title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: "CBS Evening News" reported that the photo shows that the bullet which hit above bin Laden's left eye blew out his left eyeball and blew away a large portion of his frontal skull, exposing his brain. CNN stated that the pictures from the Afghanistan hangar depict "a massive open head wound across both eyes. It's very bloody and gory." U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe said the photos taken of the body on the "Carl Vinson", which showed bin Laden's face after much of the blood and material had been washed away, should be released to the public.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A debate on whether the military photos should be released to the public took place. Those supporting the release argued that the photos should be considered public records, that they are necessary to complete the journalistic record, and that they would prove bin Laden's death and therefore prevent conspiracy theories. Those in opposition expressed concern that the photos would inflame anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Obama decided not to release the photos. In an interview aired on May4 on "60 Minutes", he said: "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies. We don't need to spike the football." Obama said that he was concerned with ensuring that "very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, or as a propaganda tool. That's not who we are." Among Republican members of Congress, Senator Lindsey Graham criticized the decision and said he wanted to see the photos released, while Senator John McCain and Representative Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, supported the decision.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On May 11, selected members of Congress (the congressional leadership and those who serve on the House and Senate intelligence, homeland security, judiciary, foreign relations, and armed forces committees) were shown 15 bin Laden photos. In an interview with Eliot Spitzer, Senator Jim Inhofe said that three of the photos were of bin Laden alive for identification reference. Three other photos were of the burial-at-sea ceremony.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain access to the photos in May 2011, soon after the raid. On May 9, the Department of Defense declined to process Judicial Watch's FOIA request, prompting Judicial Watch to file a federal lawsuit. In 2012, Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling denying release of the photographs. In May 2013, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit consisting of Chief Judge Merrick Garland, Senior Judge Harry T. Edwards, and Judge Judith Rogers affirmed the ruling, holding that 52 post-mortem images were properly classified as "top secret" and exempt from disclosure. Judicial Watch filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in August 2013, seeking U.S. Supreme Court review, but in January 2014 the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The Associated Press filed a FOIA request for photographs and videos taken during the Abbottabad raid less than one day after bin Laden was killed. The AP also requested "contingency plans for bin Laden's capture, reports on the performance of equipment during the mission and copies of DNA tests" confirming bin Laden's identity. The Defense Department rejected the AP's request for expedited processing, a legal provision to shorten the amount of time to process FOIA requests. The Defense Department rejected the request, and the AP administratively appealed.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A book published in November 2011, "Seal Target Geronimo", by Chuck Pfarrer, a former SEAL, contradicted the account as given by U.S. government sources. According to Pfarrer, neither helicopter crashed at the beginning of the raid. Instead, the SEALs jumped onto the roof from the hovering Razor1 helicopter and entered a third-floor hallway from the roof terrace. Osama's third wife, Khairah, was in the hallway, headed towards the SEALs. She was blinded by a strobe light and pushed to the floor as the SEALs went past her. Osama bin Laden stuck his head out of a bedroom door, saw the SEALs, and slammed the door closed. At the same time, Osama's son Khalid bin Laden ran up the stairs to the third floor and was killed with two shots.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Two SEALs broke through the bedroom door. Bin Laden's wife Amal was on the edge of the bed shouting in Arabic at the SEALs, and Osama bin Laden dived across the bed, shoving Amal at the same time, for an AKS-74U kept by the headboard. The SEALs fired four shots at bin Laden; the first missed, the second grazed Amal in the calf also missing bin Laden, and the final two hit bin Laden in the chest and head, killing him instantly. In Pfarrer's account, the total time elapsed from jumping on the roof to Osama bin Laden's death was between 30 and 90 seconds.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Around the same time, snipers in the hovering Razor2 helicopter shot and killed Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti when he came to the door of the guest house firing an AK-47. One SEAL sniper fired two shots at al-Kuwaiti and the other fired two three-round bursts. Two of the snipers' bullets went through al-Kuwaiti and killed his wife who was standing behind him. The Razor2 team cleared the guest house and then breached their way into the main house with explosives. As the Razor2 team entered the main house, al-Qaeda courier Arshad Khan pointed his AK-47 gun and was killed with two shots. The SEAL team fired a total of 16 shots, killing Osama bin Laden, Khalid bin Laden, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and al-Kuwaiti's wife, Arshad Khan, and wounding Osama bin Laden's wife Amal al-Sadah.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Twenty minutes into the operation, Razor1 took off from the roof of the main house to reposition to a landing spot outside the compound. As Razor1 was crossing over the courtyard, both "green unit" flight deck control systems went off line. The helicopter settled slowly, bounced off the ground, and then broke apart as it hit the ground a second time. Both failed green units were removed for later examination.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Media accounts had reported that the plan had been to fast rope to the inner courtyard and to clear the main house from the ground floor up. The helicopter crashed in the outer courtyard with the SEAL team still on board. The SEAL team exited and needed to breach two walls and then into the house. As a result, Osama bin Laden was killed several minutes into the operation. Pfarrer's account differs in that he wrote that a SEAL team was inserted onto the roof of the main house, that Osama bin Laden was killed seconds into the operation, and that the main house was cleared from the top down.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The Pentagon disputed Pfarrer's account of the raid, calling it "incorrect". The U.S. Special Operations Command also disputed Pfarrer's account, saying, "It's just not true. It's not how it happened."