Is The New Yorker’s Navy SEAL Cover Story Fake?
Posted by Joel B. Pollak Aug 6th 2011
Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair has written a post at Registan.net alleging that Nicholas Schmidle’s New Yorker cover story detailing the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound may be a fraud.
At the very least, Fair alleges, Schmidle failed to interview the Navy SEALs involved in the operation–which is not mentioned anywhere in the article, but is apparent from a close analysis of the text.
Is that really the way bin Laden dyed? (pun intended)
If Schmidle did fake all or part of his story, Fair says, that could complicate relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world:
…[M]any Muslims across the world fundamentally doubt the events of the Bin Laden raid. Some believe Bin Laden is still alive. Others believe he died long ago. Others believe that the events of May 2 were staged to allow the Obama administration to make an exit from Afghanistan. As Mr. Schmidle’s is the first (and so far only) account of the drama, these problems cast a pale of doubt upon the events that transpired that evening…
Second is the simple fact of Mr. Schmidle parentage. His father, as noted above, is the deputy commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. Given the conspiratorial propensities of many within and beyond the Muslim world, Schmidle’s ties to this organization by virtue of his father would recast any serious inaccuracy in his report as a U.S. military psychological operation to deliberately misinform the world about the operation…
Finally, whether or not the shooter actually said “For God and For Country” is another important question that affects the way in which the United States and is citizenry are seen across the world….If it wasn’t uttered, such a gratuitous detail hardly helps the United States make its case that it opposes terrorists not Muslims.
Read Fair’s post here.
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