“No Easy Day": book by SEAL who participated in Osama Bin Laden raid

[The Bread Guy]

Well, this didn't take all that long (just under 500 days between raid and latest on-the-shelf date) ....

A detailed first-person account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, written under a pseudonym by a Navy Seal who participated in the mission and was present at bin Laden’s death, will be published next month, according to two publishing executives familiar with the deal.

The book, “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden,” which is scheduled to be released on Sept. 11, has been a tightly held secret at the publisher, Penguin. It promises to be one of the biggest books of the year, with the potential to affect the presidential campaign in the final weeks before the election.

The author’s name will be listed as Mark Owen by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin. For security reasons, he used a pseudonym and changed the names of other Seal members.

A former member of Seal Team 6, the author was a team leader in the operation that resulted in the death of Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.

A co-writer, Kevin Maurer, is the author of four books and was embedded with Special Forces in Afghanistan six times ....

 

[The Bread Guy]

Well, this didn't take all that long (just under 500 days between raid and latest on-the-shelf date) ....

Even fewer days now.....

The publication of a former Navy SEAL’s first-hand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden has been moved up a week, to Sept. 4.

Mark Owen’s “No Easy Day,” already a top seller on Amazon.com, was scheduled to come out Sept. 11. Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), announced Tuesday that the release date was changed in response to “overwhelming excitement” from the public. The first printing has been increased from 300,000 to 575,000 copies.

Government officials are reviewing the book to see if any sensitive information was revealed. Owen, a pseudonym for a former SEAL widely believe to be Matt Bissonnette, said in a statement that he had a “strict desire” not to endanger national security.

armytimes.com, 28 Aug 12

Ready for pre-order at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

 

[Old Sweat]

I picked up the following blog written after reading the book from the Huffington Post. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing Provision of the Copyright Act.

'No Easy Day,' Bin Laden Raid Book: Osama Was Unarmed

Posted: 08/28/2012 8:06 pm Updated: 08/29/2012 8:43 am

The book, "No Easy Day," gives a Navy SEAL's firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

NEW YORK -- The much-anticipated firsthand account of the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden reveals the terrorist leader was unarmed and was already dead with a bullet to the brain when the SEALs entered his bedroom in the compound at Abbottabad, Pakistan.

As the SEALS ascended a narrow staircase, the team's point man saw a man poke his head from a doorway, wrote a SEAL using the pseudonym Mark Owen (whose real identity has since been revealed by Fox News) in “No Easy Day,” a copy of which was obtained at a bookstore by The Huffington Post.

"We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots. BOP. BOP," writes Owen. "I couldn't tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room."

Team members took their time entering the room, where they saw the women wailing over Bin Laden, who wore a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants and a tan tunic, according to the book.

Despite numerous reports that bin Laden had a weapon and resisted when Navy SEALs entered the room, he was unarmed, writes Owen. He had been fatally wounded before they had entered the room.

"Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull” and he was still twitching and convulsing, Owen writes. While bin Laden was in his death throes, Owen writes that he and another SEAL "trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless."

Then the SEALS repeatedly examined his face to make sure he was truly bin Laden. They interrogated a young girl and one of the women who had been wailing over Bin Laden’s body, who verified that it was the terror leader.

The shots fired inside the room appear to contradict the mission they were given. During a meeting with top commanders, a lawyer from either the Pentagon or the White House "made it clear that this wasn't an assassination," writes Owen, who recounted the instructions: "I am not going to tell you how to do your job. What we're saying is if he does not pose a threat, you will detain him."

Searching bin Laden’s neatly organized room, Owen found two guns -– an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol -– with empty chambers. “He hadn’t even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting. He asked his followers for decades to wear suicide vests or fly planes into buildings, but didn’t even pick up his weapon. In all of my deployments, we routinely saw this phenomenon. The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was.”

The book calls out inaccurate accounts of the assault. "The raid was being reported like a bad action movie," Owen writes. "At first, it was funny because it was so wrong."

Contrary to earlier accounts, Owen says SEALs weren't fired upon while they were outside the gate of the compound. There was no 40-minute firefight. And it wasn't true that bin Laden had "time to look into our eyes."

Owen, a 36-year-old SEAL who also took part in a previous 2007 attempt to get Bin Laden and was involved in the heroic 2009 operation to free Captain Richard Phillips from pirates off the coast of Somalia, also had harsh words for President Barack Obama.

