title: Tour de France

text: Broadcasting in France was largely a state monopoly until 1982, when the socialist president François Mitterrand allowed private broadcasters and privatised the leading television channel. Competition between channels raised the broadcasting fees paid to the organisers from 1.5 per cent of the race budget in 1960 to more than a third by the end of the century. Broadcasting time also increased as channels competed to secure the rights. The two largest channels to stay in public ownership, Antenne 2 and FR3, combined to offer more coverage than its private rival, TF1. The two stations, renamed France 2 and France 3, still hold the domestic rights and provide pictures for broadcasters around the world.


title: Tour de France

text: The stations use a staff of 300 with four helicopters, two aircraft, two motorcycles, 35 other vehicles including trucks, and 20 podium cameras.


title: Tour de France

text: French aviation company Hélicoptères de France (HdF) has provided aerial filming services for the Tour since 1999. HdF operates Eurocopter AS355 Écureuil 2 and AS350 Écureuil helicopters for this purpose, and the pilots undergo training along the course for six months before the race.


title: Tour de France

text: Domestic television covers the most important stages of the Tour, such as those in the mountains, from mid-morning until early evening. Coverage typically starts with a survey of the day's route, interviews along the road, discussions of the difficulties and tactics ahead, and a 30-minute archive feature. The biggest stages are shown live from start to end, followed by interviews with riders and others and features such an edited version of the stage seen from beside a team manager following and advising riders from his car. Radio covers the race in updates throughout the day, particularly on the national news channel, France Info, and some stations provide continuous commentary on long wave. The 1979 Tour was the first to be broadcast in the United States.


title: Tour de France

text: In the United Kingdom, ITV obtained the rights to the Tour de France in 2002, replacing Channel 4 as the UK terrestrial broadcaster. The coverage is shown on ITV4, having aired in previous years on ITV2 and ITV3. Initially, live coverage was only broadcast at the weekend but since the 2010 Tour de France, ITV4 has broadcast daily live coverage of every stage except the final which is shown on ITV, ITV4 have the nightly highlights show.


title: Tour de France

text: On 1 February 2011, Canada's TSN announced that they had acquired the rights to the Tour de France in a "multi-year" deal, which ultimately lasted for three years; the rights were acquired by Sportsnet in 2014.


title: Tour de France

text: The combination of unprecedented rigorous doping controls and almost no positive tests helped restore fans' confidence in the 2009 Tour de France. This led directly to an increase in global popularity of the event. The most watched stage of 2009 was stage 20, from Montélimar to Mont Ventoux in Provence, with a global total audience of 44 million, making it the 12th most watched sporting event in the world in 2009.


title: Tour de France

text: The Tour is an important cultural event for fans in Europe. Millions line the route, some having camped for a week to get the best view.


title: Tour de France

text: The Tour de France appealed from the start not just for the distance and its demands but because it played to a wish for national unity, a call to what Maurice Barrès called the France "of earth and deaths" or what Georges Vigarello called "the image of a France united by its earth."


title: Tour de France

text: The image had been started by the 1877 travel/school book "Le Tour de la France par deux enfants". It told of two boys, André and Julien, who "in a thick September fog left the town of Phalsbourg in Lorraine to see France at a time when few people had gone far beyond their nearest town."


title: Tour de France

text: The book sold six million copies by the time of the first Tour de France, the biggest selling book of 19th-century France (other than the Bible). It stimulated a national interest in France, making it "visible and alive", as its preface said. There had already been a car race called the Tour de France but it was the publicity behind the cycling race, and Desgrange's drive to educate and improve the population, that inspired the French to know more of their country.


title: Tour de France

text: The academic historians Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Léonard say most people in France had little idea of the shape of their country until "L'Auto" began publishing maps of the race.


title: Tour de France

text: The Tour has inspired several popular songs in France, notably "P'tit gars du Tour" (1932), "Les Tours de France" (1936) and "Faire le Tour de France" (1950). German electronic group Kraftwerk composed "Tour de France" in 1983 – described as a minimalistic "melding of man and machine" – and produced an album, "Tour de France Soundtracks" in 2003, the centenary of the Tour.


title: Tour de France

text: The Tour and its first Italian winner, Ottavio Bottecchia, are mentioned at the end of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises".


title: Tour de France

text: From 2011-2015, Lead Graffiti, an American letterpress studio, visually documented highlights of each Tour stage on posters using handset metal and wood type. The designers call the project “endurance letterpress”. A 2013 article on the poster series appeared in "Sports Illustrated" magazine’s “Sports in Media” issue. In 2014 the British Library celebrated the Tour’s fourth "Grand Départ" from the U.K. with an exhibition of "Tour de Lead Graffiti" posters.


title: Tour de France

text: In films, the Tour was background for "Five Red Tulips" (1949) by Jean Stelli, in which five riders are murdered. A burlesque in 1967, "Les Cracks" by Alex Joffé, with Bourvil et Monique Tarbès, also featured it. Footage of the 1970 Tour de France is shown in Jorgen Leth's experimental short "Eddy Merckx in the Vicinity of a Cup of Coffee". Patrick Le Gall made "Chacun son Tour" (1996). The comedy, "Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert" (2001), featured the Tour of 1974.


title: Tour de France

text: In 2005, three films chronicled a team. The German "Höllentour", translated as "Hell on Wheels", recorded 2003 from the perspective of Team Telekom. The film was directed by Pepe Danquart, who won an Academy Award for live-action short film in 1993 for "Black Rider" ("Schwarzfahrer"). The Danish film "Overcoming" by Tómas Gislason recorded the 2004 Tour from the perspective of Team CSC.


title: Tour de France

text: "Wired to Win" chronicles Française des Jeux riders Baden Cooke and Jimmy Caspar in 2003. By following their quest for the points classification, won by Cooke, the film looks at the working of the brain. The film, made for IMAX theaters, appeared in December 2005. It was directed by Bayley Silleck, who was nominated for an Academy Award for documentary short subject in 1996 for "Cosmic Voyage".


title: Tour de France

text: A fan, Scott Coady, followed the 2000 Tour with a handheld video camera to make "The Tour Baby!" which raised $160,000 to benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and made a 2005 sequel, "Tour Baby Deux!"


title: Tour de France

text: "Vive Le Tour" by Louis Malle is an 18-minute short of 1962. The 1965 Tour was filmed by Claude Lelouch in "Pour un Maillot Jaune". This 30-minute documentary has no narration and relies on sights and sounds of the Tour.


title: Tour de France

text: In fiction, the 2003 animated feature "Les Triplettes de Belleville" ("The Triplets of Belleville") ties into the Tour de France.


title: Tour de France

text: Netflix partnered with the organizer Amaury Sport Organisation, will produce a documentary series about the eight major teams across the 2022 Tour de France for a 2023 release.


title: Tour de France

text: After the Tour de France there are criteriums in the Netherlands and Belgium. These races are public spectacles where thousands of people can see their heroes from the Tour de France race. The budget of a criterium is over 100,000 Euro, with most of the money going to the riders. Jersey winners or big-name riders earn between 20 and 60 thousand euros per race in start money.


title: Tour de France

text: Allegations of doping have plagued the Tour almost since 1903. Early riders consumed alcohol and used ether, to dull the pain. Over the years they began to increase performance and the Union Cycliste Internationale and governments enacted policies to combat the practice.


title: Tour de France

text: In 1924, Henri Pélissier and his brother Charles told the journalist Albert Londres they used strychnine, cocaine, chloroform, aspirin, "horse ointment" and other drugs. The story was published in "Le Petit Parisien" under the title "Les Forçats de la Route" ('The Convicts of the Road')


title: Tour de France

text: In 1998, the "Tour of Shame", Willy Voet, soigneur for the Festina team, was arrested with erythropoietin (EPO), growth hormones, testosterone and amphetamine. Police raided team hotels and found products in the possession of the cycling team TVM. Riders went on strike. After mediation by director Jean-Marie Leblanc, police limited their tactics and riders continued. Some riders had dropped out and only 96 finished the race. It became clear in a trial that management and health officials of the Festina team had organised the doping.


title: Tour de France

text: Further measures were introduced by race organisers and the UCI, including more frequent testing and tests for blood doping (transfusions and EPO use). This would lead the UCI to becoming a particularly interested party in an International Olympic Committee initiative, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), created in 1999. In 2002, the wife of Raimondas Rumšas, third in the 2002 Tour de France, was arrested after EPO and anabolic steroids were found in her car. Rumšas, who had not failed a test, was not penalised. In 2004, Philippe Gaumont said doping was endemic to his Cofidis team. Fellow Cofidis rider David Millar confessed to EPO after his home was raided. In the same year, Jesus Manzano, a rider with the Kelme team, alleged he had been forced by his team to use banned substances.


