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=== Managed news ===
=== Managed news ===
President Obama was the first senior U.S. official to disclose the operation announcing, "After a firefight, they killed Usama bin Laden and took custody of his body." In a conference call with reporters less than twenty minutes later, a trio of “senior administration officials” were asked if bin Laden was "involved in firing [a weapon] himself or defending himself," one of the briefers replied: "He did resist the assault force. And he was killed in a firefight." Elsewhere in the conference [[National Security Council]] spokesman Tommy Vietor stated: “As the President said this evening, bin Laden was killed in a firefight as our operators came onto the compound.” One of the briefers added “One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant.”
President Obama was the first senior U.S. official to disclose the operation announcing, "After a firefight, they killed Usama bin Laden and took custody of his body." In a conference call with reporters less than twenty minutes later, a trio of “senior administration officials” were asked if bin Laden was "involved in firing [a weapon] himself or defending himself," one of the briefers replied: "He did resist the assault force. And he was killed in a firefight." Elsewhere in the conference [[National Security Council]] spokesman Tommy Vietor stated: “As the President said this evening, bin Laden was killed in a firefight as our operators came onto the compound.” One of the briefers added “One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant.”
Monday morning Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell convened a briefing featuring “senior Defense officials” and “senior intelligence officials.” One of the senior Pentagon officers said, “The American team engaged in a firefight, and as indicated last night, Usama bin Laden did resist.” The same official elaborated on the statement about a woman having been killed. The number involved had at least tripled, from solely bin Laden to “[bin Laden] and some other male combatants” and “appeared to use…women as shields” to “certainly did use women as shields.” One of the intelligence briefers said, “[bin Laden] died during a firefight.” A Pentagon official volunteered that “two women were wounded” in addition to the one killed. Finally, a DOD briefer provided the first estimate of how long the gunfire lasted. “[T]hrough most of the 40 minutes during which U.S. special operators were on the compound,” he said, “they were engaged in a firefight.”
Two hours later, the president’s Assistant for Homeland Security and Counter-Terrorism, [[John Brennan]], joined White House Press Secretary [[Jay Carney]] in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. Brennan described how he, [[Obama]], and the rest of the national security team had kept tabs on the action. “We were able to monitor the situation in real time and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation,” Brennan said. “I'm not going to go into details about what type of visuals we had or what type of feeds that were there, but it was -- it gave us the ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis.” The Al Qaeda chief, he said, “was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house,” and “was killed in that firefight.” Brennan also added the late terrorist waS “hiding behind women who were put in front of him as shields” – evidence, to the White House’s eyes, of “how false [bin Laden’s] narrative has been over the years.”
=== Photographs of Operation and Death ===
=== Photographs of Operation and Death ===