The true story of the killing of bin Laden by author and former U.S. Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer
On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. a satellite uplink was sent from Pakistan crackling into the situation room of the White House: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, ended Osama bin Laden’s reign of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Neptune's Spear from the men who were there. After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details in an exclusive account of what happened as he takes readers inside the walls of Bin Laden’s compound penetrating deep into the terrorist’s lair to reach the exact spot where the Al Qaeda leader was cowering when the bullet entered his head. SEAL Target Geronimo is an explosive story of unparalleled valor and clockwork military precision carried out by the most elite fighting force in the world—the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six.
"A marvelously engrossing account of the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden...Richly told in broad, cinematic strokes, this is catnip for readers who enjoy special-ops tales."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "The book is more than just a high-adventure black ops thriller. It is a work of historical importance that sets the record straight about our struggle against forces dedicated to rebuilding an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East... It is a book you will read as you walk on the sidewalk because you do not want the action to stop."--Neil W. McCabe, Human Events "Pfarrer certainly had access. A SEAL Team Six assault-element commander in the 1980s, he is known inside the intelligence community for his well-regarded first book, Warrior Soul...He clearly had detailed conversations with senior officers in the SEALs’ chain of command (especially Adm. William McRaven and then–SEAL Team Six commander Scott Kerr) and understands the vocabulary and the culture very well...SEAL Target Geronimo explodes a number of media myths about the raid to kill bin Laden...There was no “45-minute” running gun battle. The SEAL team fired only 12 bullets, and the whole operation lasted only 38 minutes...The most provocative part of the book is pure speculation: by killing bin Laden, did the SEALs accidentally do Zawahiri’s dirty work?... As the British Foreign Office used to famously say: 'Interesting, if true.'"--Richard Miniter, The Daily Beast “Chuck Pfarrer writes with the brilliant eye of a novelist and the real-world authority of a soldier who has fought in the world’s most mysterious corners. He’s not only a poet and soldier, but also a deeply read historian. Pfarrer has written a true page-turner about the inside story of Operation Neptune’s Spear. There is enough action here, enough human drama, enough fascinating history, to keep you reading until dawn—you simply have to know what happens next. SEAL Target Geronimo is first-rate storytelling. It’s an amazing story, written about a world no one knows better than Chuck Pfarrer himself.”--Doug Stanton, author of In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers
About the Author
Chuck Pfarrer is a former assault element commander of SEAL Team Six. He has written op-eds for The New York Times and the Knight Ridder syndicate, and appeared as an author and counterterrorism expert on C-SPAN2, NPR, Alhurra, IPR, Voice of America, Fox News, and America Tonight. Pfarrer serves presently as an associate editor of The Counter Terrorist, the American Journal of Counterterrorism. Pfarrer is the author of the bestseller Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL. His Hollywood credits include writing and producing work for Navy Seals, Darkman, Hard Target, The Jackal, Virus, and Red Planet. He lives in Michigan.
Product Details
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (November 8, 2011)
SEAL Target Geronimo, Inside the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden Saint Martin's Press (November, 2011)
An Inconvenient Bit of History by Chuck Pfarrer
Operation Neptune's Spear, planned by SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven, was one of America's most brilliant special operations successes. Thirty-eight minutes on target, zero American casualties, and the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 sent to meet his maker. One for the history books... well, not quite.
In the six months since the mission, history, it seems, has been up for grabs. In the days and weeks after the raid the US Government floundered through a series of stories, corrections and walk backs regarding the operation. In the absence of definitive facts from the government, the story began to morph into an ugly tale of murder.
By August, the New Yorker magazine published a version of the raid that depicted the SEALS as hit men who blasted their way into the compound, firing indiscriminately, until they got to the third floor where they shot a woman and then murdered Osama bin Laden in cold blood. It is little wonder that the words Kill Mission tripped off the tongues of media pundits.
In order to write history, one needs access to the facts; the accounts of eyewitnesses, or, at the very least, access to people who know what actually happened. SEAL Target Geronimo goes to original sources, and I have no doubt that the operators and intelligence professionals who conducted this mission told me the truth.
But before I tell you what happened, let me tell you what did not. There was not a "45 minute firefight", or even a 20 minute one. There weren't enough bullet holes or broken glass to support this story-- and neither SEAL Team nor civilian casualties supported a tale of urban combat. Zero SEALs were killed or wounded, and only five civilians died, one slightly wounded. My research showed that only twelve bullets were fired during the entire mission.