title: Tour de France

text: From 1999 to 2005, seven successive tours were declared as having been won by Lance Armstrong. In August 2005, one month after Armstrong's seventh apparent victory, "L'Équipe" published documents it said showed Armstrong had used EPO in the 1999 race. At the same Tour, Armstrong's urine showed traces of a glucocorticosteroid hormone, although below the positive threshold. He said he had used skin cream containing triamcinolone to treat saddle sores. Armstrong said he had received permission from the UCI to use this cream. Further allegations ultimately culminated in the United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA) disqualifying him from all his victories since 1 August 1998, including his seven consecutive Tour de France victories, and a lifetime ban from competing in professional sports. The ASO declined to name any other rider as winner in Armstrong's stead in those years.


title: Tour de France

text: The 2006 Tour had been plagued by the Operación Puerto doping case before it began. Favourites such as Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso were banned by their teams a day before the start. Seventeen riders were implicated. American rider Floyd Landis, who finished the Tour as holder of the overall lead, had tested positive for testosterone after he won stage 17, but this was not confirmed until some two weeks after the race finished. On 30 June 2008 Landis lost his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Óscar Pereiro was named as winner.


title: Tour de France

text: On 24 May 2007, Erik Zabel admitted using EPO during the first week of the 1996 Tour, when he won the points classification. Following his plea that other cyclists admit to drugs, former winner Bjarne Riis admitted in Copenhagen on 25 May 2007 that he used EPO regularly from 1993 to 1998, including when he won the 1996 Tour. His admission meant the top three in 1996 were all linked to doping, two admitting cheating. On 24 July 2007 Alexander Vinokourov tested positive for a blood transfusion (blood doping) after winning a time trial, prompting his Astana team to pull out and police to raid the team's hotel. The next day Cristian Moreni tested positive for testosterone. His Cofidis team pulled out.


title: Tour de France

text: The same day, leader Michael Rasmussen was removed for "violating internal team rules" by missing random tests on 9 May and 28 June. Rasmussen claimed to have been in Mexico. The Italian journalist Davide Cassani told Danish television he had seen Rasmussen in Italy. The alleged lying prompted Rasmussen's firing by Rabobank.


title: Tour de France

text: On 11 July 2008, Manuel Beltrán tested positive for EPO after the first stage. On 17 July 2008, Riccardo Riccò tested positive for continuous erythropoiesis receptor activator, a variant of EPO, after the fourth stage. In October 2008, it was revealed that Riccò's teammate and Stage 10 winner Leonardo Piepoli, as well as Stefan Schumacher – who won both time trials – and Bernhard Kohl – third on general classification and King of the Mountains – had tested positive.


title: Tour de France

text: After winning the 2010 Tour de France, it was announced that Alberto Contador had tested positive for low levels of clenbuterol on 21 July rest day. On 26 January 2011, the Spanish Cycling Federation proposed a 1-year ban but reversed its ruling on 15 February and cleared Contador to race. Despite a pending appeal by the UCI, Contador finished fifth overall in the 2011 Tour de France, but in February 2012, Contador was suspended and stripped of his 2010 victory.


title: Tour de France

text: During the 2012 Tour, the 3rd placed rider from 2011, Fränk Schleck, tested positive for the banned diuretic Xipamide and was immediately disqualified from the Tour.


title: Tour de France

text: In October 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency released a report on doping by the U.S. Postal Service cycling team, implicating, amongst others, Armstrong. The report contained affidavits from riders including Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, and others describing widespread use of Erythropoietin (EPO), blood transfusion, testosterone, and other banned practices in several Tours. In October 2012 the UCI acted upon this report, formally stripping Armstrong of all titles since 1 August 1998, including all seven Tour victories, and announced that his Tour wins would not be reallocated to other riders.


title: Tour de France

text: While no Tour winner has been convicted, or even seriously accused of doping in order to win the Tour in the past decade, due to the previous era, questions frequently arise when a strong performance exceeds expectations. While four time champion Froome has been involved in a doping case, it is out of an abundance of caution that modern riders are kept under a microscope with bike inspections to check for "mechanical doping" as well as Biological Passports as officials try not to have a repeat of EPO with 'H7379 Haemoglobin Human'.


title: Tour de France

text: Despite initially beginning as an operation to investigate the winter sport of Nordic Skiing, Operation Aderlass is of particular interest to this sport because it involved people formerly and presently involved in cycling. Including the since vacated 2008 podium finisher Bernhard Kohl, who made accusations that a team doctor instructed riders how to dope, which prompted further investigation into this matter by authorities.


title: Tour de France

text: One rider has been King of the Mountains, won the combination classification, combativity award, the points competition, and the Tour in the same year—Eddy Merckx in 1969, which was also the first year he participated. The following year he came close to repeating the feat, but was five points behind the winner in the points classification. The only other rider to come close to this achievement is Bernard Hinault in 1979, who won the overall and points competitions and placed second in the mountains classification.


title: Tour de France

text: Twice the Tour was won by a racer who never wore the yellow jersey until the race was over. In 1947, Jean Robic overturned a three-minute deficit on the final stage into Paris. In 1968, Jan Janssen of the Netherlands secured his win in the individual time trial on the last day.


title: Tour de France

text: The Tour has been won three times by racers who led the general classification on the first stage and holding the lead all the way to Paris. Maurice Garin did it during the Tour's first edition, 1903; he repeated the feat the next year, but the results were nullified by the officials as a response to widespread cheating. Ottavio Bottecchia completed a GC start-to-finish sweep in 1924. And in 1928, Nicolas Frantz held the GC for the entire race, and at the end, the podium consisted solely of members of his racing team. While no one has equalled this feat since 1928, four times a racer has taken over the GC lead on the second stage and carried that lead all the way to Paris. It is worth noting that Jacques Anquetil predicted he would wear the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification from start to finish in 1961, which he did. That year, the first day had two stages, the first part from Rouen to Versailles and the second part from Versailles to Versailles. André Darrigade wore the yellow jersey after winning the opening stage but Anquetil was in yellow at the end of the day after the time trial.


title: Tour de France

text: The most appearances record is held by Sylvain Chavanel, who rode his 18th and final Tour in 2018. Prior to Chavanel's final Tour, he shared the record with George Hincapie with 17. In light of Hincapie's suspension for use of performance-enhancing drugs, before which he held the mark for most consecutive finishes with sixteen, having completed all but his very first, Joop Zoetemelk and Chavanel share the record for the most finishes at 16, with Zoetemelk having completed all 16 of the Tours that he started. Of these 16 Tours Zoetemelk came in the top five 11 times, a record, finished 2nd six times, a record, and won the 1980 Tour de France.


title: Tour de France

text: Between 1920 and 1985, Jules Deloffre (1885–1963) was the record holder for the number of participations in the Tour de France, and even sole holder of this record until 1966, when André Darrigade rode in his 14th Tour.


title: Tour de France

text: In the early years of the Tour, cyclists rode individually, and were sometimes forbidden to ride together. This led to large gaps between the winner and the number two. Since the cyclists now tend to stay together in a peloton, the margins of the winner have become smaller, as the difference usually originates from time trials, breakaways or on mountain top finishes, or from being left behind the peloton. The smallest margins between the winner and the second placed cyclists at the end of the Tour is 8 seconds between winner Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon in 1989. The largest margin, by comparison, remains that of the first Tour in 1903: 2h 49m 45s between Maurice Garin and Lucien Pothier.


title: Tour de France

text: The most podium places by a single rider is eight by Raymond Poulidor, followed by Bernard Hinault and Joop Zoetemelk with seven. Poulidor never finished in 1st place and neither Hinault nor Zoetemelk ever finished in 3rd place.


title: Tour de France

text: Lance Armstrong finished on the podium eight times, and Jan Ullrich seven times, however they both had results voided and now officially have zero and six podiums respectively.


title: Tour de France

text: Three riders have won 8 stages in a single year: Charles Pélissier (1930), Eddy Merckx (1970, 1974), and Freddy Maertens (1976). Mark Cavendish has the most mass finish stage wins with 34 as of stage 13 in 2021, ahead of André Darrigade and André Leducq with 22, François Faber with 19, and Eddy Merckx with 18. The youngest Tour de France stage winner is Fabio Battesini, who was 19 when he won one stage in the 1931 Tour de France.


title: Tour de France

text: The fastest massed-start stage was in 1999 from Laval to Blois (), won by Mario Cipollini at . The fastest time-trial is Rohan Dennis's stage 1 of the 2015 Tour de France in Utrecht, won at an average of . The fastest stage win was by the 2013 Orica GreenEDGE team in a team time-trial. It completed the in Nice (stage 5) at .


title: Tour de France

text: The longest successful post-war breakaway by a single rider was by Albert Bourlon in the 1947 Tour de France. In the Carcassonne–Luchon stage, he stayed away for . It was one of seven breakaways longer than , the last being Thierry Marie's escape in 1991. Bourlon finished 16 m 30s ahead. This is one of the biggest time gaps but not the greatest. That record belongs to José-Luis Viejo, who beat the peloton by just over 23:00 and the second place rider by 22 m 50s in the Montgenèvre-Manosque stage in 1976. He was the fourth and most recent rider to win a stage by more than 20 minutes.


title: Tour de France

text: The record for total number of days wearing the yellow jersey is 96, held by Eddy Merckx. Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain, Chris Froome and Jacques Anquetil are the only other riders who have worn it 50 days or more.


