Sometimes the news is so big you just have to have the details right away, and the death of Osama bin Laden is a case in point. With a story like this, we’ll be hungry for the details for days, including reporting on some complicated questions. (Did torture help find him, or not? What did Pakistan’s military really know about his whereabouts, and when did it know it?)
If you’re like us, when you first heard that bin Laden had been killed, you instinctively reached for your go-to news source. What was that source?
But wait, this is a two-part question. With a story like this, once we know enough details we want to know what they mean. (Is al Qaeda done, or or should we stay off trains and subways? Where will our relationship with Pakistan go next? What does this mean for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?). And where we go for analysis is not always where we go for news.
When something big happens, who do you trust? Where do you go for news? Where do you go for analysis? And, of course, what outlets do you avoid in a time like this?
Probably a better question is who I don't go to for news, and the answer to this is American television. I listen to the BBC World Service, Radio 4, Kol Israel, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Voice of Russia, China Radio International, Radio France International, maybe more. I watch Al Jezeera, France24, and RTE News Now. I would rather watch BBC World News television but can't. I have 560 subscriptions in my Google Reader. I don't have The Times or The New York Times or any of their vassals because of their paywall. If I can afford it later I might subscribe to The Times. The New York Times isn't worth it at their price. I get AP, UPI, Reuters, the AFP feed via Yahoo Singapore, Novosti, People's Daily, and many many others that increase or decrease over time. I get a lof of feeds from blogs.
I was listening to the BBC World Service at about 10:30 pm New York time when I first heard the news about bin Laden. They switched to another story, so I switched first to France24 and then to Al Jezeera. I watched Obama's announcement on Al Jezeera, and then when RFI's English Service came on at midnight New York time, I listened to their newscast as I do every evening. Since then I have continued to follow my usual routine, which is to listen mostly to BBC World Service and Radio 4, the VOA and Kol Israel news in English via the Rekka Network, and get as many different versions and angles as I can. I read the headlines from Press-TV and Pravda, but not the stories as they are predictable and stupid. I had my cable-TV cut off last year because it wasn't worth paying for, but I do get a 20-MB cable internet and my phone connection from the cable company.
#1 Posted by Christopher Hobe Morrison, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:23 PM
My go-to news sources are the NYTimes, and ABC News.
#2 Posted by Shannon Hunter, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:28 PM
I got the news from members of an email group to which I subscribe. They were watching MSNBC for the most part. I've been looking at English-language press in Asia and India to get a sense of the impact in those areas.
I did my own analysis regarding the domestic impact. The event is meaningless with respect to Obama's reelection chances because nobody will forgive the continuing economic shambles on account of bin Laden's death, and it's meaningless with respect to our military adventurism because parties invested in the wars, including the Pentagon, federal legislators, two presidents and the institutional press, have spent the better part of ten years decoupling bin Laden from the wars and even from al Qaeda.
And of course they were right, however self-interested the exercise has been. In a week or two people will notice that nothing has materially changed because of bin Laden's death.
So if you look around the intertubes and find somebody whose analysis on the domestic impact corresponds to mine, you've found a reliable opinion source. I find Foreign Policy magazine to be generally pretty good on analysis of foreign states of being.
#3 Posted by Weldon Berger, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:35 PM
I awoke at 5:15 a.m. Cairo time (11:15 p.m. EST) and got the word from NYTimes.com. (I never get up that early unless I'm catching a flight, but my cat jumped on me early--I suppose she saw Obama's briefing & couldn't help herself). I was expecting Monday morning headlines to be driven by the Lara Logan interview on 60 Minutes the night before.
The Times site has been my go-to source, especially since a recent storm in Cairo has resulted in my satellite TV receiver working only 50 percent of the time.
I avoid The Washington Post, because whenever I want to Tweet a WaPo story from my iPhone, I have to login to Twitter. Even doing so is no guarantee of smooth transmission.
#4 Posted by Justin Martin, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:35 PM
Drudge .. who else?
#5 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:38 PM
For broadest analysis I'm heading to the Economist, Foreign Policy, and The New Yorker, and I'll likely buy print editions of all three this week. For immediate analysis, it's still The NYTimes
#6 Posted by Justin Martin, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:46 PM
When the news broke, I depended on a Twitter/NYTimes.com and NPR/1010-WINS combo. Since then, I've been especially enjoying analysis from The Atlantic, Slate and the Guardian online. And I have to say, the New York Times in print feels more essential than ever in these kinds of occasions. Something about wanting to pick up a piece of history and carry it around with me while I try to figure out what it means.