Though he praises the president for green-lighting the risky assault, Owen says the SEALS joked that Obama would take credit for their success. On his second night in Afghanistan waiting for final orders, sitting around a fire pit and joking about which Hollywood actors would play them in the bin Laden movie, one SEAL joked, “And we’ll get Obama reelected for sure. I can see him now, talking about how he killed bin Laden,” according to Owen.

Owen writes: “We had seen it before when he took credit for the Captain Phillips rescue. Although we applauded the decision-making in this case, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that he would take all the political credit for this too.”

Later, while watching Obama’s speech announcing the raid, Owen writes: “None of us were huge fans of Obama. We respected him as the commander in chief of the military and for giving us the green light on the mission.” When one SEAL jokes again that they got Obama reelected, Owen asks, “Well, would you rather not have done this?”

He writes: “We all knew the deal. We were tools in the toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles. But we should have done it. It was the right call to make. Regardless of the politics that would come along with it, the end result was what we all wanted.”

Later, when they meet Obama at the White House, Owen says he was reluctant to sign the American flag presented to the president because it would disclose his identity. So, at least one SEAL scribbled a random name on the flag. While going through the metal detector to meet the president, Owen’s pocketknife set off the alarm.

After listening to Obama’s speech and enduring Biden’s “lame jokes that no one got (He seemed like a nice guy, but he reminded me of someone’s drunken uncle at Christmas dinner)" the president invited the team to return to his residence later for a beer.

But Owen writes a few weeks later: “We never got the call to have a beer at the White House.” Joking with a fellow SEAL, “Hey, did you ever hear anything about that beer?” Walt cracks: “ You believed that shit. I bet you voted for change too, sucker.”

Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in an email: "As President Obama said on the night that justice was brought to Osama bin Laden, 'We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country.'"

 

[Jarnhamar]

I'll wait for the video game.

 

[medicineman]

Oh well...should've guessed someone would read it backwards then spoil if for all of us.  I was hoping for a cooler ending, like he's now residing in the luxurious Langley Super-8 Motel and Suites...guess not.

MM

 

[The Bread Guy]

Oh well...should've guessed someone would read it backwards then spoil if for all of us.  I was hoping for a cooler ending, like he's now residing in the luxurious Langley Super-8 Motel and Suites...

In the suite next to Elvis, right?

 

[Rifleman62]

I believe the former SEAL author is anticipating the administration to come after him for disclosing operational information (which he would not do under any circumstances).

When they do, he plans to strike at all the WH leaks.

 

[Redeye]

I love that the same "news" outlet that harped on and on about "operational security" were the ones who revealed the identity of the author. Talk about sucking and blowing simultaneously.

I'm somewhat interested in seeing what he has to say about the operation - and if it really disclosing anything particularly earth-shattering that hasn't already been said or could be reasonably inferred. That said, I'll probably just get it from the library if I find myself that curious in a couple of months.

 

[dangles]

"The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was.”

Pretty funny...but does anyone expect any retaliation from the release of this book?

 

[The Bread Guy]

I believe the former SEAL author is anticipating the administration to come after him for disclosing operational information (which he would not do under any circumstances).

When they do, he plans to strike at all the WH leaks.

Well, the system appears to be vetting the book, so whatever gets out there should, indeed, be OK'ed.

Speaking of partisan stuff ....

The mission was twofold: first and foremost, kill Osama bin Laden. Then, once the deed was done and the troops were back safe, help re-elect the president of the United States by promoting the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist.

That’s the accusation in “No Easy Day,” the firsthand account of the bin Laden raid from Matt Bissonette, a former member of SEAL Team 6. Copies of the book, due out next week, were obtained by the Huffington Post and by the Associated Press’ Kim Dozier.

In the excerpts they present, Bissonette praises President Obama for giving the green light to attack bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. But even before the mission began, Bissonette and his fellow SEALs knew that the raid would be played up by the White House for political purposes.

“We’ll get Obama re-elected for sure. I can see him now, talking about how he killed bin Laden,” one SEAL said, according to Bissonette.

Bissonette adds: “We all knew the deal. We were tools in the toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles. But we should have done it. It was the right call to make. Regardless of the politics that would come along with it, the end result was what we all wanted.”

The degree to which the White House took credit for — and leaked information about — the bin Laden raid has already become a contentious campaign issue. “No Easy Day,” written by Bissonette under a pseudonym and co-authored by the journalist Kevin Maurer, won’t exactly relieve that strain. A political action committee backed by right-wing activists and claiming to represent former special operations forces has gone after the “countless leaks, interviews and decisions by the Obama administration” that have “put future missions and personnel at risk.” ....