title: Tour de France

text: Four riders have won five times: Jacques Anquetil (FRA), Eddy Merckx (BEL), Bernard Hinault (FRA), and Miguel Indurain (ESP). Indurain achieved the mark with a record five consecutive wins.


title: Tour de France

text: L'Étape du Tour (French for 'stage of the Tour') is an organised mass participation cyclosportive event that allows amateur cyclists to race over the same route as a Tour de France stage. First held in 1993, and now organised by the ASO, in conjunction with "Vélo Magazine", it takes place each July, normally on a Tour rest day.


title: Tour de France

text: Several different versions of a Tour de France for women were held between the 1980s and 2000s, however these races failed for a variety of reasons such as high costs, lack of sponsorship and inability to use the Tour de France branding.


title: Tour de France

text: Following a campaign by the professional women's peloton, La Course by Le Tour de France was launched by ASO in 2014 as a one day classic held in conjunction with the men's race. The first edition was held on the Champs-Élysées prior to the final stage of the men's race, with La Course subsequently using other stages of the Tour prior to the men's race – with locations such as Pau, Col de la Colombière and Col d'Izoard. The race was part of the UCI Women's World Tour.


title: Tour de France

text: From 2022, Tour de France Femmes – an 8 day stage race in the UCI Women's World Tour – will be held following the Tour, replacing La Course. The Tour de France Femmes had its first stage on the Champs-Élysées prior to the final stage of the men's race. The announcement of the race was praised by the professional peloton and campaigners. The first edition was won by Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten, completing a Giro - Tour double in the same year.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: MacKenzie Scott ("née" Tuttle, formerly Bezos; April 7, 1970) is an American novelist and philanthropist. As of September 2022, she has a net worth of US$33.4 billion, owing to a 4% stake in Amazon, the company founded by her ex-husband Jeff Bezos. As such, Scott is the third-wealthiest woman in the United States and the 35th-wealthiest individual in the world. Scott was named one of the world's most powerful women by "Forbes" in 2021, and one of "Time's" 100 Most Influential People of 2020.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In 2006, Scott won an American Book Award for her 2005 debut novel, "The Testing of Luther Albright." Her second novel, "Traps", was published in 2013. She has been executive director of Bystander Revolution, an anti-bullying organization, since she founded it in 2014. Committed to give at least half of her wealth to charity, as a signatory to the Giving Pledge, Scott made US$5.8 billion in charitable gifts in 2020, one of the largest annual distributions by a private individual to working charities. She donated a further $2.7 billion in 2021.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was born on April 7, 1970, in San Francisco, California, to Holiday Robin (née Cuming), a homemaker, and Jason Baker Tuttle, a financial planner. She has two brothers. She was named after her maternal grandfather, G. Scott Cuming, who worked as an executive and general counsel at El Paso Natural Gas. She remembers seriously writing at the age of six, when she wrote "The Book Worm", a 142-page book, which was destroyed in a flood.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In 1988, she graduated from Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. In 1992, Tuttle earned her bachelor's degree in English at Princeton University, where she studied under the Nobel Laureate in Literature Toni Morrison, who described Tuttle as "one of the best students I've ever had in my creative writing classes". She also worked as a research assistant to Morrison for the 1992 novel "Jazz".


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In 2005, Scott wrote her debut novel, "The Testing of Luther Albright", for which she won an American Book Award in 2006. She said that it took her ten years to write as she was helping Bezos build Amazon, giving birth to three children, and raising them. Toni Morrison, her former teacher, reviewed the book as "a rarity: a sophisticated novel that breaks and swells the heart". Her second novel, "Traps", was published in 2013. According to NPD BookScan, sales of her books were modest.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In 1993, Scott and Bezos were married, and in 1994, they both left D. E. Shaw, moved to Seattle, and started Amazon. Scott was one of Amazon's first employees and was heavily involved in Amazon's early days, working on the company's name, business plan, accounts, and shipping early orders. She also negotiated the company's first freight contract. When Amazon began to succeed, Scott took a less involved role in the business, preferring to focus on her family and literary career.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: Scott was married to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, from 1993 to 2019. She met him while working as his assistant at D. E. Shaw in 1992; after three months of dating in New York, they married and moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1994. They have four children: three sons, and one daughter who is adopted from China.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: Their community property divorce in 2019 left Scott with US$35.6 billion in Amazon stock while her former husband retained 75% of the couple's Amazon stock. She became the third-wealthiest woman in the world and one of the wealthiest people overall in April 2019. In July 2020, Scott was ranked the 22nd-richest person in the world by "Forbes" with a net worth estimated at $36 billion. By September 2020, Scott was named the world's richest woman, and by December 2020, her net worth was estimated at $62 billion.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: After her divorce from Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Bezos changed her name to MacKenzie Scott, with the surname derived from her middle name.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: She later married Seattle-based high school science teacher Dan Jewett. The marriage was revealed in Jewett's Giving Pledge letter posted on March 6, 2021. She filed for divorce from Jewett in September 2022.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In May 2019, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, a charitable-giving campaign in which she undertook to give away most of her wealth to charity over her lifetime or in her will; despite its name, the pledge is not legally binding.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In a July 2020 Medium post, Scott announced that she had donated $1.7 billion to 116 non-profit organizations, with a focus on racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, democracy, and climate change. Her gifts to HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, and other colleges surpass $800 million. In December 2020, less than six months later, Scott stated that she had donated a further $4.15 billion in the previous four months to 384 organizations, with a focus on providing support to people affected by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing long-term systemic inequities. She said that after July, she wanted her advisory team to give her wealth away faster as the United States struggled with the unprecedented impact of COVID-19 while billionaires' wealth continued to climb. Her team's focus was on "identifying organizations with strong leadership teams and results, with special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital". Scott's 2020 charitable giving totalled $5.8 billion, one of the biggest annual distributions by a private individual to working charities.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: On June 15, 2021, Scott announced another $2.7 billion in giving to 286 organizations. "Forbes" reported that Scott donated $8.5 billion across 780 organizations in one year (July 2020 to July 2021). In June 2021, Scott and Melinda French Gates launched the Equality Can't Wait Challenge, a contest to promote gender equality and expanding women's power and influence in the United States by 2030. The four winners received $10 million each and additional $8 million was split between two finalists. In February 2022, nine organizations announced gifts from Scott totaling $264.5 million. On March 23, 2022, more gifts were announced including $436 million to Habitat for Humanity and $275 million to Planned Parenthood. In May 2022, The Big Brothers Big Sisters foundation reported a $122.6 million donation from Mackenzie Scott. Scott also donated to organizations from outside the United States such as from Kenya, India, Brazil, Micronesia and Latin America. In April 2022, "The New York Times" reported that Scott donations since 2019 have exceeded $12 billion. In September 2022, Scott donated two of her Beverly Hills homes — worth a combined $55 million — to the California Community Foundation (CCF), which provides grants to mission-based nonprofits in Los Angeles. The organization intends to sell both homes and use 90% of the earnings to fund affordable housing initiatives and the other 10% to an immigrant integration program.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In December 2022, Scott donated 84.5 million to Girl Scouts USA and 29 local councils making this investment the largest in the national organization’s history.


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: "Forbes" reported, "the unrestricted and ultimately more trusting nature of Scott's philanthropy is the exception, not the norm in their world." "The New York Times" noted that "Ms. Scott has turned traditional philanthropy on its head... by disbursing her money quickly and without much hoopla, Ms. Scott has pushed the focus away from the giver, and onto the nonprofits, she is trying to help." Scott stated she believed "teams with experience on the front lines of challenges will know best how to put the money to good use."


title: MacKenzie Scott

text: In December 2021, Scott faced backlash for a Medium post when she stated she would not reveal how much money she has donated or to whom. She subsequently announced that her team would build a website to share details of her philanthropy.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Ashley Fuller Olsen (born June 13, 1986) is an American businesswoman and former actress. She began her acting career at the age of nine months, sharing the role of Michelle Tanner with her twin sister Mary-Kate Olsen in the television sitcom "Full House" (1987–1995). They also starred in numerous films together.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 1993, the production company Dualstar Entertainment Group was founded, which produced a long string of TV movies and direct-to-video releases featuring the girls; they starred in "Passport to Paris" (1999), "Our Lips Are Sealed" (2000), "Winning London" (2001), "Holiday in the Sun" (2001) and in the television series, "So Little Time" (2001–2002). They starred in, "Getting There" (2002), "When in Rome" (2002), "The Challenge" (2003) and made cameos in "" (2003). The last film she starred in with her twin sister was "New York Minute" (2004). She continued with her acting career independently, appearing with a few guest-star roles in films and in a music video.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In March 2012, both Mary-Kate and Ashley officially indicated their interest to retire as actresses in order to focus on their careers in the fashion industry. She and her twin sister co-founded luxury fashion brand The Row, lifestyle brand Elizabeth and James, and more affordable fashion lines Olsenboye and StyleMint. They co-authored a book, "Influence", featuring interviews with fashion designers that have inspired their fashion lines. They are members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Ashley Fuller Olsen was born on June 13, 1986, in Sherman Oaks, California. She is the daughter of Jarnette "Jarnie" Olsen (née Jones; b. 1954), a personal manager, and David "Dave" Olsen, a real estate developer and mortgage banker. Along with her twin, Mary-Kate, they have an older brother Trent, a younger sister and actress Elizabeth, and younger half-siblings Taylor and Jake (from their father's second marriage). Olsen's parents divorced in 1996. The twins and their siblings have Norwegian ancestry while their mother is of French, German and Italian ancestry.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Olsen attended the Campbell Hall School in Los Angeles. After graduating from Campbell Hall in 2004, she and Mary-Kate went on to attend New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: She began her acting career at the age of nine months old when she and her twin sister, Mary-Kate Olsen, were hired to share the role of Michelle Tanner on the popular television sitcom "Full House" (1987–1995).


title: Ashley Olsen

text: She starred alongside Mary-Kate in the films, "To Grandmother's House We Go" (1992), "Double, Double, Toil and Trouble" (1993), "How the West Was Fun" (1994), "It Takes Two" (1995), "Billboard Dad" (1998) and the television series, "Two of a Kind" (1998–1999).