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Matt Bissonnette, a SEAL who participated in the raid, wrote an account of the mission in the book "No Easy Day" (2012), which significantly contradicts Pfarrer's account. Bissonnette wrote that the helicopter approach and landing matched the official version. According to Bissonnette, when bin Laden peered out at the Americans advancing on his third-floor room, the SEAL who fired upon him hit him on the right side of the head. Bin Laden stumbled into his bedroom, where the SEALs found him crumpled and twitching on the floor in a pool of body matter, with two women crying over his body. The other SEALs allegedly grabbed the women, moved them away, and shot several rounds into bin Laden's chest until he was motionless. According to Bissonnette, the weapons in the room—an AK-47 rifle and a Makarov pistol—were unloaded.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Unlike the official account, Bissonnette's version alleges that bin Laden's wife Mariam was uninjured in the raid. In addition, Bissonnette states that the report of bin Laden's daughter Safia having splintered wood striking her foot is false, as he explains that it was rather his wife Amal who was injured by such fragments.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The author also asserted that one SEAL sat on bin Laden's chest in a cramped helicopter as his body was flown back to Afghanistan.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Bissonnette stated that a search of bin Laden's room after his death uncovered a bottle of Just for Men hair dye.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In February 2013, "Esquire" conducted an interview with an anonymous individual called "the shooter" who said that bin Laden placed one of his wives between himself and the commandos, pushing her towards them. "Shooter" then claimed bin Laden stood up and had a gun "within reach" and it was only then that he fired two shots into bin Laden's forehead, killing him. Another member of SEAL Team Six said the story as presented in "Esquire" was false and "complete BS". Then, in November 2014, former SEAL Robert O'Neill disclosed his identity as the shooter in a series of interviews with "The Washington Post".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In 2011 American intelligence analyst Raelynn Hillhouse wrote that according to U.S. intelligence sources, the U.S. had been tipped-off to bin Laden's location by an unnamed Pakistani intelligence insider collecting the $25 million reward. According to the sources, Pakistan purposely stood-down its armed forces to allow the U.S. raid, and the original plan was to kill—not capture—bin Laden. Hillhouse's sources stated that the Pakistanis had been keeping bin Laden under house arrest near their military headquarters in Abbottabad with money provided by the Saudis. According to "The Telegraph", Hillhouse's account might explain why U.S. forces encountered no resistance on their way to and in Abbottabad, and why some residents in Abbottabad were warned to stay in their houses the day before the raid. Hillhouse later also said bin Laden's body had been thrown out of a helicopter over the Hindu Kush. Hillhouse's account was picked up and published internationally.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In May 2015, a detailed article in the London Review of Books by journalist Seymour Hersh said that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had kept bin Laden under house arrest at Abbottabad since 2006, and that Pakistani Army chief Pervez Kayani and ISI director Ahmad Shuja Pasha aided the U.S. mission to kill, not capture bin Laden. According to Hersh, Pakistani officials were always aware of bin Laden's location and were guarding the compound with their own soldiers. Pakistan decided to give up bin Laden's location to the U.S. because American aid was declining. Pakistani officials were aware of the raid, and assisted the U.S. in carrying it out. According to Hersh, bin Laden was basically an invalid.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Hersh's U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources stated that the U.S. had learned of bin Laden's location through a Pakistani walk-in seeking the $25 million reward, and not through tracking a courier. NBC News and Agence France-Presse subsequently reported that their sources indicated a walk-in was an extremely valuable asset, though the sources disputed that the walk-in knew the location of bin Laden. Pakistan-based journalist Amir Mir in the "News International" reported the walk-in's identity to be Usman Khalid, though that allegation was denied by Khalid's family.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Although similar in claims, both Hillhouse's and Hersh's accounts of the bin Laden death appeared to be based on different sources which "The Intercept" concluded might corroborate the claims if their identities were known. After the Hersh story broke, NBC News also independently reported that a Pakistani intelligence officer was the source of the original bin Laden location report, and not the courier.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The White House denied Hersh's report. A former intelligence official who had direct knowledge of the operation speculated that the Pakistanis, who were furious that the operation took place without being detected by them, were behind the false story as a way to save face. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in "The New York Review of Books" finds the cooperation between the CIA and ISI that Hersh describes "inconceivable", in part because 2011 was "the worst year in U.S.-Pakistan relations since the late 1980s" and "hatred and mistrust" between the CIA and ISI was "acute"—something Hersh does not mention. Among the incidents that occurred in Pakistan in the months before the killing of bin Laden were the killing of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis, numerous death threats against the Islamabad CIA station chief after his name was leaked (purportedly by the ISI), the cessation of the issuing of visas for U.S. officials (following which the U.S. consulate in Lahore was moved to Islamabad over concerns about security), increased U.S. anger over the refusal of Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban, the death of 40 Pakistanis including many civilians and later 24 Pakistani soldiers from U.S. drone strikes; and the cut-off of U.S. supplies to Afghanistan by Pakistan.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In the publication "No Easy Day", a map of the operation show the U.S. SEALs briefly crossed into Indian territory before its loop approaching Abbottabad in Pakistan, raising questions in India whether the U.S. violated Indian airspace, and if India had advance knowledge about the mission. The Indian Air Force dismissed claims that the U.S. crossed into Indian airspace.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The reports of bin Laden's death on May 2, 2011, are not universally accepted despite unreleased DNA testing confirming his identity, bin Laden's twelve-year-old daughter witnessing his death, and a May 6, 2011, al-Qaeda statement confirming his death. The swift burial of bin Laden's body at sea, the speed of the DNA results, and the decision not to release pictures of the dead body have led to the rise of conspiracy theories that bin Laden had not died in the raid. Some blogs suggested that the U.S. government feigned the raid, and some forums hosted debates over the alleged hoax.