The controversy over releasing the identity of a man who helped kill Osama bin Laden

A memoir of the killing of Osama bin Laden was published by Penguin on Sept. 11, 2012, the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil perpetrated under bin Laden's direction. The publisher describes the book as a "blow-by-blow narrative" that "is an essential piece of modern history." (Read a review posted to Goodreads on Sept. 19, 2012.)

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden was written by a U.S. Navy SEAL using the pseudonym Mark Owen. Owen was one of 24 men who participated in the raid. Navy SEALs meet strict requirements for physical fitness, mental aptitude, and psychological resilience before entering rigorous training.

Even before his book hit the shelves of bookstores, "Owen" was expected to face legal charges for publishing it. His contract with the Pentagon forbid him to reveal information about the raid. When, on Nov. 5, 2014, the author sued his attorney for $8 million for incorrectly advising that the book did not need to be reviewed by the Department of Defense, he revealed in the lawsuit that the government was demanding a penalty of $4.5 million from the author. The amount represented the current and expected future proceeds of the book.

The author's real name was revealed by Justin Fishel in a controversial story for Fox News on Aug. 23, and his name is now widely known. Within a day of that story, the book soared to the position of the single best-selling book on Amazon, even though the book was still only available for pre-order.

Fishel had previously blogged about Navy SEAL Team 6 following the famous mission. In a post for Fox News shortly after the 2011 killing of bin Laden, Fishel noted that the small team of elite service-members "have expressed concerns about their safety and the safety of their families now that details of the mission have been made public."

Indeed, the US government did not even want the name of the unit to be made public; Obama did not mention it in his address to the nation immediately following the raid.

The government also declined to release photos of bin Laden's corpse, fearing that the risk of sparking violent retaliation outweighed the benefit of assuring the public of the terrorist's demise.

Why did Fishel, who understands the role of privacy in protecting the SEALs' safety, write a story using the memoirist's real name? Perhaps he believed that the memoirist had put his fellow soldiers at risk and therefore was fair game for retaliation. Fishel quoted a SEAL who said, "How do we tell our guys to stay quiet when this guy [Owen] won't?" and a military spokesman who said, "He’s [Owen's] the one who started this so he bears the ultimate responsibility for this.”

Other major news outlets distanced themselves from Fox's stance. Even though the author's real name had already been revealed, NBC News said it would not use the name in its news stories, and CNN expressed a similar position. Both organizations acknowledged that the publisher of No Easy Day had requested that the media not perpetuate the publication of the author's real name.

Unsurprisingly, the revelation of the SEAL's real identity had prompted terrorist websites to publish death threats against him. It seems likely that news organizations that refrain from publishing the man's real name might feel a lessened sense of responsibility for hate speech that uses the man's real name.

Being "outed" to the press is risky for someone who has participated in classified activity. There are numerous examples of this.

In 2003, White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove told Matt Cooper, a journalist for Time, that former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame was an active CIA agent. Days later, Robert Novak published a column in the Washington Post identifying Plame's role. Plame, of course, could no longer serve in the same career once her identity had been made public. It is generally believed that this was done intentionally to punish her husband for publicly disagreeing with one of the White House's positions.

In 2012, another identity disclosure affected a Pakistani man who assisted the US in locating the residence where bin Laden was subsequently killed. A Pakistani tribal court sentenced the man to 33 years in jail on charges of treason.

This article was originally posted to Helium Network on Aug. 27, 2012.

Update

The 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty follows the manhunt of bin Laden. "As an act of myth-making, Zero Dark Thirty is inescapable," Dan Jackson wrote for Thrillist in 2019. "It established the narrative that all future counter-narratives must push back against or attempt to upend."

"The film's dramatic arc," Daniel Klaidman writes, "follows Maya's near-messianic quest to take out 'UBL.' Intense and headstrong, she battles the weary fatalism of her bosses, suppresses all moral doubt about the use of torture to extract leads, and sticks to her theory of the case with feverish conviction. The movie's harrowing, climactic kill operation is Maya's vindication. But then, having identified bin Laden's body in a hangar at Bagram Air Base, she finds herself all alone in a cavernous cargo hold, a thousand-yard stare on her face." ("Will Obama End the War on Terror?" Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek, December 24, 2012, p. 28) "No movie has captured the ethos of the 'we need to kill these people' era better than Zero Dark Thirty." (p. 31)

This American flag was photographed aboard an aircraft carrier on Dec. 7, 2001. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives. © No known copyright restrictions. Flickr.

