The US Special Operations Command is calling a former Navy commando’s book bogus over its claims to describe the “real” version of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
“It’s just not true,” US Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Tim Nye said. “It’s not how it happened.”
Laden with conspiracy theories and attacks on the Obama White House, Chuck Pfarrer’s SEAL Target Geronimo claims an alternative version of the raid in which a team of commandos, known as SEALs, shot bin Laden within 90 seconds of arriving at the Pakistan compound where the al-Qaeda mastermind was holed up.
Pfarrer claims the White House issued a fictional and damaging account of the raid that made the SEALs looks inept. He says President Barack Obama’s speedy acknowledgement of the raid was a craven political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered on the raid useless.
Pfarrer’s account broke into Amazon’s top 20 book sales list last week, and Pfarrer has appeared on Fox News, CNN and in other venues to promote it.
“I have truth on my side,” Pfarrer said. “I spoke to the guys on the ground and in the secondary bird,” he said, referring to the aircraft full of a second SEAL team that was there to rescue the first if it came under attack so far inside Pakistan’s borders.
“This is a fabrication,” Nye countered, issuing an on-the-record denial on behalf of Navy SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven, who took command of all special operations this year.
In his previous role, McRaven oversaw the raid in May as head of the military’s elite counterterrorism unit, the Joint Special Operations Command. Nye said McRaven was concerned the book would lead Americans to doubt the administration’s version of events.
“We have never come forward and gone after an author and say, ‘that is a lie’,” Nye said. “That tells you how far off the mark we believe this book is.”
Nye says Pfarrer had no access to any troops connected to the mission. He said there will be no investigation into whether individual SEALs spoke to Pfarrer because his account is so off-base.
Among his other claims, Pfarrer insists the stealth helicopter that the White House said crashed within moments of launching the raid actually crashed later. He says the SEALs were able to launch their raid as they had planned it, by landing atop the building while another team surged from below.
Pfarrer also said the way the White House described the SEALs shooting bin Laden – that he was unarmed but trying to evade them – is “murder”. He said his version, which has bin Laden reaching for a gun, makes the killing legal.
Officials involved in the raid say Pfarrer is out of date on the post-September 11 laws of war, which sanction targeting al-Qaeda with deadly force.
Pfarrer defended the book as a patriotic way to laud the “heroes of the bin Laden mission”. He said the money he earns will barely cover his medical bills for a long and losing battle with colon cancer. His ruddy complexion and expansive girth bely an illness the personable Pfarrer says has now spread to his lungs.
Pfarrer claims he is still part of the fighting SEAL network, even intimating that he was part of the bin Laden raid preparation.
“In the weeks and months leading up to Neptune’s Spear (the code name for the bin Laden mission), it was my privilege to help troops and platoons train for submissions and run parallel HVT (high-value target) missions,” Pfarrer writes.
“That is categorically incorrect,” Nye said. “He was not involved in mission planning, execution or close mission analysis.”
Pfarrer responded that he conducted training for the SEAL Team 6’s parent organisation, the Naval Special Warfare Command through his defence security company Acme Ballistics. He refused to describe how it was related to the raid, saying the contracts are classified.
Pfarrer frequently claims that his accounts come from a top secret world, and that a reader must take his word on faith. – Sapa-AP