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Pakistan came under intense international scrutiny after the raid. The Pakistani government denied that it had sheltered bin Laden, and said it had shared information with the CIA and other intelligence agencies about the compound since 2009.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Carlotta Gall, in her 2014 book "The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014", accuses the ISI, Pakistan's clandestine intelligence service, of hiding and protecting Osama bin Laden and his family after the September 11, 2001 attacks. She claims that she learned from a Pakistani official (with whom she later clarified that she did not speak, the information coming through a friend) that a senior U.S. official had told him that the United States had direct evidence that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, but ISI, Pasha and officials in Washington all deny this: "C.I.A. and other Obama administration officials have said they possess no evidence—no intercepts, no unreleased documents from Abbottabad—that Kayani or Pasha or any other I.S.I. officer knew where bin Laden was hiding."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: After the raid, there was an unconfirmed report that Pakistan allowed Chinese military officials to examine the wreckage of the crashed helicopter.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Abbottabad attracted refugees from fighting in the tribal areas and Swat Valley, as well as Afghanistan. "People don't really care now to ask who's there", said Gohar Ayub Khan, a former foreign minister and resident of the city. "That's one of the reasons why, possibly, he came in there."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The city was home to at least one al-Qaeda leader before bin Laden. Operational chief Abu Faraj al-Libi reportedly moved his family to Abbottabad in mid-2003. Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) raided the house in December 2003 but did not find him. This account was contradicted by American officials who said that satellite photos show that in 2004 the site was an empty field. A courier told interrogators that al-Libi used three houses in Abbottabad. Pakistani officials say they informed their American counterparts at the time that the city could be a hiding place for al-Qaeda leaders. In 2009 officials began providing the U.S. with intelligence about bin Laden's compound without knowing who lived there.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On January 25, 2011, ISI arrested Umar Patek, an Indonesian wanted in connection with the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, while he was staying with a family in Abbottabad. Tahir Shehzad, a clerk at the post office, was arrested on suspicion of facilitating travel for al-Qaeda militants.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Numerous allegations were made that the government of Pakistan had shielded bin Laden. Critics cited the proximity of bin Laden's heavily fortified compound to the Pakistan Military Academy, that the U.S. chose to not notify Pakistani authorities before the operation, and the double standards of Pakistan regarding the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. U.S. government files, leaked by WikiLeaks, disclosed that American diplomats had been told that Pakistani security services were tipping off bin Laden every time U.S. forces approached. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), also helped smuggle al-Qaeda militants into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops. According to the leaked files, in December 2009, the government of Tajikistan had also told U.S. officials that many in Pakistan were aware of bin Laden's whereabouts.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: CIA chief Leon Panetta said the CIA had ruled out involving Pakistan in the operation, because it feared that "any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding". Obama echoed her sentiments. John O. Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism advisor, said that it was inconceivable that bin Laden did not have support from within Pakistan. He said: "People have been referring to this as hiding in plain sight. We are looking at how he was able to hide out there for so long."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The Indian 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 called on Pakistan to arrest them.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Pakistani-born British member of parliament Khalid Mahmood said he was "flabbergasted and shocked" after he learned that bin Laden was living in a city with thousands of Pakistani troops, reviving questions about alleged links between al-Qaeda and elements in Pakistan's security forces.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: On August 7, 2011, Raelynn Hillhouse, an American spy novelist and security analyst, posted "The Spy Who Billed Me" on her national security blog, suggesting that Pakistan's ISI had sheltered bin Laden in return for a $25 million bounty; ISI and government officials have denied her allegations.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Former Pakistani Army Chief, General Ziauddin Butt has said that, according to his knowledge, Osama bin Laden was kept in an Intelligence Bureau safe house in Abbottabad by the then Director-General of the Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan (2004–2008), Brigadier Ijaz Shah. This had occurred with the "full knowledge" of former army chief General Pervez Musharraf and possibly that of current Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Emails from the private American security firm, Stratfor, published by WikiLeaks on February 27, 2012, indicate that up to 12 officials in Pakistan's ISI knew of Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad safe house. Stratfor had been given access to the papers collected by American forces from bin Laden's Abbottabad house. The emails reveal that these Pakistani officers included "Mid to senior level ISI and Pak Mil with one retired Pak Mil General". In 2014, British journalist Carlotta Gall revealed that she had been told by an undisclosed ISI source that the ISI "ran a special desk assigned to handle bin Laden". The desk was "led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior [...] but the top military bosses knew about it, I was told".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to Steve Coll, as of 2019 there is no direct evidence showing Pakistani knowledge of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, even by a rogue or compartmented faction within the government, other than the circumstantial fact of bin Laden's compound being located near (albeit not directly visible from) the Pakistan Military Academy. Documents captured from the Abbottabad compound generally show that bin Laden was wary of contact with Pakistani intelligence and police, especially in light of Pakistan's role in the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; it has also been suggested that the $25 million U.S. reward for information leading to bin Laden would have been enticing to Pakistani officers given their reputation for corruption. The compound itself, although unusually tall, was less conspicuous than sometimes envisaged by Americans, given the common local habit of walling off homes for protection against violence or to ensure the privacy of female family members. Coll notes that a Pakistani Taliban cell had previously surveilled the army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi out of a nearby house for two months prior to a deadly October 2009 attack on the facility—without detection.