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Osama bin Laden was killed in a May raid by Navy SEALs, and Chuck Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL, commanded the “same outfit” that carried out the strike on the Al Qaeda leader. Mr. Pfarrer targets some myths in his book, “Seal Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden.”
Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. (Faisal Mahmood/Reuters/File)
2. Bin Laden was diving for a weapon when shot
Pfarrer describes it this way: “The lights and lasers swept into the room, illuminating the figures of a man and a woman. The woman was shouting [in Arabic] ... ’No, no, don’t do this.’ Osama was standing by the back wall. He dived across the king-size bed to get at the rifle he kept by the headboard. The room smelled like old clothing, like a guest bedroom in a grandmother’s house, a place sort of frozen in time.
“Pinned in the lights, Amal [one of bin Laden’s wives] lifted her hands to her eyes. She said, ‘It’s not him,’ in Arabic, and then something else that the operators could not hear.”
Then, Pfarrer writes, “Four suppressed shots were fired, two rounds and two rounds....The first round sailed past Osama’s face and thudded into the mattress. Osama shoved Amal as he clawed across the bed. A second bullet, aimed at Osama’s head, grazed Amal in the calf.” The next two bullets, he writes, ended bin Laden’s life.
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