#7 Posted by Lauren Kirchner, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:48 PM
I saw the news on my facebook newsfeed. Not trusting this as a reliable source, I turned on BBC news to find out that the post had been legitimate. I flipped through numerous new stations- CNN, Al Jazeera, and Euro News to find similar headlines.
I also trust the New York Times, although with this story I didn't feel the need to verify it because it had been reiterated on virtually every television channel.
#8 Posted by Dalia Abbas, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:49 PM
I bribed my sister, who lives in Manhattan, to pick up a copy of Monday's print NYT for me. I also bought up all the largest Egyptian dailies. Best headline among them: "Al Qaeda is Headless," -from Al Masry Al Yom.
#9 Posted by Justin Martin, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:53 PM
Foreign Policy magazine's excellent AfPak Channel, the Times, the Post, Talking Points Memo, and, of course, Reuters and the AP.
#10 Posted by Michael Meyer, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:55 PM
I heard the news from my wife and then flipped open nytimes.com and my Twitter feed. Then I jumped upstairs to turn on CNN, but the only thing really worth watching it for was Peter Bergen. I also streamed Al Jazeera English online, and I had the WSJ and Washington Post open in browser tabs and refreshed them periodically, too.
The Times is the place for one-stop shopping on news and analysis. But the best early analysis I read was on The New Yorker's website. See Steve Coll, in particular.
#11 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 04:56 PM
I had the old-school experience of learning about it when I woke up the next morning, groggily logging onto nytimes.com not expecting much of anything. (If I had *really* been old school, I would have read it in the paper.) It was a bit of a throwback to get big news not in real time (I notice that the mission was accomplished pretty well without me). TPM's and Politico's followup political coverage has been good.
#12 Posted by Dean Starkman, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 05:18 PM
Sad to say I have faith in independence of zero of the network & cable anchors and very few reporters to give a balanced report. No gravitas is evident.
There is no Cronkite.
#13 Posted by Tom Gallagher, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 05:27 PM
[By Jon Friedman, NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Brian Ross, ABC News’s chief investigative correspondent, had just gone to bed Sunday in preparation for his appearance on “Good Morning America” early the following morning. He was going to discuss what he recalled about an alleged terrorist plot on Times Square.
At that time, Ross had just gotten, by his estimate, “about 12 minutes” of shut-eye when the phone rang from ABC News, a unit of Walt Disney to inform him that President Barack Obama was poised to go on television to announce that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces.]
I found the initial coverage, including video, at ABC, to be superior. Obviously, the rehearsals helped. (The BBC mentioned its ABC link in its coverage.) Tapping into The New York Times is not at all a problem--just by Google-the-headline. The source I relied on first for 9/11 was msnbc, a site now much bedeviled by video glitches with sticky ads. At least, from an ASUS netbook.
Sometimes I get the sense that--the NYT is not exempt--news outlets do not require their international reporters to dominate the history and political science sections in bookstores. That would help in getting traction on stories like this. Often the focus in the UK is sharper, especially at the Guardian. For example, at the student paper at LSE, The Beaver, there has been good material on Libya-LSE links. But except for Boston Globe coverage, the American analysis re Harvard, Monitor Consulting Group, and Libya has been weaker.
Brian Ross is a solid investigative journalist who seems untroubled by his ego. (Perhaps a minor hint for Bill Keller).
#14 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 05:54 PM
The New York Times has owned this story. The sheer breadth and depth of their coverage has been awesome -- they have stood head and shoulders above any other news source. Virtually every single one of their major reporters have obviously been working their last source literally all over the world -- Shane and Mazettis team on national security, Baker, Cooper et al on the administration, their technical staff has been outstanding -- their mapping team, graphics team, photogs, video, the local angles, the Lede and the Caucus providing news aggregation from other sources. I really can't say enough about their coverage.
This is what a great newspaper can do, when the story is big. If they don't win multiple Pulitzers for their work on this story, there's something wrong with the process. I'm glad I paid the $0.99 for my four weeks coverage.
The networks and cable news have been -- not very good. CNN once again reports it wrong. The networks and CNN's coverage have been shallow and sensational without much real information there. TPM has had some great coverage as well from the political perspective -- I'll bet their little shop has been buzzing on overtime as well. That's where I first learned it might be bin Ladin.