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to a Pakistani intelligence official, raw phone-tap data had been transferred to the U.S. without being analyzed by Pakistan. While the U.S. "was concentrating on this" information since September 2010, information regarding bin Laden and the compound's inhabitants had "slipped from" Pakistan's "radar" over the months. Bin Laden left "an invisible footprint" and he had not been contacting other militant networks. It was noted that much focus had been placed on a courier entering and leaving the compound. The transfer of intelligence to the U.S. was a regular occurrence according to the official, who also stated regarding the raid that "I think they came in undetected and went out the same day", and Pakistan did not believe that U.S. personnel were present in the area before the special operation occurred.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: According to the Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan had prior knowledge that an operation would happen. Pakistan was "in the know of certain things" and "what happened, happened with our consent. Americans got to know him—where he was first—and that's why they struck it and struck it precisely." Husain Haqqani, Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., had said that Pakistan would have pursued bin Laden had the intelligence of his location existed with them and Pakistan was "very glad that our American partners did. They had superior intelligence, superior technology, and we are grateful to them."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Another Pakistani official stated that Pakistan "assisted only in terms of authorization of the helicopter flights in our airspace" and the operation was conducted by the United States. He also said that "in any event, we did not want anything to do with such an operation in case something went wrong."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In June, the ISI arrested the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe Osama bin Laden's compound and five CIA informants.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Mark Kelton, then the CIA station chief for Pakistan, alleges that he was poisoned by the ISI in retaliation for the raid, forcing him to leave the country.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Several officials who were present in the Situation Room, including the president, told reporters that the code name for bin Laden was "Geronimo". They had watched Leon Panetta, speaking from CIA headquarters, while he narrated the action in Abbottabad. Panetta said, "We have a visual on Geronimo", and later, "Geronimo EKIA"—enemy killed in action. The words of the commander on the ground were, "For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo." Officials subsequently explained that each step of the mission was labelled alphabetically in an "Execution Checklist", which is used to ensure all participants in a large operation are kept synchronized with a minimum of radio traffic. "Geronimo" indicated the raiders had reached step "G", the capture or killing of bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was identified as "Jackpot", the general code name for the target of an operation. ABC News reported that otherwise his regular code name was "Cakebread". "The New Yorker" reported that bin Laden's code name was "Crankshaft".


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Many Native Americans were offended that Geronimo, the renowned 19th-century Apache leader, was irrevocably linked with bin Laden. The chairman of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, the successor to Geronimo's tribe, wrote a letter to Obama asking him to "right this wrong." The president of the Navajo Nation requested that the U.S. government change the code name retroactively. Officials from the National Congress of American Indians said the focus should be on honoring the disproportionately high number of Native Americans who serve in the military, and they had been assured that "Geronimo" was not a code name for bin Laden. The U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs heard testimony on the issue from tribal leaders, while the Defense Department had no comment except to say that no disrespect was intended.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: After the death of bin Laden, some officials from the Bush administration, such as former Bush Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo and former attorney general Michael Mukasey, wrote op-eds stating that the enhanced interrogation techniques they authorized (since legally clarified as torture) yielded the intelligence that later led to locating bin Laden's hideout. Mukasey said that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed caused him to reveal the nickname of bin Laden's courier.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: U.S. officials and legislators, including Republican John McCain and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, countered that those statements were false. They noted that a report by CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that the first mention of the courier's nickname did not come from Mohammed, but rather from another government's interrogation of a suspect whom they said they "believe was not tortured."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Panetta had written a letter to McCain on the issue, saying: "Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier's role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the 'only timely and effective way' to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively." Although some information may have been obtained from detainees who were subjected to torture, Panetta wrote to McCain that:


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: We first learned about the facilitator/courier's nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier's role were alerting. In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier's full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In addition, other U.S. officials state that shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in CIA secret prisons told interrogators about the courier's pseudonym "al-Kuwaiti" and that when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was later captured, he only confirmed the courier's pseudonym. After Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured, he provided false or misleading information: he denied that he knew al-Kuwaiti and he made up another name instead. Also, a group of interrogators asserted that the courier's nickname was not divulged "during torture, but rather several months later, when [detainees] were questioned by interrogators who did not use abusive techniques."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Evidence seized from the compound is said to include ten cell phones, five to ten computers, twelve hard drives, at least 100 computer disks (including thumb drives and DVDs), handwritten notes, documents, weapons, and an assortment of personal items. It was described by a senior Pentagon intelligence official as "the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever." On November 1, 2017, the CIA released to the public approximately 470,000 files and a copy of bin Laden's diary.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Intelligence analysts also studied call detail records from two phone numbers that were found to be sewn into bin Laden's clothing. They helped over the course of several months to apprehend several al-Qaeda members in several countries and to kill several of bin Laden's closest associates by CIA drone attacks in Pakistan.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The material gathered at the compound was stored at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, where forensic experts analyzed fingerprints, DNA, and other trace evidence left on the material. Copies of the material were provided to other agencies; officials want to preserve a chain of custody in case any of the information is needed as evidence in a future trial.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: A special CIA team has been given the responsibility of combing through the digital material and documents removed from the bin Laden compound. The CIA team is working in collaboration with other U.S. government agencies "to triage, catalog and analyze this intelligence."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden's youngest wife told Pakistani investigators that the family lived in the feudal village of Chak Shah Muhammad, in the nearby district of Haripur, Pakistan, for two and a half years before moving to Abbottabad in late 2005.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The material seized from the compound contained al-Qaeda's strategy for Afghanistan after America's withdrawal from the country in 2014, as well as thousands of electronic memos and missives that captured conversations between bin Laden and his deputies around the world. It showed that bin Laden stayed in touch with al-Qaeda's established affiliates and sought new alliances with groups such as Boko Haram from Nigeria. According to the material, he sought to reassert control over factions of loosely affiliated jihadists from Yemen to Somalia, as well as independent actors whom he believed had sullied al-Qaeda's reputation and muddied its central message. Bin Laden was worried at times about his personal security and was annoyed that his organization had not utilized the Arab Spring to improve its image. He acted, according to "The Washington Post", on the one hand as "chief executive fully engaged in the group's myriad crises, grappling with financial problems, recruitment, rebellious field managers, and sudden staff vacancies resulting from the unrelenting U.S. drone campaign", and on the other hand as "a hands-on manager who participated in the terrorist group's operational planning and strategic thinking while also giving orders and advice to field operatives scattered worldwide." The material also described Osama bin Laden's relation with Ayman al-Zawahiri and Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: Seventeen documents seized during the Abbottabad raid, consisting of electronic letters or draft letters dating from September 2006 to April 2011, were released by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point one year and one day after bin Laden's death. and made available at "The Washington Post" homepage. The documents covered subjects such as the news media in America, affiliate organization, targets, America, security, and the Arab Spring. In the documents, bin Laden said al-Qaeda's strength was limited and therefore suggested that the best way to attack the U.S., which he compared to a tree, "is to concentrate on sawing the trunk". He refused the promotion of Anwar al-Awlaki when this was requested by Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. "We here become reassured of the people when they go to the line and get examined there", bin Laden said. He told al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to expand operations in the U.S. in the wake of the 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot by writing "We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The seized material shed light on al-Qaeda's relationship with Iran, which detained jihadis and their relatives in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, including members of bin Laden's family. Al-Qaeda's relationship with Iran was, according to the Combating Terrorism Center, an "unpleasant byproduct of necessity, fueled by mutual distrust and antagonism." An explicit reference to any institutional support from Pakistan for al-Qaeda wasn't mentioned in the documents; instead, bin Laden instructed his family members how to avoid detection so that members of Pakistani intelligence couldn't track them to find him. According to the seized material, former commander of the international forces in Afghanistan David Petraeus and US President Barack Obama should be assassinated during any of their visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan, if there was an opportunity to do so. Bin Laden opined that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden should not be a target because "Biden is totally unprepared for that post [of president], which will lead the US into a crisis." Bin Laden was also against one-person suicide attacks and was of the opinion that at least two persons should undertake these attacks instead. He planned to reform in a way so that al-Qaeda's central leadership would have a greater say in the naming of the al-Qaeda branch leaders and their deputies. He expressed his opinion that killing Muslims has weakened his organization and not helped al-Qaeda, writing that it "cost the mujahedeen no small amount of sympathy among Muslims. The enemy has exploited the mistakes of the mujahedeen to mar their image among the masses."


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The United States Department of Justice released a further eleven documents in March 2015. The documents were part of the trial against Abid Naseer, who was convicted of plotting to bomb a Manchester shopping mall in 2009. They included letters to and from Osama bin Laden in the year before his death, and showed the extent of the damage the CIA drone program had done to Al-Qaeda.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: In addition to information and data recovered that were of intelligence interest, the documents and computer items also contained personal files, including family correspondence and a large stash of pornography. US officials have refused to characterize the type of pornography found other than to say that it was "modern" in nature. The most likely explanation for the pornography on bin Laden's hard drive is that he bought a poorly refurbished computer since bin Laden did not have internet access and the computer was also infected with viruses.


