SEALs were told to say they were hunting for a lost drone if they were caught in Pakistan

The Navy SEAL team who carried out the mission to kill Osama bin Laden laughed out loud at their superiors ‘preposterous’ suggestion of a cover story in the event that the mission didn’t even reach the al-Qaeda head’s Pakistani compound.
That is the latest revelation from former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonette in his first hand account of the bin Laden raid, ‘No Easy Day’ and he makes it clear that not one member of the ultimately successful mission trusted the excuse to work with their supposed allies.
In the event of being apprehended by any Pakistani forces the men of SEAL Team 6 were instructed to say that their secret mission was to locate and extract a missing unmanned drone.
‘The story was preposterous. We were allies with Pakistan on paper, so if we did lose a drone, the State Department would negotiate directly with the Pakistani government to get it back.
‘The story didn’t wash and would be very difficult to stick to during hours of questioning.
‘The truth is, if we got to that point, no story we could come up with was going to cover up twenty-two SEALs packing sixty pounds of hi-tech gear on their backs.’
Bissonette, who has caused political waves with his decision to document the bin Laden raid a little more than a year on from its successful conclusion had other insights into the mission.
He writes how the night before the raid some of the SEAL Team 6 took Ambien because they could not sleep.
The 36-year-old, he wrote his book under the pseudonym Mark Owen – but whose real identity was leaked by Fox News also tells how the team had to a battle with the CIA not to take an extra sixty-pound box of cellphone-jamming equipment.
The special forces soldier did take along $200 to use for bribes in the case of mission failure and a digital camera which he used to photograph bin Laden’s body and face – photographs which are now under lock and key in the White House.
Wearing night vision goggles that cost $65,000, Bissonette admitted to dozing on the helicopter ride to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound with his legs dangling out of a top secret stealth helicopter.
Indeed, during the landing, Bissonette was yanked to safety by a fellow SEAL as the helicopter he was in crashed on landing at the compound.
He described how the the Navy SEALS killed bin Laden’s son Khalid as they made their way through the compound towards the terrorist leader’s private quarters on the third floor. Before revealing the moment a teammate opened fire on a man who had peered through a doorway as they made their way up a flight of stairs.
He wrote: ‘We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots. BOP. BOP.
‘The point man had seen a man peeking out of the door on the right side of the hallway about ten feet in front of him. The man disappeared into the dark room.’
Bissonnette alleges he was the second man to step inside the room and find a man lying on the ground, surrounded by two hysterical women – later revealed to be two of his wives. Three children, likely to have been bin Laden’s own offspring, were cowering in the corner.
He wrote: ‘He was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants and a tan tunic. The point man’s shots had entered the right side of his head. Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull. In his death throes he was still twitching and convulsing.’
Bissonnette and his teammate, named ‘Tom’ in the book, then fired a series of rounds into his chest to ensure he was dead.
Examining the body, the pair became convinced they had killed Bin Laden.
Bissonnette wrote: ‘The man’s face was mangled from from at least one bullet one and covered in blood. his chest was torn up.
‘I started to wipe blood away from his face using a blanket from the bed. With each swipe, the face became more familiar.
‘It was strange to see such an infamous face up close. Lying in front of me was the reason we had been fighting for the last decade.’
Despite alleging that his superiors handed the men of SEAL Team 6 a lame cover story, Bissonette does outline the incredible level of detail that the American intelligence community went to in planning the mission.
A full scale model of bin Laden’s house was mocked up in the North Carolina woods and analysts from the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency were aware of every detail of the al Qaeda chief’s hideout.