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In the 1990s, associates of Olsen and her twin sister acted in recognition of their marketing potential, building a production company around them called Dualstar Entertainment Group, which produced a successful long string of TV movies and direct-to-video releases featuring the girls. They starred in "Passport to Paris" (1999), "Switching Goals" (1999), "Our Lips Are Sealed" (2000), "Winning London" (2001), "Holiday in the Sun" (2001) and the television series, "So Little Time" (2001–2002).


title: Ashley Olsen

text: She and her twin sister became household names and a popular figures in the preteen market during the late 1990s and early 2000s, with her likeness seen in clothes, books, fragrances, magazines, movies, and posters, among others. There were fashion dolls of her made by Mattel from 2000 to 2005. They also starred in the films "Getting There" (2002), "When in Rome" (2002), "The Challenge" (2003) and made cameos in "" (2003). In 2004, the sisters appeared in their theatrical light-hearted romantic comedy film, "New York Minute". It would be their last film together, as well as Ashley's last acting role. Mary-Kate continued with her acting career independently, appearing in a few films and shows, with her final acting project being in the 2011 horror movie "Beastly".


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 2004, upon the twins' 18th birthday, they became co-presidents of their company Dualstar (created in 1993 following the success of "Full House"), the brand currently selling in over 3,000 stores in America and 5,300 stores worldwide.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 2007, when Mary-Kate and Ashley were 21, they said that if they got involved in movies together again it would be as producers.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In March 2012, both Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen indicated their interest to retire as actresses in order to focus on their careers in fashion. The twins felt that their futures were in fashion, and not in acting. They discussed wanting to open a store as one of their future fashion-based endeavors.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 2015, it was announced that John Stamos had signed on with Netflix to produce and co-star in "Fuller House", a spin-off of "Full House" that would reunite the original cast members. In May of that year, Mary-Kate and Ashley originally announced that they would not reprise their role as Michelle Tanner; however, two months later in July, according to Netflix's Ted Sarandos, the Olsen twins were "teetering" on an agreement to join the series. The twins eventually declined to join the cast of "Fuller House", with Ashley saying she would not feel comfortable in front of the camera after a 12-year absence from acting and Mary-Kate saying the timing was bad. Nickelodeon acquired the rights to Mary-Kate and Ashley's video library in 2015.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: She and her sister were jointly ranked number three on the VH1 program "100 Greatest Child Stars". Ashley and her twin Mary-Kate's success has been marked by their inclusion on every Forbes The Celebrity 100 list since 2002. In 2007, Forbes ranked the twins as the eleventh-richest women in entertainment, with an estimated combined net worth of $100 million. Forbes had the twins on their 30 Under 30: All-Star Alumni list in 2017.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Following a high volume of public interest in their fashion choices, Mary-Kate and Ashley collaborated on a series of fashion lines available to the public. They released clothing in Walmart stores across America for girls ages 4 to 14, as well as a beauty line called Mary-Kate and Ashley: Real Fashion for Real Girls.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 2004, they made news by signing a pledge to allow all the workers that sew their line of clothing in Bangladesh full maternity leave. The National Labor Committee, which organized the pledge, later praised the twins for their commitment to worker rights.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: The idea for The Row started as a personal project in 2005 when Ashley Olsen challenged herself to create a perfect T-shirt. She tested the design on a variety of women of all body shapes and ages in an attempt to find a "commonality in fit and attitude."


title: Ashley Olsen

text: By 2006, the sisters had created a 7-piece collection that included the T-shirt, a pair of cotton sateen leggings, and a cashmere wool tank dress. Barneys New York bought the entire first collection. The brand has expanded to include ready-to-wear, resort, handbags, sunglasses, and shoes.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 2008, Mary-Kate and Ashley published "Influence", a book featuring interviews with fashion designers that have inspired their fashion lines.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In 2011, the sisters collaborated with TOMS Shoes to design footwear for children without shoes in more than 20 countries worldwide.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: As adults, Mary-Kate and Ashley have devoted much of their attention to the world of fashion. They head a couture fashion label, The Row, as well as the Elizabeth and James, Olsenboye, and StyleMint retail collections.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Mary-Kate and Ashley designed an Olsenboye change purse in 2011 and donated the money to "Pennies From Heaven".


title: Ashley Olsen

text: The Olsens are members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, CFDA a not-for-profit trade association of over 450 prominent American fashion and accessory designers. They are now the creative directors for the Italian fashion shoe brand Superga.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: In February 2005, Olsen filed a $40 million lawsuit against tabloid magazine "National Enquirer" for depicting her as being involved in a drug scandal. Later on that year in October, the tabloid eventually apologized to Olsen and stated it did not intend to suggest that she was involved in the scandal.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Olsen is currently in a relationship with artist Louis Eisner whom she has been dating since at least October 2017. Eisner is the son of Eric Eisner, former president of The Geffen Company and a noted philanthropist who founded the Young Eisner Scholars. In July 2019, Olsen sparked engagement rumors after she was spotted wearing a ring on her finger.