The case for calling the enemy 'Daesh'

Isis is the Greek name of an ancient Egyptian fertility goddess. The Egyptians, who were the ones who actually worshipped her thousands of years ago, pronounced her name something like Aset, Ast, Iset, or Uset. Her Greek name has retained appeal, conveying exotic, earthy sexuality and strength. Thousands of women are named Isis, and many American businesses have branded themselves with her name. Dean Obeidallah reported: "According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, more than 270 products or business names among active federal trademarks use 'ISIS.'"

There is competition for her name. Today, a terrorist group so extreme that even al-Qaeda disavows it is self-styling itself as a new state. Initially, it announced itself as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, which in English has the acronym "ISIS". The exact region of the imagined caliphate is still in dispute, but even when "al-Sham" is replaced with "Syria," the acronym remains intact. Major American media outlets including CNN, NBC, and NPR still use the name "ISIS". The Obama administration, however, now prefers the acronym "ISIL," standing for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Meanwhile, the group itself has decided not to geographically limit its aspirations, and now simply refers to itself as Islamic State (IS).

Despite its relatively sudden appearance, the extremely violent, repressive group is believed to have tens of thousands of fighters, and now that it has captured some oil facilities in northern Iraq and northern Syria, it is believed to have an income of $1 million per day.

France recently announced that they would call this group "Daesh." Zeba Khan (who writes on Twitter @zebakhan) argued in The Boston Globe that this was a sensible choice, since

"it spells out the acronym of the group’s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. Yet, at the same time, 'Daesh' can also be understood as a play on words – and an insult. Depending on how it is conjugated in Arabic, it can mean anything from 'to trample down and crush' to 'a bigot who imposes his view on others.' Already, the group has reportedly threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who uses the term."

That ought to settle the matter. "Daesh" is the name that protests the group's influence, denies them the dignity of naming themselves and the power to declare themselves a state, and reveals their powerlessness to carry out their threats against the speaker.

As Khan points out, violent movements on this scale must be defeated both militarily and intellectually. Identifying the right name may help win the war of ideas. Allowing people to choose their own name is a sign of respect, and, in this case, no respect is due to this organization.

On a related note: in the case of lone militants, who tend to be disorganized and ineffective, some have suggested that a simple insult, such as "nitwits," is sufficient.

Consider Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – the Nigerian "Jockstrap Jihadist" who boarded a Detroit-bound jet in Amsterdam with a suicidal plan in his head and some explosives in his underwear. Although the media colored the incident as a sophisticated al-Qaeda plot, Abdulmutallab showed no great skill or cunning, and simple safeguards should have kept him off the plane in the first place. He was, after all, traveling without luggage, on a one-way ticket that he purchased with cash. All of this while being on a U.S. government watch list.

Fortunately, Abdulmutallab, a college-educated engineer, failed to detonate his underpants. ("The Case for Calling Them Nitwits." Daniel Byman and Christine Fair. The Atlantic. July/August 2010. p. 107.)

Isis image above: public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Shakil Afridi, doctor who helped US find Osama bin Laden, faces long jail term in Pakistan

Pakistan jailed the doctor who helped the US find Osama bin Laden. Originally posted to Helium Network on May 25, 2012.

Pakistan sentenced a man to a lengthy jail term because he helped the United States locate Osama bin Laden's residence inside Pakistan. The US subsequently raided the compound and killed bin Laden. Pakistan has maintained that the US should have first asked for their cooperation.

The U.S. CIA had asked Dr. Shakil Afridi, a surgeon employed by the Pakistani government, to collect DNA from children living in a suspicious compound. The US wanted the DNA to determine if the inhabitants of the house were family members of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The US already had the DNA of bin Laden's sister.

The US had been aggressively searching for bin Laden ever since 2001. After the US invaded Afghanistan, he was suspected of having escaped over the southeastern border into Pakistan and was widely imagined to be hiding in a cave.

In the decade following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the US gave over $20 billion in aid to Pakistan. Pakistan provided military support to the US invasion of Afghanistan but limited the amount of activity that the US could conduct inside Pakistan. Diplomatic relations were always strained.

Eventually suspicion fell on a million-dollar compound near a Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad. Despite the apparent wealth of the owner, the compound reportedly had no Internet access and all trash was burned. It seemed a likely hideout for a criminal.

