Email shows effort to shield bin Laden photos
By STEPHEN BRAUN
18 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A
newly-released email shows that 11 days after the killing of terror
leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, the U.S. military's top special
operations officer ordered subordinates to destroy any photographs of
the al-Qaida founder's corpse or turn them over to the CIA.
The email was
obtained under a freedom of information request by the conservative
legal group Judicial Watch. The document, released Monday by the group,
shows that Adm. William McRaven, who heads the U.S. Special Operations
Command, told military officers on May 13, 2011 that photos of bin
Laden's remains should have been sent to the CIA or already destroyed.
Bin Laden was killed by a special operations team in Pakistan on May 2,
2011.
McRaven's order to purge
the bin Laden material came 10 days after The Associated Press asked
for the photos and other documents under the U.S. Freedom of Information
Act. Typically, when a freedom of information request is filed to a
government agency under the Federal Records Act, the agency is obliged
to preserve the material sought — even if the agency later denies the
request.
On May 3, 2011, the
AP asked Special Operations Command's Freedom of Information/Privacy Act
Division office for "copies of all e-mails sent from and to the U.S.
government account or accounts" of McRaven referencing bin Laden.
McRaven was then vice admiral.
A
May 4, 2011 response from the command's FOIA office to the AP
acknowledged the bin Laden document request and said it had been
assigned for processing. AP did not receive a copy of the McRaven email
obtained by Judicial Watch.
The
Department of Defense FOIA office told the AP in a Feb. 29, 2012 letter
that it could find no McRaven emails "responsive to your request" for
communications about the bin Laden material.
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