title: Ashley Olsen

text: Olsen has dated former Columbia University quarterback and now producer Matt Kaplan, restaurateur Scott Sartiano, actor Jared Leto, cyclist Lance Armstrong, actor Justin Bartha, and financier Richard Sachs.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was shot several times and killed at his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six). The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a CIA-led operation with Joint Special Operations Command, commonly known as JSOC, coordinating the Special Mission Units involved in the raid. In addition to SEAL Team Six, participating units under JSOC included the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)—also known as "Night Stalkers"—and operators from the CIA's Special Activities Division, which recruits heavily from former JSOC Special Mission Units. The operation's success ended a nearly decade-long manhunt for bin Laden, who was wanted for masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The raid, approved by president Barack Obama and involving two-dozen Navy Seals in two Black Hawk helicopters, was launched from Afghanistan, where U.S. forces were based, about away. The raid was 40 minutes long; bin Laden was killed shortly before 1:00a.m. PKT (20:00 UTC, May 1). Three other men (including one of bin Laden's sons) and a woman in the compound were also killed. After the raid was completed, U.S. forces returned to Afghanistan with the body of bin Laden for identification; they then flew over to the Arabian Sea, where his body was buried in accordance with Islamic tradition, within 24 hours of his death.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Al-Qaeda confirmed the death on May 6 with posts made on militant websites, vowing to avenge the killing. Other Pakistani militant groups, including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, vowed retaliation against the U.S. and against Pakistan for not preventing the operation. The raid was supported by over 90% of the American public, was welcomed by the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and a large number of governments, but was condemned by others, including two-thirds of the Pakistani public. Legal and ethical aspects of the killing, such as the failure to capture him alive despite him being unarmed, were questioned by others, including Amnesty International. Also controversial was the decision not to publish any photographic or DNA evidence of bin Laden's death. There was also controversy in Pakistan as to how the country's defenses were breached and the Air Force failed to pick up the American aircraft.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: After the killing, Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani formed a commission under Senior Justice Javed Iqbal to investigate the circumstances of the attack. The resulting Abbottabad Commission Report, which revealed Pakistani state military and intelligence authorities' "collective failure" that enabled bin Laden to hide in Pakistan for nine years, was leaked to Al Jazeera on July 8, 2013.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Accounts of how bin Laden was located by U.S. intelligence differ. The White House and CIA director John Brennan stated that the process began with a fragment of information unearthed in 2002, resulting in years of investigation. This account states that by September 2010, these leads followed a courier to the Abbottabad compound, where the U.S. began intensive multiplatform surveillance. According to journalist Seymour Hersh and NBC News, the U.S. was tipped off about bin Laden's location by a Pakistani intelligence officer who offered details of where the Pakistani Intelligence Service held him in detention in exchange for a bounty.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to the earlier official version of his identification from a U.S. official, identification of al-Qaeda couriers was an early priority for interrogators at CIA black sites and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, because bin Laden was believed to communicate through such couriers while concealing his whereabouts from al-Qaeda foot soldiers and top commanders. Bin Laden was known not to use phones after 1998, when the U.S. had launched missile strikes against his bases in Afghanistan in August by tracking an associate's satellite phone.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The U.S. official had stated that by 2002, interrogators had heard uncorroborated claims about an al-Qaeda courier with the "kunya" Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (sometimes referred to as Sheikh Abu Ahmed from Kuwait). One of those claims came from Mohammed al-Qahtani, a detainee interrogated for 48 days more or less continuously between November 23, 2002, and January 11, 2003. At some point during this period, al-Qahtani told interrogators about a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was part of the inner circle of al-Qaeda. Later in 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged operational chief of al-Qaeda, said he was acquainted with al-Kuwaiti but that the man was not active in al-Qaeda, according to a U.S. official.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to a U.S. official, in 2004 a prisoner named Hassan Ghul revealed that bin Laden relied on a trusted courier known as al-Kuwaiti. Ghul said al-Kuwaiti was close to bin Laden as well as Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mohammed's successor Abu Faraj al-Libbi. Ghul revealed that al-Kuwaiti had not been seen in some time, which led U.S. officials to suspect he was traveling with bin Laden. When confronted with Ghul's account, Mohammed maintained his original story. Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured in 2005 and transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. He told CIA interrogators that bin Laden's courier was a man named Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti. Because both Mohammed and al-Libbi had minimized al-Kuwaiti's importance, officials speculated that he was part of bin Laden's inner circle.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In 2007, officials learned al-Kuwaiti's real name, though they said they would disclose neither the name nor how they learned it. Pakistani officials in 2011 stated the courier's name was Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, from Pakistan's Swat Valley. He and his brother Abrar and their families were living at bin Laden's compound, the officials said.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The name Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan appears in the JTF-GTMO detainee assessment for Abu Faraj al-Libbi released by WikiLeaks on April 24, 2011, but the CIA never found anyone named Maulawi Jan and concluded that the name was an invention of al-Libbi.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A 2010 wiretap of another suspect picked up a conversation with al-Kuwaiti. CIA paramilitary operatives located al-Kuwaiti in August 2010 and followed him back to the Abbottabad compound, which led them to speculate it was bin Laden's location.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The courier and a relative (who was either a brother or a cousin) were killed in the May 2, 2011, raid. Afterward, some locals identified the men as Pashtuns named Arshad and Tareq Khan. Arshad Khan was carrying an old, noncomputerized Pakistani identification card, which identified him as from Khat Kuruna, a village near Charsadda in northwestern Pakistan. Pakistani officials have found no record of an Arshad Khan in that area and suspect the men were living under false identities.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The CIA used surveillance photos and intelligence reports to determine the identities of the inhabitants of the Abbottabad compound to which the courier was traveling. In September 2010, the CIA concluded that the compound was custom-built to hide someone of significance, very likely bin Laden. Officials surmised that he was living there with his youngest wife and family.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Built in 2004, the three-story compound was at the end of a narrow dirt road. Google Earth maps made from satellite photographs show that the compound was not present in 2001 but had been built by the time that new images were taken in 2005. It is located northeast of the city center of Abbottabad. Abbottabad is about from the Afghanistan border on the far eastern side of Pakistan (about from India). The compound is southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy. Located on a plot of land eight times larger than those of nearby houses, the compound was surrounded by a concrete wall topped with barbed wire. It had two security gates, and the third-floor balcony had a privacy wall, tall enough to hide the bin Laden.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The compound had no Internet or landline telephone service. Its residents burned their refuse, unlike their neighbors, who set their garbage out for collection. Local residents called the building the "Waziristan Haveli", because they believed the owner was from Waziristan. Following the American raid and killing of bin Laden, the Pakistani government demolished the compound in February 2012.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The CIA led the effort to surveil and gather intelligence on the compound; other critical roles in the operation were played by other United States agencies, including the National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and U.S. Defense Department. U.S. officials told "The Washington Post" that the intelligence-gathering effort "was so extensive and costly that the CIA went to Congress in December [2010] to secure authority to reallocate tens of millions of dollars within assorted agency budgets to fund it."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The CIA rented a home in Abbottabad from which a team staked out and observed the compound over a number of months. The CIA team used informants and other techniques—including a widely criticized fake polio vaccination program— to gather intelligence on the compound. The safe house was abandoned immediately after bin Laden's death. The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency helped the Joint Special Operations Command create mission simulators for the pilots, and analyzed data from an RQ-170 drone before, during and after the raid on the compound. The NGA created three-dimensional renderings of the house, created schedules describing residential traffic patterns, and assessed the number, height and gender of the residents of the compound. Also involved in the intelligence gathering measures were an arm of the National Security Agency known as the Tailored Access Operations group which, among other things, is specialized in surreptitiously installing spyware and tracking devices on targeted computers and mobile-phone networks. Because of the work of the Tailored Access Operations group, the NSA could collect intelligence from mobile phones that were used by al-Qaeda operatives and other "persons of interest" in the hunt for bin Laden.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The design of bin Laden's compound may have ultimately contributed to his discovery. A former CIA official involved in the manhunt told "The Washington Post": "The place was three stories high, and you could watch it from a variety of angles."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The CIA used a process called "red teaming" on the collected intelligence to independently review the circumstantial evidence and available facts of their case that bin Laden was living at the Abbottabad compound. An administration official said, "We conducted red-team exercises and other forms of alternative analysis to check our work. No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Despite what officials described as an extraordinarily concentrated collection effort leading up to the operation, no U.S. spy agency was ever able to capture a photograph of bin Laden at the compound before the raid or a recording of the voice of the mysterious male figure whose family occupied the structure's top two floors.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The official mission code name was Operation Neptune Spear. Neptune's spear is the trident, which appears on the U.S. Navy's Special Warfare insignia, with the three prongs of the trident representing the operational capacity of SEALs on sea, air and land.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The Associated Press reported at the time two U.S. officials as stating the operation was "a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender", but that "it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering". White House counterterrorism advisor John O. Brennan said after the raid: "If we had the opportunity to take bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that." CIA Director Leon Panetta said on "PBS NewsHour": "The authority here was to kill bin Laden. ... Obviously under the rules of engagement, if he in fact had thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But, they had full authority to kill him."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A U.S. national security official, who was not named, told Reuters that "This was a kill operation". Another official said that when the SEALS were told "We think we found Osama bin Laden, and your job is to kill him," they started to cheer.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: An article published in "Political Science Quarterly" in 2016 surveyed various published accounts and interpretations of the objective of the mission and concluded that "the capture option was mainly there for appearance's sake and to fulfill requirements of international law and that everyone involved considered it for all practical purposes a mission to kill."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The CIA briefed Vice Admiral William H. McRaven, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), about the compound in January 2011. The admiral was both a student and practitioner of special operations, having published a thesis on the subject during the 1990s. His theory held that special operations had the potential to be very effective in achieving their goal if they were organized and commanded by special operations professionals rather than being subsumed into larger military units or operations. He believed that such actions required that "relative superiority" be gained during the operation in question via characteristics such as simplicity, security, rehearsals, surprise, speed, and a clearly-but-narrowly defined purpose.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In this case, McRaven said a commando raid would be fairly straightforward but he was concerned about the Pakistani response. He assigned a captain from the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) to work with a CIA team at their campus in Langley, Virginia. The captain, named "Brian", set up an office in the printing plant in the CIA's Langley compound and, with six other JSOC officers, began to plan the raid. Administration attorneys considered legal implications and options before the raid.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In addition to a helicopter raid, planners considered attacking the compound with B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. They also considered a joint operation with Pakistani forces. Obama decided that the Pakistani government and military could not be trusted to maintain operational security for the operation against bin Laden. "There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond," a senior adviser to the President told "The New Yorker".