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The tail section of the secret helicopter survived demolition and lay just outside the compound wall. Pakistani security forces put up a cloth barrier at first light to hide the wreckage. Later, a tractor hauled it away hidden under a tarp. Journalists obtained photographs that revealed the previously undisclosed stealth technology. "Aviation Week" said the helicopter appeared to be a significantly modified MH-60 Black Hawk. Serial numbers found at the scene were consistent with an MH-60 built in 2009. Its performance during the operation confirmed that a stealth helicopter could evade detection in a militarily sensitive, densely populated area. Photos showed that the Black Hawk's tail had stealth-configured shapes on the boom and the fairings, swept stabilizers and a "hubcap" over the noise-reducing five- or six-blade tail rotor. It appeared to have a silver-loaded infrared suppression finish similar to some V-22 Ospreys. The crash of the Blackhawk may have been, at least in part, caused by the aerodynamic deficiencies introduced to the airframe by the stealth technology add-ons (an unrelated possible cause of the crash was that the rehearsal mock-ups of the compound had used a chain-link fence rather than a solid wall for the perimeter and thus had not reproduced the airflows that the helicopter would face).


title: Killing of Osama bin Laden

text: The U.S. requested return of the wreckage and the Chinese government also expressed interest, according to Pakistani officials. Pakistan had custody of the wreckage for over two weeks before its return was secured by U.S. Senator John Kerry. Experts disagreed as to how much information could have been gleaned from the tail fragment. Stealth technology was already operational on several fixed-wing aircraft and the cancelled RAH-66 Comanche helicopter; the modified Black Hawk was the first confirmed operational "stealth helicopter". It is likely that the most valuable information obtainable from the wreckage was the composition of the radar-absorbing paint used on the tail section. Local children were seen picking up pieces of the wreckage and selling them as souvenirs. In August 2011, Fox News reported that Pakistan had allowed Chinese scientists to examine the helicopter's tail section and were especially interested in its radar-absorbing paint. Pakistan and the PRC denied these claims.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Eddie Jerome Vedder (born Edward Louis Severson III; December 23, 1964) is an American singer, musician, and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and one of four guitarists of the rock band Pearl Jam. He also appeared as a guest vocalist in Temple of the Dog, the one-off tribute band dedicated to the late singer Andrew Wood.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder is known for his powerful baritone vocals. He was ranked number 7 on a list of "Best Lead Singers of All Time", based on a readers' poll compiled by "Rolling Stone".


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In 2007, Vedder released his first solo album as a soundtrack for the film "Into the Wild" (2007). His second album, "Ukulele Songs," and a live DVD titled "Water on the Road" were released in 2011. His third solo album "Earthling" was released in 2022.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder was born Edward Louis Severson III in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, on December 23, 1964, to Karen Lee Vedder and Edward Louis Severson Jr. His parents divorced in 1965 when Vedder was an infant. His mother soon remarried to a man named Peter Mueller. Vedder was raised believing that Mueller was his biological father, and he went by the name Edward Mueller for a time. Vedder's ancestry includes Norwegian (Severson) and Dutch, German, and Danish (Vedder).


title: Eddie Vedder

text: While living in Evanston, Vedder's family fostered seven younger children in a group home. In the mid-1970s, the family, including Vedder's three younger half-brothers, moved to San Diego County, California. It was at this point that Vedder, who received a guitar from his mother on his 12th birthday, began turning to music (as well as surfing) as a source of comfort. He particularly found solace in The Who's 1973 album, "Quadrophenia". He said, "When I was around 15 or 16... I was all alone—except for music." His mother and Mueller divorced when Vedder was in his late teens. His mother and brothers moved back to the Chicago area, but Vedder remained with his stepfather in California so he would not have to change schools.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: After the divorce, Vedder learned the truth about his parentage: Mueller was really his stepfather. Vedder had met his biological father briefly as a child, but had believed that Severson was merely an old friend of his parents. By the time Vedder learned the truth, Severson had died of multiple sclerosis. During his senior year at San Dieguito High School, Vedder moved out to live in an apartment, supporting himself with a nightly job at a drug store in Encinitas. Because of the pressure of work and school, Vedder dropped out of high school. He joined the rest of his family in Chicago, and at this time he changed his name to Vedder, his mother's maiden name.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In the early 1980s, while working as a waiter, Eddie earned his high school GED, and briefly attended a community college near Chicago. In 1984, Vedder returned to San Diego, with his girlfriend Beth Liebling and his friend Frank. He kept busy recording demo tapes at his home and working various jobs, including a position as a contracted security guard at the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla. Vedder had several stints in San Diego area bands, including Surf and Destroy and the Butts. One of those bands, called Indian Style, included future Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave drummer Brad Wilk. In 1988, Vedder became the vocalist for San Diego progressive funk rock band Bad Radio. The band's original incarnation was influenced by Duran Duran; however, after Vedder joined, the band moved on to a more alternative rock sound influenced by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In the 1980s, Vedder worked part time as a night attendant at a local gas station. Through the Southern California music scene, Vedder met former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons, who became a friend of Vedder and would play basketball with him. Later in 1990, Irons gave him the demo tape of a Seattle band looking for a singer. Vedder listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him. He wrote lyrics for three of the songs in what he later described as a "mini-opera" entitled "Momma-Son". The songs tell the story of a young man who, like Vedder, learns that he had been lied to about his paternity and that his real father is dead, grows up to become a serial killer, and is eventually imprisoned and sentenced to death. Vedder recorded vocals for the three songs, and mailed the demo tape back to Seattle. The three songs would later become Pearl Jam's "Alive", "Once", and "Footsteps".