Update: It is now widely believed that Pakistani Brigadier Usman Khalid, a senior intelligence officer, leaked the whereabouts of bin Laden to the US. Seymour Hersh wrote for the London Review of Books in May 2015 that bin Laden was kept prisoner in the Abbottabad compound for years by Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Khalid revealed the location for millions of dollars of reward money, according to Pakistan's The News. Carlotta Gall said that the reporter for The News is credible, and on May 12, 2015 she approved of the overall theory in the New York Times: "On this count, my own reporting tracks with Hersh’s."

To attempt to obtain the DNA from the residents of the compound, Afridi ran a fake vaccination program. "Although Afridi apparently failed to collect blood," Ismail Khan wrote for the Brisbane Times, "he was able to secure a telephone number for Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden's trusted courier, enabling the CIA to confirm his identity."

The U.S. subsequently sent in Navy SEAL Team 6 which killed Osama bin Laden in the compound on May 2, 2011. Bin Laden was shot in the head and chest and was quickly buried at sea, eliminating the possibility that his grave would become a shrine for terrorists that would require ongoing military attention. The Taliban - an organization closely allied with bin Laden's al Qaeda - quickly acknowledged that bin Laden had indeed been killed in the raid.  Ayman al-Zawahiri was announced a month later as the new leader of al Qaeda.

Pakistan reacted angrily to the raid by asking the US to limit its military presence in Pakistan and threatening to reduce their cooperation with the US.  They claimed that the US's failure to inform them of and include them in the raid implied a lack of trust.

One of bin Laden's three wives revealed that Bin Laden's family had been living there since 2005, prior to which they had lived elsewhere in Pakistan.  None of the three women are Pakistani; after the raid, they were detained by Pakistani officials and were charged with immigration violations in March 2012. Bin Laden was not Pakistani either. He did not have a citizenship; Saudi Arabia had revoked it in 1994 due to his terrorist activities.

The identity of Afridi, the doctor who worked with the US to identify the residents of the compound, was somehow made public. On May 23, 2012, a tribal court in Pakistan's Khyber district sentenced Afridi to 33 years in jail, to be slightly reduced if he pays a fine amounting to several times the annual income for an average Pakistani. Afridi was not present at his trial and had no legal representation. According to the BBC, trials at tribal courts do not always follow typical procedures.

Had he been charged under Pakistani penal law, however, he might have been subject to the death penalty. He is now being held in isolation at the central jail in Peshawar, a compound fenced off from the road with guard towers of sand-colored brick. Prison officials say they are concerned for his safety and his health.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have verbally defended Afridi. Panetta told 60 Minutes in January 2012 that Afridi "was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan" and "was helping to go after terrorism." It is unclear whether the US "outed" Afridi to Pakistan and why he was not given asylum in the United States.

The day after Afridi's sentencing, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee reacted by unanimously voting to cut aid to Pakistan by $33 million, symbolic of his 33-year sentence. This was in addition to significant cuts they had already recommended. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called Pakistan a "schizophrenic ally" while Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called the situation "Alice in Wonderland at best."

Update: In March 2014, Afridi's sentence was reduced to 23 years. In March 2015, Afridi's former lawyer was fatally shot near Peshawar, Pakistan; two militant groups claimed responsibility.

Pakistan has argued that the U.S. killing of bin Laden violated its sovereignty. On the request of parliament, Pakistan's Abbottabad Commission produced a report, hundreds of pages long, inquiring into the incident.

According to Pakistan's AAJ News, Afridi was convicted of "offences against the state, conspiracy or attempt to wage war against Pakistan, concealing with intent designs to wage war against the state and on charges of working against the country's sovereignty."

It is hard to see how the assassination of bin Laden harmed Pakistan's national interests, making the charge of treason questionable. Rather, the UK's Daily Mail reported that "the sentence is viewed by Western officials as punishment for humiliating the nation which claimed not to know it was harbouring the Al Qaeda leader."

Among Pakistan's troubles are the growing mobilization of its religious extremists against its more moderate, democratically elected officials. As just one example, when the governor of Punjab province, home to half of Pakistan's population, was assassinated by his own bodyguard on January 4, 2011, no clerics were willing to recite funeral prayers, fearing for their own safety. Other politicians, including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, have also been assassinated in recent years by extremists. This violent climate has a constraining effect upon the words and actions of many otherwise liberal politicians.