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Obama met with the National Security Council on March 14 to review the options; he was concerned that the mission would be exposed and wanted to proceed quickly. For that reason he ruled out involving the Pakistanis. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other military officials expressed doubts as to whether bin Laden was in the compound, and whether a commando raid was worth the risk. At the end of the meeting, the president seemed to be leaning toward a bombing mission. Two U.S. Air Force officers were tasked with exploring that option further.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The CIA was unable to rule out the existence of an underground bunker below the compound. Presuming that one existed, 32 bombs fitted with JDAM guidance systems would be required to destroy it. With that amount of ordnance, at least one other house was in the blast radius. Estimates were that up to a dozen civilians would be killed in addition to those in the compound. Furthermore, it was unlikely there would be enough evidence remaining to prove that bin Laden was dead. Presented with this information at the next Security Council meeting on March 29, Obama put the bombing plan on hold. Instead he directed Admiral McRaven to develop the plan for a helicopter raid. The U.S. intelligence community also studied an option of hitting bin Laden with a drone-fired small tactical munition as he paced in his compound's vegetable garden.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: McRaven hand-picked a team drawing from the most experienced and senior operators from Red Squadron, one of four that make up DEVGRU. Red Squadron was coming home from Afghanistan and could be redirected without attracting attention. The team had language skills and experience with cross-border operations into Pakistan. Almost all the Red Squadron operators had ten or more deployments to Afghanistan.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Without being told the exact nature of their mission, the team performed rehearsals of the raid in two locations in the U.S.—around April 10 at Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity facility in North Carolina where a 1:1 version of bin Laden's compound was built (), and April 18 in Nevada. The location in Nevada was at elevation—chosen to test the effects the altitude would have on the raiders' helicopters. The Nevada mock-up used chain-link fences to simulate the compound walls, which left the U.S. participants unaware of the potential effects of the high compound walls on the helicopters' lift capabilities.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Planners believed the SEALs could get to Abbottabad and back without being challenged by the Pakistani military. The helicopters (modified Black Hawk helicopters) to be used in the raid had been designed to be quiet and to have low radar visibility. Since the U.S. had helped equip and train the Pakistanis, their defensive capabilities were known. The U.S. had supplied F-16 Fighting Falcons to Pakistan on the condition they were kept at a Pakistani military base under 24-hour U.S. surveillance.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: If bin Laden surrendered, he would be held near Bagram Air Base. If the SEALs were discovered by the Pakistanis in the middle of the raid, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen would call Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and try to negotiate their release.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: When the National Security Council (NSC) met again on April 19, Obama gave provisional approval for the helicopter raid. Worried that the plan for dealing with the Pakistanis was too uncertain, Obama asked Admiral McRaven to equip the team to fight its way out if necessary.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: McRaven and the SEALs left for Afghanistan to practice at a , full-scale replica of the compound built on a restricted area of Bagram known as Camp Alpha. The team departed the U.S. from Naval Air Station Oceana on April 26 in a C-17 aircraft, refueled on the ground at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, landed at Bagram Air Base, then moved to Jalalabad on April 27.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On April 28, Admiral Mullen explained the final plan to the NSC. As a measure to bolster the "fight your way out" scenario, Chinook helicopters were to be positioned nearby with additional troops. The greater part of the advisers in the meeting supported going forward with the raid. Vice President Joe Biden laid out the risk of it going wrong and the potential for confrontation with the Pakistanis. According to NSA Advisor Ben Rhodes, "I don't remember it as being firmly against as much as it being about like, 'I'm going to point out the downsides that you need to consider from the perspective of Pakistan'...Biden was just trying to make sure that Obama had a bunch of room for his decision-making." Gates advocated using the drone missile option but changed his support the next day to the helicopter raid plan. Obama said he wanted to speak directly to Admiral McRaven before he gave the order to proceed. The president asked if McRaven had learned anything since arriving in Afghanistan that caused him to lose confidence in the mission. McRaven told him the team was ready and that the next few nights would have little moonlight over Abbottabad, good conditions for a raid.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On April 29 at 8:20 a.m. EDT, Obama conferred with his advisers and gave the final go-ahead. The raid would take place the following day. That evening the president was informed that the operation would be delayed one day due to cloudy weather.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On April 30, Obama called McRaven one more time to wish the SEALs well and to thank them for their service. That evening, the President attended the annual White House Correspondent's Association dinner, which was hosted by comedian and television actor Seth Meyers. At one point, Meyers joked: "People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush, but did you know that every day from four to five he hosts a show on C-SPAN?" Obama laughed, despite his knowledge of the operation to come.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On May 1 at 1:22 p.m., Panetta, acting on the president's orders, directed McRaven to move forward with the operation. Shortly after 3 p.m., the president joined national security officials in the Situation Room to monitor the raid. They watched night-vision images taken from a Sentinel drone while Panetta, appearing in the corner of the screen from CIA headquarters, narrated what was happening. Video links with Panetta at CIA headquarters and McRaven in Afghanistan were set up in the Situation Room. In an adjoining office was the live drone feed presented on a laptop computer operated by Brigadier General Marshall Webb, assistant commander of JSOC. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was one of those in the Situation Room, and described it like this: "Contrary to some news reports and what you see in the movies, we had no means to see what was happening inside the building itself. All we could do was wait for an update from the team on the ground. I looked at the President. He was calm. Rarely have I been prouder to serve by his side as I was that day." Two other command centers monitored the raid from the Pentagon and the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The raid was carried out by approximately two dozen heliborne U.S. Navy SEALs from DEVGRU's Red Squadron. For legal reasons (namely that the U.S. was not at war with Pakistan), the military personnel assigned to the mission were temporarily transferred to the control of the civilian Central Intelligence Agency.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The SEALs operated in teams and used weapons including the HK416 assault rifle (their primary weapon), the Mark 48 machine gun for fire support, and the MP7 personal defense weapon used by some SEALs for close quarters and greater silence.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to "The New York Times", a total of "79 commandos and a dog" were involved in the raid. The military working dog was a Belgian Malinois named Cairo. According to one report, the dog was tasked with tracking "anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces". The dog was to be used to help deter any Pakistani ground response to the raid and to help look for any hidden rooms or hidden doors in the compound. Additional personnel on the mission included a language interpreter, the dog handler, helicopter pilots, plus intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers to view the operation.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The SEALs flew into Pakistan from a staging base in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan after originating at Bagram Air Base in northeastern Afghanistan. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), a U.S. Army Special Operations Command unit known as the "Night Stalkers", provided the two modified Black Hawk helicopters that were used for the raid itself, as well as the much larger Chinook heavy-lift helicopters that were employed as backups.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The Black Hawks were previously unseen "stealth" versions that flew more quietly and were harder to detect on radar than conventional models; due to the extra weight of the stealth equipment, their cargo was "calculated to the ounce, with the weather factored in."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The Chinooks kept on standby were on the ground "in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way" from Jalalabad to Abbottabad, with two additional SEAL teams consisting of approximately 24 DEVGRU operators for a "quick reaction force" (QRF). The Chinooks were equipped with 7.62mm GAU-17/A miniguns and GAU-21/B .50-caliber machine guns and extra fuel for the Black Hawks. Their mission was to interdict any Pakistani military attempts to interfere with the raid. Other Chinooks, holding 25 more SEALs from DEVGRU, were stationed just across the border in Afghanistan in case reinforcements were needed during the operation.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The 160th SOAR helicopters were supported by an array of other aircraft, to include fixed-wing fighter jets and drones. According to CNN, "the Air Force had a full team of combat search-and-rescue helicopters available".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The raid was scheduled for a time with little moonlight so the helicopters could enter Pakistan "low to the ground and undetected". The helicopters used hilly terrain and nap-of-the-earth techniques to reach the compound without appearing on radar and alerting the Pakistani military. The flight from Jalalabad to Abbottabad took about 90 minutes.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to the mission plan, the first helicopter would hover over the compound's yard while its full team of SEALs fast-roped to the ground. At the same time, the second helicopter would fly to the northeast corner of the compound and deploy the interpreter, the dog and handler, and four SEALs to secure the perimeter. The team in the courtyard was to enter the house from the ground floor.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: As they hovered above the target the first helicopter experienced a hazardous airflow condition known as a vortex ring state. This was aggravated by higher than expected air temperature and the high compound walls, which stopped the rotor downwash from diffusing. The helicopter's tail grazed one of the compound's walls, damaging its tail rotor, and the helicopter rolled onto its side. The pilot quickly buried the helicopter's nose to keep it from tipping over. None of the SEALs, crew, or pilots on the helicopter were seriously injured in the soft crash landing, which ended with it pitched at a 45-degree angle resting against the wall. The other helicopter landed outside the compound and the SEALs scaled the walls to get inside. The SEALs advanced into the house, breaching walls and doors with explosives.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The SEALs encountered the residents in the compound's guest house, in its main building on the first floor where two adult males lived, and on the second and third floors where bin Laden lived with his family. The second and third floors were the last section of the compound to be cleared. There were reportedly "small knots of children ... on every level, including the balcony of bin Laden's room".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Osama bin Laden was killed in the raid and initial versions said three other men and a woman were killed as well: bin Laden's adult son Khalid, bin Laden's courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, al-Kuwaiti's brother Abrar, and Abrar's wife Bushra.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Conflicting reports of an initial firefight exist. Mark Owen's book states that the team were in a "short firefight" before reaching bin Laden.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: An intelligence official told Seymour Hersh in 2015 that no firefight took place. In the earlier versions, Al-Kuwaiti is said to have opened fire on the first team of SEALs with an AK-47 from behind the guesthouse door, lightly injuring a SEAL with bullet fragments. A short firefight took place between al-Kuwaiti and the SEALs, in which al-Kuwaiti was killed. His wife Mariam was allegedly shot and wounded in the right shoulder. The courier's male relative Abrar was then said to have been shot and killed by the SEALs' second team on the first floor of the main house as shots had already been fired and the SEALs thought that he was armed with a loaded AK-47 (this was later confirmed to be true in the official report). A woman near him, later identified as Abrar's wife Bushra, was in this version also shot and killed. Bin Laden's young adult son is said to have encountered the SEALs on the staircase of the main house, and to have been shot and killed by the second team. An unnamed U.S. senior defense official said only one of the five people killed, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was armed. The interior of the house was pitch dark, because CIA operatives had cut the power to the neighborhood. The SEALs wore night vision goggles.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The SEALs encountered bin Laden on the third floor of the main building. Bin Laden was unarmed, "wearing the local loose-fitting tunic and pants known as a "kurta paijama"", which were later found to have €500 and two phone numbers sewn into the fabric.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden peered through his bedroom door at the Americans advancing up the stairs, and the lead SEAL fired at him. Reports differ, though agree eventually he was hit by shots to the body and head. The initial shots either missed, hit him in the chest, the side, or in the head. A number of bin Laden's female relatives were near him. According to journalist Nicholas Schmidle, one of bin Laden's wives, Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, motioned as if she were about to charge; the lead SEAL shot her in the leg, then grabbed both women and shoved them aside.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Robert J. O'Neill, who later publicly identified himself as one of the SEALs who shot bin Laden, states that he pushed past the lead SEAL, entered through the door and confronted bin Laden inside the bedroom. O'Neill states that bin Laden was standing behind a woman with his hands on her shoulders, pushing her forward. O'Neill immediately shot bin Laden twice in the forehead, then once more as bin Laden crumpled to the floor.