Bin Laden Shooter Dispute, SEAL Team 6 Member Says Story Was Embellished

A Bin Laden shooter dispute has followed the Esquire piece recently by the man who allegedly took down America’s most sought-out adversary, and it has been alleged that the “Bin Laden shooter” who gave his account of happenings to the mag was embellishing his account of the raid.

The Bin Laden shooter dispute arises as a third member of the SEAL Team 6 squad speaks out about the night the Al Qaeda head was taken out in Afghanistan, and Britain’s Independent notes that with this information, there are “now at least three different accounts of what happened the night Osama bin Laden was killed.”

The third Bin Laden shooter dispute claim surfaced on CNN, where the Esquire account was heavily disputed in a piece this week.

The coverage is lengthy, but CNN reports that the Bin Laden shooter dispute stems from what may have been an overly self-aggrandizing account of the raid:

“The SEAL Team 6 operator who spoke to me says there is no way the Shooter could have seen a gun in bin Laden’s reach because the two guns that were found in bin Laden’s bedroom after al Qaeda’s leader was killed were only found after a thorough search of the room and were sitting on a high shelf above the frame of the door that opened to bin Laden’s bedroom.”

The piece adds:

“The SEAL operator also points out there was a discussion before the raid in which the assault team was told ‘don’t shoot the guy [bin Laden] in the face unless you have to’ because the CIA would need to analyze good pictures of bin Laden’s face for its facial recognition experts to work effectively. Yet the Shooter in the Esquire story says he shot bin Laden on purpose twice in the forehead.”

After the Bin Laden shooter dispute, the unnamed SEAL who spoke to Esquire declined to comment on the allegations.