Everyone knows something of what happened the night American Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad. Frenzied reports followed the news of his death as information, much of it erroneous, flooded the public domain.
Bin Laden was armed and engaged the Seals in a fire fight; he was cowering behind his wife when Seals stormed his room and pushed her towards them; there was a stand-off where he looked into the Seals’ eyes before they shot him.
The New Yorker published a controversial account of events by Nicholas Schmidle where some of those untruths were advanced. Schmidle’s piece is so thick with atmospheric actualities that readers would reasonably assume that it is based on the testimonies of those involved, except it isn’t.
This conceit continues as Schmidle relates the last moments of bin Laden’s life.
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