The downed helicopter story was also suspect. Eye witnesses told me that the helicopter did not crash on insertion, but only after it had successfully landed assaulters on bin Laden's roof. Nor did the "crashed on insertion" story make tactical sense. If the lead helicopter went down approaching the target, why would its back up then divert outside the compound and deposit its load of shooters on the wrong side of a twenty-foot concrete wall? In addition, a close up inspection of the walls of the compound revealed no main rotor strike damage, and the tail rotor left behind was largely intact, and its blades undamaged, suggesting that it was not turning when it was thrown outside the walls.
Overhead video imagery confirms that assaulters were delivered successfully to the roof of the main building, and that the crash of the insertion helicopter came 12 to 18 minutes into the raid-- not at the outset. This live video feed was beamed into the White House. As the President and his entourage watched in horror, the helicopter was seen to lift off from the roof, turn tail and settle into the livestock pen next to the main residence. The cause of the crash is unknown, but may have to do with the catastrophic failure of two flight control systems. The stealth helicopter, now unflyable, was abandoned and blown up in place. Despite this accident, Admiral McRaven's SEALs completed their mission and returned to base without loss or injury. Bin Laden's corpse was flown to the carrier USS Carl Vinson where he was buried at sea.
The Administration's pushback started even before SEAL Target Geronimo hit its publication date. For the first time in history, the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) singled out a military history book for criticism-- calling SEAL Target Geronimo "a fabrication", and branding me, its author, "a liar". Those are serious accusations to a third generation naval officer, and I take exception to them. But lost in the government denunciation was a statement that may provide an explanation of why the book was such an annoyance, at least to politicians. An AP article quoted a SOCCOM spokesman as saying, that Admiral Bill McRaven "...was concerned that the book would lead Americans to doubt the Administration's version of the story."
You may count me as a doubter, and an early one.
When politics is mixed with military history, the result is not often pretty. One need only recall the press stories involving Specialist Jessica Lynch, Ranger Pat Tillman or "Mission Accomplished" to know what happens when politicians put their spin on battlefield facts.
Indeed, the Administration's handling of the narrative could not have been worse: a premature, politically driven announcement, followed by a contradictory story, crowned by a highly negative magazine account and a television dramatization that depicted the raid as a cold blooded hit. What might have been an important success for the United States in the "information space" was turned into an unmitigated disaster. Reaction to the New Yorker article was immediate-- flags started burning all over the Middle East, and US Special Operations Forces were seen as a gang of murderers and thugs.
But worse, much worse, by almost immediately confirming that the United States had conducted the operation, President Obama rendered worthless hundreds of items of actionable intelligence-- enough to put Al Qaeda out of business, forever. As news of the raid spread around the world, Al Qaeda operatives, including Ayman Zawahiri, bolted for cover. The intelligence gathered by the SEALs was squandered in an instant-- bartered for a bump in the polls.
When the administration and the military failed to disavow the scabrous New Yorker article, I was appalled. The brave SEALs who pulled off this mission deserved better, and history deserved the truth. I wrote SEAL Target Geronimo to correct the record, and I stand by every word.
I've found that the most strident attacks against the book (and me) have been made either anonymously, or by people who did not witness the raid. The mission was filmed, in its entirety, by an RQ-170 Sentinel drone. The people who watched the mission live included: President Barrack Obama, VP Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Brigadier General Brad Webb, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor, White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley, Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President, Audrey Tomason, Director for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council, John O. Brennan, Chief Counterterrorism Advisor to the President, and James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. These people saw the mission, and they saw it happen as I described it in the book.
Not one of these eye-witnesses has come forward to refute or even question what I have written.
I am certain that one, several, or perhaps all of these people will eventually write their memoirs, and it will be interesting to see what they say not only about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden-- but why they felt it wasn't necessary to come to the defense of an honest man who wrote the facts.
I have learned long ago to never be disappointed by people-- especially politicians.
The Navy SEALs who struck bin Laden's compound did so with the stealth and precision that has been the hallmark of Naval Special Warfare for more than 50 years. The facts of this operation are a vital part of our nation's history. The events at Abbottabad exemplify the professionalism and fighting spirit of the United States Navy. I have been honored to their story.