Agence France=Presse has been an excellent source, especially from the White House Briefing Room.
The abysmal coverage from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times (AND the networks and CNN) demonstrates what happens when news organizations reduce their most important asset -- their reporting staff -- and then expect them to do "more with less." Think of all the sources who were lost with the massive buyouts and layoffs from these formerly great news organizations, to say nothing of the reporting talent that were no longer there when this huge story broke. Pathetic. Sad.
I'm just a lowly news consumer, though.
#15 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 06:18 PM
Goto source is CNN.
For analysis I go to WWW.realclearpolitics.com and their family of sites including realclearworld.
I avoid Fox and MSNBC.
#16 Posted by Layne, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 06:45 PM
I listened on BBC from my NPR station. I turned on ABC for a few minutes and then turned it off after hearing the USA USA chants as though we were at the Atlanta Summer Olympics.
#17 Posted by nswfm, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 08:25 PM
OBL's death was first reported in 2001 by Fox, NYT, CNN, Telegraph, et al.: 911oz.com/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=49611&postcount=1
As for the allegedly recent killing of OBL, the best analysis is at LRC and RT.
But, if you believe every thing (lie) the govt tells you, then stick with the AP. They are the most "fair and balanced" court historians of all.
#18 Posted by Dan A.., CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 09:28 PM
@Justin Martin-- I love that Al Masry Al Yom headline.
This past weekend I was in Southern California attending a wedding, so the news broke earlier in the night for me than it would have if I'd been on the East Coast. At the moment, I was having dinner, and two of the three people at my table got text messages about it. It was interesting to look around the restaurant and see the popping reactions. In the car afterward, I tuned in public radio, which first had BBC coverage, and then switched to NPR.
In the wake, I've mostly been reading The New York Times's coverage, but also have found some good work at The New Yorker and Politico--particularly this Josh Gerstein//Matt Negrin piece that was ahead of the game on sussing out the false points in the early narrative.
I'm looking forward to the first really good long form tick-tock reconstruction. And as with all good things, I'm willing to wait. (William Langewiesche, maybe? Could be a fitting coda to his work on the World Trade Center site.)
While we're on the subject, I heartily recommend Liz Cox Barrett's capturing of how Fox's Geraldo Rivera broke the news. He served up enough ham to throw a lu'au.
#19 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 09:28 AM
On Sunday night, a breaking news alert on NYTimes.com indicating that the president would soon address the nation sent me to my TV, where I flipped around (cable news/networks) and watched the anchors try to fill the air until the president appeared. I may not have learned much, but I did get a CJR post out of it.
Since then: NYT, print and online (20 reporters contributed to their next-day "NYC reacts" story, I noticed), New Yorker online, and assorted pieces here and there that have received heavy Twitter promotion/chatter (like, this piece from Atlantic's Ambinder).
And I'm with Clint-- rooting for a Langewiesche(-like) reconstruction one day.
#20 Posted by Liz Cox Barrett, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 10:01 AM
Talking Points Memo has done a great job aggregating all the Bin Laden facts - that's where I've been going for updates. Also, Twitter is good for breaking updates.
In terms of the actual announcement, I followed GSteph (Stephanopoulos) on ABC News.
#21 Posted by Meg, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 10:22 AM
Got an alert on my computer that the President was going to speak at 10:30. Clicked on CNN, then MSNBC, then chanced it to see if it was on the major nets. It was so followed it via Brian Williams on NBC. Excellent coverage - they also have Richard Engel, who speaks Arabic and is always on top of Middle East news.
#22 Posted by DC NewsHound, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 12:04 PM
Do we have the details of IR internalized? Apparently not. Does that have anything to do with superficiality and bad reading habits by media operatives? Probably. If names are so obviously confusable, editors have to make sure that it is not going to happen on air.
It is a cognitive indicator. For those who want to read the signs. Or can.
[Debra Black. The Toronto Star. Staff Reporter. We’ve all done it — mixed up names of people.
But imagine the embarrassment of journalists and broadcasters — people who are trained to be quick on their feet when broadcasting live — as they repeatedly confused the names of the President of the United States Barack Obama with that of Osama bin Laden.
One of the broadcasters, who is shown several times making the mistake, is Carolyn Jarvis, a correspondent for Global National and Global’s weekly newsmagazine. She also anchors the Saturday edition of Global National, according to Global’s website.]