Wired.com, 29 Aug 12
It'll be interesting to see how much these same groups go after the book once it's out.

 

[medicineman]

In the suite next to Elvis, right?

Bien sure...likely sharing cocktails and music  ;D.

MM

 

[cupper]

Well, the system appears to be vetting the book, so whatever gets out there should, indeed, be OK'ed.

Problem is they are doing the vetting after the fact and not before the book goes to print. The normal process is to have the agencies hack the thing apart, redact the snot out of it, and the publisher prints a book full of black rectangles interspersed with disjointed pieces of text (see Valerie Plame's bio for a primo example of this).

Now they (DOD and CIA) are looking for legal action opportunities where they could either get an injunction to suspend release, criminal prosecution for leaking classified materials, or at the very least develop damage control strategies once it hit's the bookshelves.

 

[cupper]

The Washington Post has a review of the book by Peter Bergen.

Book review: ‘No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-no-easy-day-the-firsthand-account-of-the-mission-that-killed-osama-bin-laden/2012/08/29/4e4b9302-f20f-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html?hpid=z5

Even before the book went on sale, the announcement by the publisher Dutton that the pseudonymous Mark Owen, one of the SEALs on the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, would be publishing an account of his role in the raid quickly propelled “No Easy Day” to the No. 1 slot on Amazon, displacing “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

It was inevitable that one of the men on the bin Laden mission would eventually write a book about it. After all, we live in an open society. Anyone involved in this history-making mission would want to set the record straight about what exactly happened — given some of the nonsense that has been written about it — and also make a little money on the side. (To his credit, Owen — whose real name has been revealed to be Matt Bissonnette — is donating most of the proceeds of his book to charities that help the families of fallen SEALs.)

Owen’s account of the raid fits almost exactly with my own understanding of the operation, based on being the only outside observer allowed inside the bin Laden compound before it was demolished and interviewing dozens of American officials familiar with the details of the operation, as well as interviews with Pakistani officials who investigated the aftermath of the raid.

The only surprising thing, perhaps, given the code of silence that exists among the men of SEAL Team 6 — a small, tightknit covert unit that prides itself on being the “quiet professionals” — is how soon this tell-all book was published. After all, it’s been only a little over a year since bin Laden’s body was dumped from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson as it cruised off the coast of Pakistan.

The title of Owen’s book comes from a piece of Navy SEAL lore that “the only easy day was yesterday.” “No Easy Day” joins a growing shelf of best-selling SEAL memoirs that detail just how true that piece of lore is. Last year in “The Heart and the Fist,” Eric Greitens, a Rhodes scholar and SEAL, eloquently outlined the notoriously tough training regime that every SEAL must go through. Marcus Luttrell’s 2007 book, “Lone Survivor,” gave a visceral account of how he barely escaped the debacle of Operation Redwing in Afghanistan two years earlier, when he was the only one of four SEALs to survive a brutal firefight with the Taliban. The ensuing rescue operation cost the lives of 16 other servicemen.

How does “No Easy Day” stack up with these other SEAL memoirs? Owen and his co-author, Kevin Maurer — who has written extensively on special operations — ably navigate the reader through the secretive world of the SEALs, as well as Owen’s graduation into SEAL Team 6, an elite group within the SEAL elite that, along with the Army’s Delta Force, is arguably the most effective fighting unit in the world.

Owen describes his life growing up in the Alaskan outback, where he learned to handle guns and hunt from a young age — valuable skills for his future line of work. And he does a nice job of detailing the grueling deployments and uncertainties of warfare in the streets of Baghdad and the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where it is luck as much as skill that keeps you alive.

Sometimes the metaphors in “No Easy Day” get too down-home and obscure — heavy weapons strafing an Afghan ridge­line that looks like a “Bloomin’ Onion at Outback Steakhouse” will no doubt puzzle many readers. But generally the writing is fast-paced, and Owen and Maurer tell some good yarns in a conversational style. They also neatly capture the camaraderie, the pranks, the constant training and the evident love that the men of SEAL Team 6 have for their jobs.

Of course, the readers who are lining up to buy “No Easy Day” are not doing so to read just another SEAL memoir. They want to know exactly what happened the night bin Laden was killed and what it felt like to be on that mission.

Owen and Maurer do not disappoint. They take the reader on a roller-coaster ride, opening the book with Owen on the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed within the first seconds of the SEAL team’s arrival at bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Preparations

The heart of the book is the four weeks or so leading up to that moment and the 40 minutes that followed it as the SEALs recovered from what could have been a crippling blow to the mission.

