Despite new revelations that cast doubt on the story told by the administration about how Osama Bin Laden was discovered and killed, reporters covering the White House on Tuesday appeared completely uninterested in digging any further.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest glided through Tuesday’s press briefing without being asked one question about allegations reported on Sunday by esteemed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and advanced Monday by NBC News.
While the two stories differ wildly, they both deviate from the US government’s initial line—that it found Bin Laden by cracking his communications network.
In a report published by the London Review of Books, Hersh alleged that the Pakistani government knew all along the whereabouts of Bin Laden in the Abbottabad compound, and actually assisted US Special Forces in the mission to kill the terrorist leader. The article also claims that, according to Hersh’s main source, that soldiers disposed of parts of Bin Laden’s body while flying in a helicopter over the Hindu Kush Mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The White House’s official narrative states that Bin Laden’s body was dumped at sea.
During Monday’s briefing, Earnest was asked if there “are there any elements of [the bin Laden raid story] that perhaps are not correct in the public’s mind?”
“I can tell you that the Obama White House is not the only one to observe that the story is riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods,” Earnest responded, referencing other news outlets that criticized the Hersh’s reportage—deemed by some to be based on thin-sourcing.
Hours after the briefing ended, however, NBC News corroborated a key element of Hersh’s story, reporting that the US government learned about Bin Laden’s hideout from a “walk-in”—an informant from within Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.
If true, it belies claims made by the White House that Bin Laden was eventually tracked down from intelligence derived from one of his couriers—information that may have been collected as a result of torture, according to some advocates of “enhanced interrogation.” That version of events was popularized in the Hollywood film Zero Dark Thirty, which the CIA reportedly collaborated on with director Kathryn Bigelow.
NBC’s report did not, however, pique the interest of the White House press corp on Tuesday afternoon. It collectively asked the President’s spokesperson zero questions about the Monday splash.
Even NBC reporter Kris Jansing failed to bring up the topic during her turn in questioning, opting instead to ask about the president’s thoughts on changing the face that appears on the twenty-dollar bill.
Most questions on Tuesday were instead focused on the Democratic revolt in the Senate against legislation to fast-track the Trans Pacific Partnership.
Meanwhile, Earnest did struggle to answer press inquiries about one other topic in the news: the suspension of NFL quarterback Tom Brady.
“I will say that I spent a lot of time thinking about all the things that were going to come up in this briefing,” Earnest said, amid laughter from reporters in Brady room (named after the late former Press Secretary of Ronald Reagan, James Brady). “This is one of them.”
Earnest added that he hasn’t’ spoken with the President directly on the issue—a question that prompted a follow-up from a second reporter about the relationship between the White House and Tom Brady.