Now we know why the President was holding back on his birth certificate: He was doctoring "Barack Osama" into "Barack Obama."
#23 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 04:15 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYP10vlFZrk&feature=player_embedded
#24 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 04:26 PM
The question is not where you get your OBL news, but how. How I piece it together in my own private way. Without having Bill Keller spoonfeed it to me.
[US admits bin Laden unarmed when shot: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.]
[Bin Laden leaves a treasure trove of terrorist data.
By Mitch Potter, The Toronto Star, Washington Bureau.
• How deeply into the American mindset will grow the fast-emerging “deather” movement, which doubts whether bin Laden was actually killed? The end of OBL was a frenzied event for online conspiracy theorists, who feasted on the lack of photographic evidence and subsequent U.S. claims of a burial at sea as proof positive it never really happened.]
Have you seen the OBL death certificate? I think not.
The worst of it is, the international Media Illuminati will attempt to slip some clues by us. Note this: "US admits bin Laden un[h]armed when shot."
9/11 was a made-for-TV illusion. Trump is suspected of being a hologram. How else can you account for his hair? Obama is Osama. Osama is Obama. Proof that my doubleganger is out to get me.
#25 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 05:30 PM
A great report by Brian Ross of ABC on the stealth Blackhawk involved in the Bin Laden raid.
The Reuters body photos pretty much explode the rationale for not releasing the Bin Laden death photos. In fact, not to release the photos of Bin Laden in death now would have to rate as somewhat pornographic reticence.
If the CIA does not care, then why should anyone else?
#26 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 12:22 AM
Craig Whitlock: The Washington Post, on Adm. William McRaven, Bin Laden hunter:
[The author of a textbook titled “Spec Ops,” McRaven had long emphasized six key requirements for any successful mission: surprise, speed, security, simplicity, purpose and repetition.
For the especially risky bin Laden operation, he insisted on another: precision.]
There is a good reason why the US operation against bin Laden should not have turned into an information black box. It should have been fully documented in video and photos released to the media. It is strange that the White House itself was in the dark at the critical period of the raid. Not at all impressive. As if they did not want to know the details.
Obama can't have it both ways. He put up with the Koran burning provocation, but he wants to go all prissy about the Osama death documentation, despite the fact that Reuters has scooped everyone with the death photos of the associates.
Don't play politics with the truth, Mr. President. The 9/11 families are right: we want those photos and any video.
The larger reason why the "black box" doctrine is wrong is that there are far more serious problems loose in the world, and far greater threats to America, than one clearly inept terrorist leader. Mexico, for example: see the powerful Dallas Morning News article, "Drug cartels taking over government functions in Mexico" (Alfredo Corchado). In British Columbia, where we are vulnerable to cartel infiltration (note "The Threat Matrix" on the FBI, on the prominence of Vancouver), where the police do not train for even two years, by studying Mexico and "No Country for Old Men," film and novel. It is all over their heads. They are just security guards. If the cartels become further entrenched in BC, it is going to cause a lot of trouble for America.
A comment I strongly recommend is in the National Post today, by Matt Gurney: "Trust Pakistan at your own risk," on nuclear weapons in that country. Both Mexico and Pakistan are far more dangerous than the strength of our information resources, including information precision.
Students in the US should not be wasting time on the SAT. They should be fully assimilating an international media reading cycle. The Australian right now has a fascinating article on Pakistan and bin Laden. We just can't get at necessary information quickly enough, or understand its implications.
The rebuilt Ground Zero should have a prototype honors high school where students would learn how to dominate an international media reading cycle, history, political science, and political fiction, IT, and language. The very opposite to a black box approach to education. So that students would have the intellectual plasticity for 2020, not 1950.
#27 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 01:16 PM
A few extracts from the article:
Kevin Rudd in row over Osama bin Laden ally Umar Patek's arrest
EXCLUSIVE Amanda Hodge in Abbottabad and Peter Alford
The Australian May 06, 2011 12:00AM
[FOREIGN Minister Kevin Rudd has been drawn into an ugly international dispute over intelligence revelations, which Pakistan says could have disrupted the top-secret US operation to kill Osama bin Laden.
Many security experts have also expressed surprise that the leaking of Patek's arrest in Abbottabad did not trigger alarm bells in the bin Laden compound and prompt the al-Qa'ida chief to flee the area.
