WASHINGTON - A Navy SEAL's firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden pulls back the veil on the secret operations conducted almost nightly by elite American forces against terrorist suspects.
Former SEAL Matt Bissonnette's version contradicted in key details the account presented by administration officials in the days after the May 2011 raid in Abbotabad, Pakistan, that killed the al-Qaida leader. It also raised questions about whether the SEALs followed to the letter the order to use deadly force only if they deemed him a threat.
Bissonnette wrote that the SEALs spotted bin Laden at the top of a darkened hallway and shot him in the head even though they could not tell whether he was armed. Administration officials have described the SEALs shooting bin Laden only after he ducked back into a bedroom because they assumed he might be reaching for a weapon.
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Military experts said Wednesday that if Bissonnette's recollection is accurate, the SEALS made the right call because the terrorist mastermind had plenty of time to reach for a weapon or explosives as they made their way up to the third level of the house where he hid.
Bissonnette wrote the book, "No Easy Day," under the pseudonym Mark Owen as one of the men in the room when they killed bin Laden. The book is to be published next week. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.
For years, the primary weapon in the war on terror has been unmanned drones firing missiles from the sky. But the Bissonnette book reveals a more bloody war waged by special operators, one the public almost never sees close up.
Nearly every top al-Qaida figure killed by the United States since the 9/11 attacks has died in a remote-controlled strike by unmanned drone aircraft - their deaths seen in Washington on video.
But special-operations troops often conduct raids similar to the bin Laden strike a dozen times a night in Afghanistan, and previously in Iraq.
In the bin Laden raid, Bissonnette writes that by the time the SEALs reached the top floor of the compound, roughly 15 minutes had passed, giving the terror leader time to strap on a suicide vest or get a gun.
Bissonnette says he was directly behind a point man going up the stairs in a pitch black hallway. Near the top, he said, he heard two silenced shots fired by the first SEAL. He writes that the point man had seen a man peeking out of a door, but Bissonnette could not tell whether the bullets hit their target.
The author writes that the SEALs found the man crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body. Once they wiped the blood off his face, they were convinced it was bin Laden.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor late Tuesday would not comment on the apparent contradiction between the administration's account and the book's version.
Bissonnette writes that none of the SEALs were fans of President Obama, but he says they respected him as commander in chief and for authorizing the operation.