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Matt Bissonnette gives a conflicting account of the situation, writing that bin Laden had already been mortally wounded by the lead SEAL's shots from the staircase. The lead SEAL then pushed bin Laden's wives aside, attempting to shield the SEALs behind him in the case that either woman had an explosive device. After bin Laden staggered back or fell into the bedroom, Bissonnette and O'Neill entered the room, saw the wounded bin Laden on the ground, fired multiple rounds, and killed him. Journalist Peter Bergen investigated the conflicting claims and found that most of the SEALs present during the raid favored Bissonnette's account of the events. According to Bergen's sources, O'Neill did not mention firing the shots that killed bin Laden in the after action report following the operations.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The weapon used to kill bin Laden was an HK416 using 5.56mm NATO 77-grain OTM (open-tip match) rounds. The SEAL team leader radioed, "For God and country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo" and then, after being prompted by McRaven for confirmation, "Geronimo EKIA" (enemy killed in action). Watching the operation in the White House Situation Room, Obama simply said, "We got him."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Various authors have written that there were two weapons in bin Laden's room: an AKS-74U carbine and a Russian-made Makarov pistol. According to his wife Amal, bin Laden was shot before he could reach the AKS-74U. According to the Associated Press, the guns were on a shelf next to the door and the SEALs did not see them until they were photographing the body. According to journalist Matthew Cole, the guns were not loaded and only found later during a search of the third floor.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: As the SEALs encountered women and children during the raid, they restrained them with plastic handcuffs or zip ties. After the raid was over, U.S. forces moved the surviving residents outside "for Pakistani forces to discover". The injured Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah continued to harangue the raiders in Arabic. Bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter Safia was allegedly struck in her foot or ankle by a piece of flying debris.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: While bin Laden's body was taken by U.S. forces, the bodies of the four others killed in the raid were left behind at the compound and later taken into Pakistani custody.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The raid was intended to take 40 minutes. The time between the team's entry in and exit from the compound was 38 minutes. According to the Associated Press, the assault was completed in the first 15 minutes.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Time in the compound was spent killing defenders, "moving carefully through the compound, room to room, floor to floor" securing the women and children, clearing "weapons stashes and barricades" including a false door, and searching the compound for information. U.S. personnel recovered three Kalashnikov rifles and two pistols, ten computer hard drives, documents, DVDs, almost a hundred thumb drives, a dozen cell phones, and "electronic equipment" for later analysis. The SEALs also discovered a large amount of opium stored in the house.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Since the helicopter that had made the emergency landing was damaged and unable to fly the team out, it was destroyed to safeguard its classified equipment, including an apparent stealth capability. The pilot smashed the instrument panel, radio, and the other classified fixtures and the SEALs demolished the helicopter with explosives. Since the SEAL team was reduced to one operational helicopter, one of the two Chinooks held in reserve was dispatched to carry part of the team and bin Laden's body out of Pakistan.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: While the American force gathered intelligence and destroyed the helicopter, a crowd of locals gathered outside the compound, curious about the noise and activity. An Urdu-speaking American officer, through a megaphone, told those gathered that it was a Pakistani military operation, and to remain at a distance.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: While the official Department of Defense narrative did not mention the airbases used in the operation, later accounts indicated that the helicopters returned to Bagram Airfield. The body of Osama bin Laden was flown from Bagram to the aircraft carrier in a V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft escorted by two U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to U.S. officials, bin Laden was buried at sea because no country would accept his remains. Before disposing of the body, the U.S. called the Saudi Arabian government, who approved of burying the body in the ocean. Muslim religious rites were performed aboard "Carl Vinson" in the North Arabian Sea within 24 hours of bin Laden's death. Preparations began at 10:10 a.m. local time and at-sea burial was completed at 11 a.m. The body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet and placed in a weighted plastic bag. An officer read prepared religious remarks which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. Afterward, bin Laden's body was placed onto a flat board. The board was tilted upward on one side and the body slid off into the sea.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace", Leon Panetta wrote that bin Laden's body was draped in a white shroud, given final prayers in Arabic and placed inside a black bag loaded with of iron chains, apparently to ensure that it would sink and never float. The body bag was placed on a white table at the rail of the ship, and the table was tipped to let the body bag slide into the sea, but the body bag did not slide and took the table with it. The table bobbed on the surface while the weighted body sank.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to Obama administration officials, U.S. officials did not share information about the raid with the government of Pakistan until it was over. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen called Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at about 3 am local time to inform him of the operation.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to the Pakistani foreign ministry, the operation was conducted entirely by the U.S. forces. Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials said they were present at what they called a joint operation; President Asif Ali Zardari flatly denied this. Pakistan's foreign secretary Salman Bashir later confirmed that Pakistani military had scrambled F-16s after they became aware of the attack but that they reached the compound after the U.S. helicopters had left.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Beginning at 12:58 a.m. local time (19:58 UTC), Abbottabad resident Sohaib Athar sent a series of tweets starting with "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." By 1:44 a.m. all was quiet until a plane flew over the city at 3:39 a.m. Neighbors took to their roofs and watched as U.S. special operations forces stormed the compound. One neighbor said, "I saw soldiers emerging from the helicopters and advancing towards the house. Some of them instructed us in chaste Pashto to turn off the lights and stay inside." Another man said he heard shooting and screams, then an explosion as a grounded helicopter was destroyed. The blast broke his bedroom window and left charred debris over a nearby field. A local security officer said he entered the compound shortly after the Americans left, before it was sealed off by the army. "There were four dead bodies, three male and one female and one female was injured", he said. "There was a lot of blood on the floor and one could easily see the marks like a dead body had been dragged out of the compound." Numerous witnesses reported that power, and possibly cellphone service, went out around the time of the raid and apparently included the military academy. Accounts differed as to the exact time of the blackout. One journalist concluded after interviewing several residents that it was a routine rolling blackout.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: ISI reported after questioning survivors of the raid that there were 17 to 18 people in the compound at the time of the attack and that the Americans took away one person still alive, possibly a bin Laden son. The ISI said that survivors included a wife, a daughter and eight to nine other children, not apparently bin Laden's. An unnamed Pakistani security official was quoted as saying one of bin Laden's daughters told Pakistani investigators that bin Laden had been captured alive, then in front of family members was shot dead by U.S. forces and dragged to a helicopter.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: U.S. officials said there were 22 people in the compound. Five were killed, including Osama bin Laden. Pakistani officials gave conflicting reports suggesting between 12 and 17 survivors. "The Sunday Times" subsequently published excerpts from a pocket guide, presumably dropped by the SEALs during the raid, containing pictures and descriptions of likely compound residents. The guide listed several adult children of bin Laden and their families who were not ultimately found in the compound. Because of a lack of accurate information, some of what follows cannot be verified as true.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Around 9:45 p.m. EDT, the White House announced that the president would be addressing the nation later in the evening. At 10:24:05 p.m. EDT the first public leak was made by Navy Reserve intel officer Keith Urbahn and 47 seconds later by actor and professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson on Twitter. Anonymous government officials confirmed details to the media, and by 11 p.m. numerous major news sources were reporting that bin Laden was dead; the number of leaks were characterized as "voluminous" by David E. Sanger.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: President Obama recalled the victims of the September 11 attacks. He praised the nearly ten-year-old war against al-Qaeda, which he said had disrupted terrorist plots, strengthened homeland defenses, removed the Taliban government, and captured or killed scores of al-Qaeda operatives. Obama said that when he took office he made finding bin Laden the top priority of the war. Bin Laden's death was the most significant blow to al-Qaeda so far but the war would continue. He reaffirmed that the U.S. was not at war against Islam and defended his decision to conduct an operation within Pakistan. He said Americans understood the cost of war but would not stand by while their security was threatened. "To those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror," he said, "justice has been done." This remark book-ended President Bush's statement to a joint session of Congress following the September 11 attacks that "justice will be done."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Before the official announcement, large crowds spontaneously gathered outside the White House, Ground Zero, The Pentagon, and in New York's Times Square to celebrate. In Dearborn, Michigan, where there is a large Muslim and Arab population, a small crowd gathered outside the City Hall in celebration, many of them of Middle Eastern descent. From the beginning to the end of Obama's speech, 5,000 tweets per second were posted on Twitter. As news of bin Laden's death filtered through the crowd at a nationally televised Major League Baseball game in Philadelphia between rivals Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, "U-S-A!" cheers began. In Tampa, Florida, at the conclusion of a professional wrestling event which was occurring at the time, WWE Champion John Cena announced to the audience that bin Laden had been "caught and compromised to a permanent end", prompting chants while he exited the arena to the march "The Stars and Stripes Forever".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The deputy leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said that, with bin Laden dead, Western forces should now pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan; authorities in Iran made similar comments. Palestinian Authority leaders had contrasting reactions. Mahmoud Abbas welcomed bin Laden's death, while Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, condemned what he saw as the assassination of an "Arab holy warrior".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The 14th Dalai Lama was quoted by the "Los Angeles Times" as saying, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures." This was widely reported as an endorsement of bin Laden's killing and was criticized in Buddhist circles, but another journalist cited a video of the discussion to argue that the comment was taken out of context and the Dalai Lama supports killing only in self-defense.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A CBS/"The New York Times" poll taken after bin Laden's death showed that 16% of Americans feel safer as the result of his death while 60% of Americans of those polled believe killing bin Laden would likely increase the threat of terrorism against the U.S. in the short term.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In India, Minister for Home Affairs P. Chidambaram said that bin Laden hiding "deep inside" Pakistan was a matter of grave concern for India and showed that "many of the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and the handlers of the terrorists who actually carried out the attack, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan". He also called on Pakistan to arrest them, amidst calls for similar strikes being conducted by India against Hafiz Saeed and Dawood Ibrahim.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Although the Abbottabad raid has been described in great detail by U.S. officials, no physical evidence constituting "proof of death" has been offered to the public, neither to journalists nor to independent third parties who have requested this information through the Freedom of Information Act. Numerous organizations filed FOIA requests seeking at least a partial release of photographs, videos, and/or DNA test results, including The Associated Press, Reuters, CBS News, Judicial Watch, Politico, Fox News, Citizens United, and NPR. On April 26, 2012, Judge James E. Boasberg held that the Department of Defense was not required to release any evidence to the public.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, Admiral William McRaven, the top special operations commander, ordered the Department of Defense to purge from its computer systems all files on the bin Laden raid after first sending them to the CIA. Any mention of this decision was expunged from the final version of the inspector general's report. According to the Pentagon, this was done to protect the identities of the Navy SEALs involved in the raid. The legal justification for the records transfer is that the SEALs were effectively working for the CIA at the time of the raid, which ostensibly means that any records of the raid belong to the CIA. "Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director", CIA agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. "Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records." Golson said it is absolutely false that records were moved to the CIA to avoid the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. The National Security Archive has criticized this maneuver, saying that the records have now gone into a "FOIA black hole":