Pakistan intelligence officials arrested Patek on January 25 after tracking him and his Filipino wife to a house not 10km from the bin Laden compound, following the detention of an alleged al-Qa'ida facilitator in Abbottabad known as Tahir Shehzad.
On April 13, AP was again the first to reveal that Patek was caught in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, just 100km from the capital, Islamabad.
While that leak came from an ISI official, The Australian understands the story created serious blowback both within the ISI and for the Islamabad office of Associated Press.]
What Columbia Journalism School should do is inculcate the media reading cycle in its students. The School should encourage the state of New York to set up honors programs for high school students so that not only would they develop power over the international media, but would also interface their cycle with those of students in the UK and Australia.
It amazes me that the reading cycles are so slow, and that it continues to elude college administrators that such a problem exists. Instead, we have the elaborate scams of College Board and Kaplan, and the information insensitivity of admissions deans.
I would have students master the Cold War board game "Twilight Struggle," "Moby-Dick," "The Scarlet Letter," "Jane Eyre," and "Great Expectations," as linked to the COBUILD English Grammar and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, so as to enhance linguistic and cognitive precision.
A former professor at the Marine university wrote me that American universities, including his own, were just too conservative. Read just too obsolete. The uptake of ideas is far too feeble. Why can't we have these powerful reading and study cycles at West Point and at Columbia? Why can't the CIA and the FBI face cognition head on, with Mark Ashcraft's great text, "Cognition"?
What exactly is the excuse? Maybe we would rather live in the black box.
#28 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 01:52 PM
Mark Moyar (info@markmoyar.com):
I have just about finished your "Triumph Forsaken." A minor point is that it would be better to make the notes as self-contained as possible (since I do a lot of reading, I have no time to keep flipping from the text to notes at the back--I usually read all of the notes first, then the text).
I would like your university to consider establishing the Marine Doctorate. I have little use for master's degrees--I would much prefer to see an intensive 2-year PhD that would draw in 100 beginning students--Marines or not--per year (if the students just could not assimilate the program in two years, it would be necessary to go to three).
I would have students ready at 7 a.m. to work on a print media reading cycle--WSJ, NY Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Australian, Globe and Mail, Times of London and UK Telegraph--learning how to read these papers in two hours so as to practise pattern recognition is hard. Any doctoral student who could not master this cycle would be dropped from the program. It takes about three months of hard work fully to internalize this cycle. The print papers mimic spatial needs far more powerfully than Internet reading. Students should also be at their stations on Saturdays, and study the Sunday papers along with Monday's.
From 9-11 a.m. I would work on a live History and Political Science curriculum. Good books are coming out very fast ("The Road to Dallas," "Triumph Forsaken"). Universities are far too slow in adapting. Students should learn how to get on top of these sections in a good bookstore, working over and over the sections to extract the best books. I never see senior RCMP or Canadian military working over the sections systematically in bookstores.
From 12-2 I would work on English language and literature. Somehow, university and military psychology professors have failed to grasp the intimate connection between language and perception. If such an awareness existed, at West Point and your university the "COBUILD English Grammar" would be official for all operations. Such texts as Henry James's "The Wings of the Dove" and "The Beast in the Jungle" would be mandatory because of their challenging nature. I like your employment of counterfactuals (what might have happened in different
circumstances). However, at any university in America is the linkage between grammar and literature so tight that a professor is teaching "Great Expectations" for the reason that it contains 170 counterfactuals? I do not think so. Not at all. Instead, even at Harvard, we see the misery of TOEFL.
Students should emerge from the Marine Doctorate with a highly evolved ability to compose in Internet screen formats, about 550-600 words, 6 or so paragraphs, in 50 minute units of composition. I could send you a model that I posted at "The Crimson."
Clayton Burns PhD Vancouver.
to Clayton Burns
Clayton,
Thanks for your incisive suggestion about a Marine doctorate. That would be
a great program, but would require a degree of flexibility that is unlikely to be encountered at any university, whether civilian or military. Our university does a better job than most at bringing new thinking into the curriculum but even here it is sometimes difficult to change existing practices. I'm pleased to hear that you are enjoying Triumph Forsaken. I'd recommend that you also read A Question of Command, which students here have begun using.
