to presidential daily briefings.
The imprisoned Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden's compound, Dr. Shakil Afridi, managed to make a phone call to Fox News' Dominic Di-Natale and describe the brutal tortue he says he's been subject to since being arrested for treason last year.
CBS News anchor Scott Pelley was stunned when the ex-Navy SEAL author of No Easy Day told him members of SEAL Team 6 were napping on the helicopter ride over to Osama bin Laden's hideout. But one explanation that occurs often in the book is that members of SEAL Team 6, apparently, are extensive users of potent sleeping pills such as Ambien.
Now, 11 years later, new details of the attack on the World Trade Center continue to emerge from the government's vault of classified documents and the journalists who've gained access.
The latest in the legal fight between No Easy Day author and former Navy SEAL Matthew Bissonette and the Pentagon, a Defense Department spokesman shared with Reuters the nondisclosure agreement that they say they make SEALs sign.
The admiral who overseas the Navy's special operations units slammed the former SEAL team member for selling his story as the Pentagon declares that the book No Easy Day contains sensitive and classified military information.
Former Navy SEAL author Matt Bissonnette is going to tell his version of events surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden, even if the Pentagon sues him for every last penny.
The Defense Department threw down the gauntlet last night, telling former Navy SEAL author Matt Bissonnette he's in "material breach" of his agreements not to disclose military secrets with his book, No Easy Day, and, as a result, the Pentagon is considering legal action against him.
It turns out, Navy SEAL author Matt Bissonnette was in disguise when he appeared on 60 Minutes last night.
The publisher and author of No Easy Day, an upcoming tell-all on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, promised the book doesn't reveal classified information. But government privacy lawyers speaking with The Atlantic Wire say the book almost certainly does.
Several news outlets have finally got their hands on a copy of the new book about the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound, and the details emerging contradict many of the earlier reports about what happened inside the house on the night the al Qaeda leader was killed.
For everyone who didn't get special access to information about the Osama bin Laden raid, today was a little bit discouraging as new e-mails revealed CIA officials gushing over Hollywood filmakers at the expense of trained reporters and documentarians.
Sorry patriotic moviegoers, you'll have to settle for two well-financed movies about killing Osama bin Laden instead of three.
If ex-Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette discloses classified information in his upcoming tell-all on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, he could be subject to criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act, as we noted earlier. But even if he doesn't divulge any secrets, he's still got major legal problems.
There are already two movies coming out this fall about the Bin Laden raid, and now apparently there's going to be a third. The New York Post's Page 6 reports the new book from a Navy SEAL Team 6 member is going to be turned into a movie, and Steven Spielberg is in talks to direct.
It only took one day for Fox News to identify the ex-Navy SEAL responsible for a new book on the death of Osama bin Laden. It took even less time for Al Qaeda-affiliated websites to begin distributing his name and image while calling for his "destruction."
There's more than one way to profit from your experience in the military. For Matt Bisonnette, the former Navy SEAL Team 6 member who wrote a book about killing Osama bin Laden, that includes offering consulting services to a big name video game maker.
The day after Fox News outed the former Navy SEAL Team 6 member who wrote an account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, 60 Minutes announced it had interviewed him, military officials confirmed his identity, and The New York Post ran his picture.
The former Navy SEAL Team 6 member and anonymous author of a soon to be released tell-all book about the mission to kill Osama bin Laden better hire a security guard and a good lawyer: He's just been outed by Fox News.
They were the Republicans' best chance at swift-boating President Obama, but they're unraveling at the seams.
There have been numerous revisions to the official account of how Osama bin Ladan was killed on May 2, 2011, but a new book, set for release on September 11, promises to deliver what no one else has: The perspective of a Navy SEAL who actually participated in the raid.
Investigative journalist Richard Miniter has a new book out today, Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him, in which he claims Barack Obama is "fully vetted" for the first time in history. He also claims Obama has been heavily influenced in his decision-making by women.
The amazing thing about reporter Madeleine Baran's Minnesota Public Radio story about a former Navy SEAL who runs a company that reenacts the Osama bin Laden raid is that he can charge people $325 to play pretend, and it's successful.
Politically speaking, Navy SEALs aren't the safest targets to rail against in a presidential race, but the Obama campaign isn't hesitating to take down a group of former SEALs who've criticized the president's national security decisions.
The anti-Obama campaign slogan "you didn't build that" has reached its inevitable extension into the foreign policy arena. But this may be its worst application yet.
You can almost hear the heavy sigh emanating from the White House press office as it disputes a charge in a forthcoming book by Richard Miniter that President Barack Obama called off the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before finally giving the OK.
Inspired by The New York Times' exposé on Obama's "secret 'kill list,'" we collected some of the best pieces of watchdog journalism on Obama's national security policies.
Just when you thought Pakistan's shady legal system couldn't get any shadier, the treason case against Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden, takes a wild turn.
He may have helped find the world's number one terrorist, but Pakistani doctor Jamil Afridi has been smeared, tortured, starved and improperly prosecuted in the weeks and months following his arrest, according to a handful of new reports.
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