Owen says that the plan was for one Black Hawk to hover over bin Laden’s third-floor bedroom at the compound. Some SEALs would then fast-rope onto the roof of the bedroom and surprise al-Qaeda’s leader while he slept. The SEALs practiced this on a replica of bin Laden’s residence made from plywood, shipping containers and chain-link fencing that was assembled in the pine forests of North Carolina, but they had no intelligence about what the interiors of the compound would look like.

At one point, the SEALs asked a lawyer who was attending the rehearsals if the bin Laden operation was an assassination mission. The lawyer replied that “if he is naked with his hands up, you’re not going to engage him. . . . You will detain him.”

Owen has, of course, only a grunt’s-eye view of the bin Laden operation. There is little in the book about the decision making at the White House as the president considered the multiple courses of action at bin Laden’s presumed hideout. Nor is there much about how the intelligence picture that indicated bin Laden might be living at the Abbottabad compound developed. But there is an intriguing cameo appearance by a CIA analyst, “Jen,” who had been recruited out of college and had been on the bin Laden “account” for the past five years. Despite the circumstantial nature of the intelligence case that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, Jen told Owen she was “one hundred percent” certain that al-Qaeda’s leader was hiding there.

The kill shot

After landing in the compound in the controlled helicopter crash, the SEALs were 15 minutes into the mission and hadn’t yet found bin Laden. Then the “point man” spotted a man poking his head out a room on the third floor. He shot at him. The SEALs moved slowly toward this room and inside found a man lying on the floor in his death throes. Owen and another SEAL finished him off with a few more rounds.

This contradicts previous accounts that bin Laden was shot by the SEALs inside his bedroom. This version of events indicates that there was little real effort to capture bin Laden, despite the admonition of the lawyer to the SEALs that detaining bin Laden was definitely an option.

The raid commander “Jay” called his boss, Adm. William McRaven, on satellite radio, saying, “For God and country. I pass Geronimo. . . . Geronimo EKIA.”

“Geronimo” was the code name for bin Laden, and “EKIA” stands for “enemy killed in action.”

Owen found bin Laden’s guns in his bedroom, an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol. The chambers of both guns were empty. “He hadn’t even prepared a defense,” Owen reflects.

Finally, the SEAL team arrived back in Afghanistan, and Owen and some of his fellow SEALs who didn’t seem to be big fans of President Obama watched his news conference about the successful mission.

“We’d expected him to give away details,” he writes. “If he had, we could have talked some smack. But I didn’t think his speech was bad at all. If anything, it was kind of anticlimactic.”

Owen’s account, however, is devastating to that of Chuck Pfarrer, a SEAL who retired more than two decades ago and who published “SEAL Target Geronimo,” a New York Times bestseller, in November. In Pfarrer’s account of the raid, which he says was based on talking to the SEAL team members on the operation, they did fast-rope successfully onto the roof of bin Laden’s bedroom and within two minutes of the raid beginning they had killed him. The helicopter crash came much later in the raid in Pfarrer’s telling.

Special Operations Command, which almost never comments on operations, issued an unusual on-the-record statement that Pfarrer’s account was a “fabrication” and that he had never spoken to the SEALs on the raid.

Pfarrer’s book is being reissued on Sept. 11 in paperback. Don’t waste your money on it. Buy Owen’s book to find out what really happened that night in Abbottabad.

Bergen is the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad.”

 

[Jarnhamar]

You just know these guys were coming up with book ideas on the helicopter ride back from the compound.  I actually figured a book would be out in 4 or 5 months max.

 

[cupper]

Looks like the book is a real "hit" at DOD.

Pentagon threatens lawsuit over Osama bin Laden book

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80491.html?hp=r8

The Defense Department is threatening to go after an ex-SEAL author and his publisher over a new book that challenges the administration’s official account of last year’s raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The Pentagon late Thursday released a letter from its top lawyer, Jeh Johnson, to publishing giant Penguin and “Mark Owen,” the pseudonym of an ex-SEAL special operator who has been identified as Matt Bissonnette. In the letter, Johnson said Bissonnette had breached non-disclosure agreements he signed while on active duty in 2007.

According to official Navy records obtained Thursday by POLITICO, Bissonnette served in the Navy from 1998 until April of this year. Johnson wrote that the NDA he’d signed remained in effect “even after you left the active duty Navy.”