title: Eddie Vedder

text: After hearing Vedder's tape, former Mother Love Bone members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament invited Vedder to come to Seattle to audition for their new band. They were instantly impressed with his unique sound. At the time, Gossard and Ament were working on the Temple of the Dog project founded by Soundgarden's Chris Cornell as a musical tribute to Mother Love Bone's frontman Andrew Wood, who died of a heroin overdose at age 24. Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron and newcomer Mike McCready were also a part of the project. The song "Hunger Strike" became a duet between Cornell and Vedder. Cornell later said of Vedder that "he sang half of that song not even knowing that I'd wanted the part to be there and he sang it exactly the way I was thinking about doing it, just instinctively." Vedder would provide background vocals on several other songs as well. In April 1991, "Temple of the Dog" was released through A&M Records. "Hunger Strike" became Temple of the Dog's breakout single; it was also Vedder's first featured vocal on a record. Vedder said about the song in the 2009 book "Grunge Is Dead"; "I really like hearing that song. I feel like I could be real proud of it – because one, I didn't write it, and two, it was such a nice way to be ushered onto vinyl for the first time. I'm indebted to Chris [Cornell] time eternal for being invited onto that track." On the 2011 documentary "Pearl Jam Twenty", Vedder stated; "That was the first time I heard myself on a real record. It could be one of my favorite songs that I've ever been on – or the most meaningful." Vedder and Cornell performed the song together for the last time on October 26, 2014, at the Bridge School Benefit.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Pearl Jam was formed in 1990 by Ament, Gossard, and McCready, who then recruited Vedder and three different drummers in sequence. The band originally took the name Mookie Blaylock, but was forced to change it when they signed to Epic Records in 1991, instead calling their debut album "Ten" after Blaylock's jersey number.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: "Ten" brought the band into the mainstream, and became one of the best selling alternative albums of the 1990s, being certified 13× Platinum. The band found itself amidst the sudden popularity and attention given to the Seattle music scene and the genre known as grunge. The single "Jeremy" received Grammy Award nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance in 1993. Pearl Jam received four awards at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards for its music video for "Jeremy", including Video of the Year and Best Group Video. "Ten" ranks number 209 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and "Jeremy" was ranked number 11 on VH1's list of the 100 greatest songs of the '90s.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Following an intense touring schedule, the band went into the studio to record what would become its second studio album, "Vs.", released in 1993. Upon its release, "Vs." set the record at the time for most copies of an album sold in a week, and spent five weeks at number one on the "Billboard" 200. "Vs." was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 1995. From "Vs.", the song "Daughter" received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and the song "Go" received a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Feeling the pressures of success, with much of the burden of Pearl Jam's popularity falling on Vedder, the band decided to decrease the level of promotion for its albums, including refusing to release music videos. Vedder's issue with fame came from what he stated as "what happens when a lot of these people start thinking you can change their lives or save their lives or whatever and create these impossible fuckin' expectations that in the end just start tearing you apart." In 1994, the band began a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster, which lasted for three years and limited the band's ability to tour in the United States. Vedder faced what he called a "pretty intense stalker problem" during the mid-1990s. Vedder would refer to the issue in the song "Lukin" from "No Code".


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Later that same year the band released its third studio album, "Vitalogy", which became the band's third straight album to reach multi-platinum status. It was at this time that Vedder began to be featured more on rhythm guitar, as well as on back up vocals and some drumming. The pressure of fame is a common theme of Vedder's songs on the album. The album received Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Best Rock Album in 1996. "Vitalogy" was ranked number 485 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The lead single "Spin the Black Circle" won a Grammy Award in 1996 for Best Hard Rock Performance. Although Dave Abbruzzese performed on the album "Vitalogy", he was fired in August 1994, four months before the album was released. The band cited political differences between Abbruzzese and the other members; for example, he disagreed with the Ticketmaster boycott. He was replaced by Jack Irons, a close friend of Vedder and the former and original drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Regarding the approach Pearl Jam took after its initial success, Vedder stated, "We've had the luxury of writing our own job description...and that description has basically been cut down to just one line: make music." The band subsequently released "No Code" in 1996 and "Yield" in 1998. In 1998, prior to Pearl Jam's U.S. Yield Tour, Irons left the band due to dissatisfaction with touring. Pearl Jam enlisted former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron as Irons' replacement on an initially temporary basis, but he soon became the permanent replacement for Irons. "Do the Evolution" (from "Yield") received a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance. In 1998, Pearl Jam recorded "Last Kiss", a cover of a 1960s ballad made famous by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. It was released on the band's 1998 fan club Christmas single; however, by popular demand, the cover was released to the public as a single in 1999. "Last Kiss" peaked at number two on the "Billboard" charts and became the band's highest-charting single.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In 2000, the band released its sixth studio album, "Binaural", and initiated a successful and ongoing series of official bootlegs. The band released seventy-two such live albums in 2000 and 2001, and set a record for most albums to debut in the "Billboard" 200 at the same time. "Grievance" (from "Binaural") received a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band released its seventh studio album, "Riot Act", in 2002. Pearl Jam's contribution to the 2003 film "Big Fish," titled "Man of the Hour," was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 2004. The band's eighth studio album, the eponymous "Pearl Jam", was released in 2006. The band released its ninth studio album, "Backspacer", in 2009, its tenth studio album, "Lightning Bolt", in 2013, and its eleventh studio album, "Gigaton", in 2020.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder uses the pseudonym "Jerome Turner" on Pearl Jam records for his non-musical contributions such as design and artwork. He has also used the pseudonym "Wes C. Addle" ("West Seattle").


