The heroic account of how a Navy SEAL took out Osama bin Laden in the daring raid on the terrorist’s compound in May 2011 has been called “complete B-S” by another SEAL who took part in the operation.
A member of SEAL Team Six, which executed the attack in Abbottabad, Pakistan, said that a dramatic Esquire piece describing the raid is inaccurate and the man behind it has been kicked off his elite squad, CNN reported yesterday.
In the February article, a SEAL Team 6 member took credit for taking out bin Laden with two gunshots to the head as the 9/11 mastermind was reaching for his gun in his bedroom.
“I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he’s going down,” the Special Forces fighter said in Esquire.
But the other SEAL-team member told CNN that those gunshots to the forehead never took place.
In fact, the SEAL Team 6 members were specifically told, “Don’t shoot the guy [bin Laden] in the face unless you have to,” so that the CIA could properly identify him and prove that he had been killed, the second team member said.
Also, the SEAL told CNN that the guns in bin Laden’s room were found only after an intensive search of the compound.
In his account, the point man took out bin Laden after the terrorist poked his head out of the bedroom door.
Bin Laden was found mortally wounded on his bedroom floor and was finished off with two rounds to the chest, he said.
The SEAL member behind the Esquire piece has also been tossed out of the Red Squadron assault group for bragging about the raid in bars around his Virginia Beach base, according to yesterday’s CNN report.