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: What the transfer really did was ensure that the files would be placed in the CIA's operational records, a records system that—due to the 1986 CIA Operational Files exemption—is not subject to the FOIA and is a black hole for anyone trying to access the files within. The move prevents the public from accessing the official record about the raid, and bypasses several important federal records keeping procedures in the process.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The United States Defense Department can prevent the release of its own military files citing risks to national security, but that can be contested in court, and a judge can compel the Pentagon to turn over non-sensitive portions of records. The CIA has special authority to prevent the release of operational files in ways that cannot be challenged in federal court. Richard Lardner, reporting for the Associated Press, wrote that the maneuver "could represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The inspector general's draft report also described how former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta disclosed classified information to the makers of "Zero Dark Thirty", including the unit that conducted the raid and the ground commander's name.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which authorized the President to use "necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines were involved in the attacks. The Obama administration justified its use of force by relying on that resolution, as well as international law set forth in treaties and customary laws of war.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: John Bellinger III, who served as the U.S. State Department's senior lawyer during President George W. Bush's second term, said the strike was a legitimate military action and did not run counter to the U.S.' self-imposed prohibition on assassinations:


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The killing is not prohibited by the long-standing assassination prohibition in executive order 12333 [signed in 1981], because the action was a military action in the ongoing U.S. armed conflict with al-Qaeda, and it is not prohibited to kill specific leaders of an opposing force. The assassination prohibition does not apply to killings in self-defense.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Similarly, Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, said in 2010 that "under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination'."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: David Scheffer, director of the Northwestern University School of Law Center for International Human Rights, said the fact that bin Laden had previously been indicted in 1998 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations was a complicating factor. "Normally when an individual is under indictment the purpose is to capture that person in order to bring him to court to try him ... The object is not to literally summarily execute him if he's under indictment." Scheffer and another expert stated that it was important to determine whether the mission was to capture bin Laden or to kill him. If the Navy SEALs were instructed to kill bin Laden without trying first to capture him, it "may have violated American ideals if not international law."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In an address to the Pakistani parliament, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said, "Our people are rightly incensed on the issue of violation of sovereignty as typified by the covert U.S. air and ground assault on the Osama hideout in Abbottabad. ... The Security Council, while exhorting UN member states to join their efforts against terrorism, has repeatedly emphasized that this be done in accordance with international law, human rights and humanitarian law." Former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf denied a report in "The Guardian" that his government made a secret agreement permitting U.S. forces to conduct unilateral raids in search of the top three al-Qaeda leaders.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self-defense. It's lawful to target an enemy commander in the field." He called the killing of bin Laden "a tremendous step forward in attaining justice for the nearly 3,000 innocent Americans who were murdered on September 11, 2001." Commenting on the legality under international law, University of Michigan Law Professor Steven Ratner said, "A lot of it depends on whether you believe Osama bin Laden is a combatant in a war or a suspect in a mass murder." In the latter case, "you would... be able to kill a suspect [only] if they represented an immediate threat".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Holder testified that bin Laden made no attempt to surrender, and "even if he had there would be a good basis on the part of those very brave Navy SEAL team members to do what they did in order to protect themselves and the other people who were in that building." According to Anthony Dworkin, an international law expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, if bin Laden was "hors de combat" (as his daughter is said to have alleged) that would have been a violation of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz said it was unclear if bin Laden's killing was justified self-defense or premeditated illegal assassination, and that "killing a captive who poses no immediate threat is a crime under military law as well as all other law," a view also held by legal scholar Philippe Sands.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The UN Security Council released a statement applauding the news of bin Laden's death, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "very much relieved." Two United Nations Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement seeking more information regarding the circumstances in which bin Laden was killed and cautioning that "actions taken by States in combating terrorism, especially in high profile cases, set precedents for the way in which the right to life will be treated in future instances."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Under Islamic tradition, burial at sea is considered inappropriate when other, preferred forms of burial are available, and several prominent Islamic clerics criticized the decision. Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb, the head of Al-Azhar University, Egypt's seat of Sunni Muslim learning, said the disposal of the body at sea was an affront to religious and human values. Scholars like el-Tayeb hold that sea burials can be allowed only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship, and that the regular practice should have occurred in this case—the body buried in the ground with the head pointing to Islam's holy city of Mecca.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A stated advantage of a burial at sea is that the site is not readily identified or accessed, thus preventing it from becoming a focus of attention or "terrorist shrine". "The Guardian" questioned whether bin Laden's grave would have become a shrine, as this is strongly discouraged in Wahhabism. Addressing the same concern, Egyptian Islamic analyst and lawyer Montasser el-Zayat said that if the Americans wished to avoid making a shrine to bin Laden, an unmarked grave on land would have accomplished the same goal.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: "The Guardian" also quoted a U.S. official explaining the anticipated difficulty of finding a country that would accept the burial of bin Laden in its soil. A professor of Islamic Law at the University of Jordan stated burying at sea was permitted if there was nobody to receive the body and provide a Muslim burial, but that "it's neither true nor correct to claim that there was nobody in the Muslim world ready to receive bin Laden's body". On a similar note, Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand mufti, stated: "They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam. If the family does not want him, it's really simple in Islam: you dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that's it. Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them." Khalid Latif, an imam who serves as a chaplain and the director of the Islamic Center of New York University, argued that the sea burial was respectful.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Leor Halevi, a professor at Vanderbilt University and the author of "Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society", explained that Islamic law does not prescribe ordinary funerals for those killed in battle, and pointed to controversy within the Muslim world over whether bin Laden was, as a "mass murderer of Muslims", entitled to the same respect as mainstream Muslims. At the same time, he suggested that the burial could have been handled with more cultural sensitivity.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Omar bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, published a complaint on May 10, 2011, that the burial at sea deprived the family of a proper burial.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: After bin Laden's death, it was reported he had left a will written a short time after the September 11 attacks in which he urged his children not to join al-Qaeda and not to continue the Jihad.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: CNN cited a senior U.S. official as saying three sets of photographs of bin Laden's body exist: photos taken at an aircraft hangar in Afghanistan, described as the most recognizable and gruesome; photos taken from the burial at sea on before a shroud was placed around his body; and photos from the raid itself, which include shots of the interior of the compound as well as three of the others who died in the raid.