I read a lot of history books, and I find they tend to fall into two general categories -- a) those that are years in the writing, scholarly, exhaustively researched, extensively footnoted and annotated, and b) those that make history come alive. This book is clearly in the latter category. If you want to know what it's like to train to be a SEAL and to participate in a mission, this is that book. The author -- who was a Navy SEAL and for years has been involved in training Navy SEALs here and in Afghanistan and Iraq -- writes so descriptively, you'll feel the heat of the weapon in your hands, experience the jolt to your foot as you kick down the door in the Abbottabad compound and smell the musty air of Bin Laden's bedroom when you burst in.
What I didn't expect, and the book delivered, were chapters that put the mission in context -- including the geopolitical context going back decades, and the preparation for this particular mission through the context of the last several decades of SEAL missions. One element I particularly appreciated in the book was the section that gave a background to what made Bin Laden Bin Laden. It's popular to think that he sprung up from nowhere as a fully formed monster. But many factors made him the man he was who did the things he did. Chuck writes so vividly -- well, you don't exactly sympathize with Bin Laden -- but you do have an idea what it would have been like to BE him. That accomplishment takes a special and rare kind of historian and, I think, represents the main value of this book. A value that will stand even decades from now when the mission is declassified and someone has the extensive time and many research assistants it will take to write the fully annotated, exhaustively researched definitive account of the killing of Bin Laden. Perhaps Chuck will be that person. Perhaps it will be someone else. Perhaps, as is usually the case, it will take several books for the reader to be able to get "the full story".
I do want to address the negative reviewers -- not the one-star troll flamers who have never reviewed on Amazon before this and clearly have never read this book -- but the people who bought the book and thought it wasn't "extensive" enough. You do know the years and years of work that goes into those sorts of books? I doubt we'll ever have a more definitive book on Seabiscuit than Laura Hillenbrand's or a more multi-leveled biography of Kit Carson and his impact on the American West than Hampton Sides', but it took both of those authors nearly a decade to research and write each of their books. They also had the advantage of being able to stand on others' shoulders as they had access to a wealth of history, research, newspaper and contemporary accounts of their subjects and the gift of distance to put it all into perspective.
Chuck's book is first out of the gate and, it does have the advantage of his first-hand research -- both in his role as a contractor involved with the training of SEALs, his former service as a member of the elite SEAL Team Six and his primary research here and in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, not only did he not have Hillenbrand or Side's luxury of time for research, he was dealing with a subject for which many details are classified and necessitated that, even if he was privy to some of those details, he omit or obscure them for security's sake. It's a huge burden on a historian, but, as I contend, when the exhaustively researched, annotated account of the Bin Laden mission comes out, this book will still stand -- as a visceral description of how the mission went down.
I find it strange how many of the reviewers who gave this read one star have never reviewed a single product on Amazon before! I sense a political desire to discredit the author and the truth because his account does not jive with the official "White House" account of what happened. I do know this, I read the book as I have read just about every book written on the Navy SEAL's, and I found it informative, exciting and more plausible than the "official" account of a "45 minute raid" and certainly more believable considering the author. My only reason for not giving it five stars is that it seems there was a rush to get this to print and the result was a few typos.
This book is phenomenal and it makes sense. The official story from the White House changed multiple times, as if they were trying to make it "fit." Anyone who thinks OBL was sitting in his room as SEALS fought for around a half hour in a quiet neighborhood, then reached for his weapon and hid behind his wife, are not using common sense. He would have been fighting or prepared to fight and likely in a different location. Honestly, does the official story make ANY SENSE? It is obvious the SEALS surprised Bin Ladin, as this author asserts. Dropped on the roof and OBL dead in less than 2 minutes? OK, that makes sense!
Additionally, the personal attack on him and the comments from the White House are suspicious. If he were a "crack pot" or clueless, they would leave it alone. He simply isn't a "pawn." This is the only book officals have commented on, likely because it is correct and thus dangerous.
This guy is/was well connected and highly respected. In the spirit of "full disclosure," I had read a previous book by him called Warrior Soul. Once while on a plane and reading it, a former SEAL was sitting next to me. He told me Chuck Pfarrer was a legend. Legends are typically well connected.
The books is a terrific "read" and common sense dictates, the most accurate account.
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