Best Regards,
Mark Moyar
#29 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 02:03 PM
[Shifting US story invites disbelief. Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor. From: The Australian May 06, 2011 12:00AM:
Indonesian terrorist Umar Patek, the Jemaah Islamiah commander who was integral to the Bali bombing which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, was arrested in Pakistan a few months ago. He had been in Abbottabad. It is known he was in Pakistan to make contact with al-Qa'ida, which has helped JI in the past. According to some sources, Patek visited bin Laden at the compound in Abbottabad.
If so, it was Patek who led the Americans to bin Laden. But if Patek did visit bin Laden, how then is it that the world's most wanted terrorists didn't change his residence as soon as the Indonesian was arrested in January?]
If the CIA courier narrative is fixed, then there would be an obvious benefit: to wrap a justification of CIA torture around the assassination of bin Laden.
Not a pretty prospect. Is the White House capable of participating in such a device? Probably not.
Is the CIA capable of such a self-serving deception? Probably.
#30 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 04:32 PM
I read "The Guardian," "Truth-Out," did give a regular late morning ear to NPR News.
#31 Posted by Brenda, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 06:32 PM
The Washington Post: Obama owes thanks, and an apology, to CIA interrogators By Marc A. Thiessen, Wednesday, May 4, 9:26 AM:
[Earlier this year, Umar Patek, the highest-ranking terrorist captured alive at this point in the Obama administration, was taken into custody by Pakistani authorities. Patek had traveled from Southeast Asia to Abbottabad — the same place where bin Laden was hiding. Coincidence? What was Patek doing in Abbottabad? With whom did he meet and what did they discuss? He should be in CIA custody answering such questions.
The time has come for Obama to restore the CIA interrogation program that made bin Laden’s demise possible — and to instruct Eric Holder to end his witch hunt against the heroes who helped lead us to bin Laden’s lair. That is the least Obama can do for the men and women responsible for the crowning achievement of his presidency. They don’t deserve a special prosecutor, Mr. President. They deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Marc A. Thiessen, a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute , writes a weekly online column for The Post.]
#32 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 07:00 PM
[Bali bomber Umar Patek helped lead world to Osama bin Laden's hideaway.
Amanda Hodge in Abbottabad and Peter Alford. From: The Australian May 05, 2011 12:00AM:
While US authorities have maintained they tracked bin Laden through his courier, Pakistan's highest selling Urdu newspaper, Jang, yesterday reported, without attribution, that the final clues leading to bin Laden's hideout were extracted from Patek under ISI interrogation and handed to the CIA.
Retired Pakistani general turned security analyst Talat Masood told The Australian yesterday "it is highly possible" that Patek's arrest was the final nail in bin Laden's coffin. "His arrest was almost certainly quite significant in that sense," he said.]
#33 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 07:40 PM
That the CIA, according to Fox, had courier information going back to 2002 is odd. That it took so long for the CIA to turn this file around does not seem possible:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4679485/new-details-on-bin-laden-raid
However, one tipoff is the book by T. J. Waters: "Class 11," inside the CIA's first post-9/11 intake. If the book is an accurate portrait of what is deemed a sound education for the CIA, then no wonder.
"Legacy of Ashes" has some excellent material on lapses in intelligence education.
#34 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Thu 5 May 2011 at 11:19 PM
Without making any provocative statements--such as this finally proves that Bob Woodward has become a CIA asset--it would be a good idea to analyze this lead website Washington Post story. On a number of counts, it is a curious one, as much for what it does not say as what it says:
Death of Osama bin Laden: Phone call pointed U.S. to compound — and to ‘the pacer’ By Bob Woodward, Published: May 6
[It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend.
Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?]
#35 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Sat 7 May 2011 at 02:53 PM
I stumbled out of bed in the morning to find a phone message from an emotional relative. The way she led into it made me sure that I was the last one being informed that one of my parents had died. So when she finally said, "bin Laden," I shouted "WTF!?" and hit the erase button.
I gave fervent thanks to be spared my parents and had my cup of coffee. Then I turned to my go-to source for international news---Al Jazeera English online. After reading that the US claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden, and an account of how it was allegedly done, I had all I needed for some time.
Any fuller story would take days to develop. My immediate eye was on Pakistan's protests (cum involvement?), and the real story was going to be not bin Laden's assassination but the fall-out yet to come. In the aftermath, I pieced out a picture drawing on numerous sources, with the exception, however, of the mainstream US media.
#36 Posted by CH, CJR on Mon 20 Jun 2011 at 09:36 PM