“In the judgment of the Department of Defense, you are in material breach and violation of the non-disclosure agreements you signed,” Johnson wrote to “Owen,” in keeping with DOD’s policy not to identify some special operators. “Further public dissemination of your book will aggravate your breach and violation of your agreements.”

Johnson closed by informing “Owen” and Penguin that the Defense Department “is considering pursuing against you, and all those acting in concert with you, all remedies legally available to us in light of this situation.”

The Pentagon could ask the Justice Department to try to prosecute Bissonnette or seize the royalties raised by the book, which is officially due out Monday but has already gone on sale in some places. Its original release date was Sept. 11, but it was moved up in response to national hype over the first account of the bin Laden raid to come from a member of the team that staged it.

Johnson’s letter is among the first official comments from the Defense Department over the book; previously it had deferred questions to the White House. Its top spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters on Thursday that he would not comment on Bissonnette’s account other than to say that administration officials had given the most accurate information available in the days after the May, 2011 raid.

At that time, White House and defense officials said bin Laden “resisted” the SEAL raiders, used his wives as a “shield” and that the U.S. troops had been in a “40 minute firefight” during their raid. But according to reports about Bissonnette’s book, the SEALs shot bin Laden when he stuck his head out of a doorway and laughed about the “firefight” reports they saw in the news media.

White House officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

 

[cupper]

Ahh. We now have a game of dueling lawyers. Who's gonna end up squealing like a pig?

Ex-SEAL fires back at DOD over book

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80537.html?hp=l10

An embattled ex-SEAL author is firing back at the Defense Department after it accused him of breaching his non-disclosure agreement, arguing that the deal did not cover the material he has included in his book.

An attorney for former special operator Matt Bissonnette, who wrote about his role in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden under the pen name “Mark Owen,” responded Friday to an earlier letter from the Pentagon that warned it was considering legal action.

Lawyer Robert Luskin, of the high-powered D.C. law firm Patton Boggs, wrote to DOD general counsel Jeh Johnson that Bissonnette’s 2007 NDA “invites, but by no means requires, Mr. Owen to submit materials for pre-publication review.” Owen and his publisher, Penguin, did not screen his book, “No Easy Day,” with defense or intelligence officials before its scheduled release next week.

A copy of his letter was released Friday by Penguin.

Moreover, Luskin wrote, Bissonnette’s NDA doesn’t even cover the events that he actually wrote about.

“Although the Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Statement does require pre-publication security review under certain circumstances, that obligation is expressly limited to specifically identified Special Access Programs,” he wrote.

“That agreement was executed in January 2007, and the Special Access Programs to which it applies were identified on that date. Accordingly it is difficult to understand how the matter that is the subject of Mr. Owen’s book could conceivably be encompassed by the non-disclosure agreement that you have identified.”

In other words, Luskin argues the NDA cited by Johnson delineated the things Bissonnette couldn’t discuss at the time he signed it, and given that the raid against bin Laden didn’t take place until May, 2011, it wasn’t among them.

The response appears to put the ball back in the Pentagon’s court – officials said Friday before the release of Penguin’s letter they believed “Owen’s” agreement obligated him to screen his book with them before publication. They could ask the Justice Department to prosecute him or attempt a lawsuit seeking to seize his royalties from the book.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that even if he ultimately wins the the battle of the lawsuits, life as he knows it will from this day forth become very difficult when dealing with the government. Hope his taxes are all in order.  :Tin-Foil-Hat:

 

[Jarnhamar]

What?  The DOD lied about how Osama was killed? He didn't use his wife as a shield?

I don't believe it, why would they lie about how he died and make it more fantastic than it actually was?
*cough*Jessica lynch*couch*

 

[MikeL]

I'll wait for the video game.

Why wait for the game when you can reenact the raid now


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2190175/You-shoot-dead-Osama-325-Former-SEAL-recreates-raid-Bin-laden-complex.html

 

[The Bread Guy]

Why wait for the game when you can reenact the raid now


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2190175/You-shoot-dead-Osama-325-Former-SEAL-recreates-raid-Bin-laden-complex.html

Paint me naive, but I'm actually a bit surprised at this.  So soon, anyway....

 

[dangerboy]

Just finished reading the book, nothing very in depth about it but it was an entertaining read.  Much like most books of this type (Bravo Two Zero, The One that Got Away, etc) about have the book is the author recounting training and other missions.  It just about the seals point of view so not a lot of info on how they found Bin Laden (I will check out "Zero Dark Thirty" for their version of the story).  Overall a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  Whether or not you believe the information presented is up to you as I think it will be a long time (if ever) that the American Government will tell the whole story.