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder has contributed solo material to several soundtracks and compilations, including the soundtracks for the films "Dead Man Walking" (1995), "I Am Sam" (2001), "A Brokedown Melody" (2004), "Body of War" (2007), and "Reign Over Me" (2007). Vedder collaborated with Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for his contributions to the "Dead Man Walking" soundtrack. He covered the Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" for the "I Am Sam" soundtrack. Vedder wrote "Man of the Hour" that Pearl Jam recorded for Tim Burton's Big Fish Soundtrack (2003). Vedder wrote two songs for the 2007 feature documentary, "Body of War", produced by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue: "No More" (a song referring to the Iraq War) and "Long Nights". Vedder and the supergroup the Million Dollar Bashers, which includes members from Sonic Youth, Wilco, and Bob Dylan's band, covered Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" for the biopic film, "I'm Not There" (2007). Pearl Jam recorded a cover version of The Who's song "Love, Reign o'er Me" for the film "Reign Over Me", which takes its title from the song. In 2010, Vedder recorded a new song, "Better Days", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 2010 film "Eat Pray Love". Vedder contributed original music for the soundtrack to the 2021 film "Flag Day", which also featured the musical debut of Vedder's daughter Olivia on lead vocals in the first single, "My Father’s Daughter", written by Vedder and Glen Hansard.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder contributed an album's worth of songs to the soundtrack for the 2007 film, "Into the Wild". The soundtrack was released on September 18, 2007, through J Records. It includes covers of the Indio song "Hard Sun" and the Jerry Hannan song "Society". Vedder said that having to write songs based on a narrative "simplified things". He said, "There were fewer choices. The story was there and the scenes were there." Vedder's songs written for the film feature a folk sound. Thom Jurek of AllMusic called the soundtrack a "collection of folksy, rootsy tunes where rock & roll makes fleeting appearances." Vedder won a 2008 Golden Globe Award for the song "Guaranteed" from "Into the Wild". He was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his contributions to the film's original score. At the 2008 Grammy Awards, "Guaranteed" received a nomination for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. "Guaranteed" was also nominated a 2008 World Soundtrack Award in the category of Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, "Rise" received a nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder promoted the "Into the Wild" soundtrack with his first solo tour, which began in April 2008. The April leg of the tour, dubbed the "April Fools Tour", began in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada at The Centre on April 2, 2008, and was composed of ten dates focusing on the West Coast of the United States. Vedder continued the tour with a second leg in August 2008 composed of fourteen dates focusing on the East Coast and Canada. The second leg of the tour began in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Opera House and ended in Chicago, Illinois at the Auditorium Theatre. In June 2009, Vedder followed his 2008 solo tour with another solo tour composed of fourteen dates focusing on the Eastern United States and Hawaii, which began in Albany, New York at the Palace Theatre and continued through to Honolulu at the Hawaii Theatre.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder released his second solo album titled "Ukulele Songs", a collection of original songs and covers performed on the ukulele, on May 31, 2011. The first single from the album, "Longing to Belong", was released through digital retailers on March 21. A live DVD titled "Water on the Road", featuring live performances from two shows in Washington, D.C. during Vedder's 2008 solo tour, was released the same day as "Ukulele Songs".


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In September 2021, Vedder released the single "Long Way", taken from his third studio album "Earthling". This was followed by "The Haves" on November 18, 2021, and "Brother the Cloud" on January 14, 2022. "Long Way" and "The Haves" have been released as a limited edition 7" vinyl. To tour the album, Vedder assembled a backing band dubbed "The Earthlings", which includes Glen Hansard on rhythm guitar and backing vocals, Josh Klinghoffer on guitar, keyboard and vocals, Chad Smith on drums, Chris Chaney on bass, and guitarist Andrew Watt. Watt also produced the album.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In addition to playing with Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog, Vedder has performed or recorded with numerous well-known artists. He has appeared on albums by the Who, Ramones, Neil Young, R.E.M., Neil Finn, Bad Religion, Mark Seymour, Cat Power, Mike Watt, Fastbacks, Wellwater Conspiracy, Jack Irons, and John Doe, and has also recorded with the Strokes, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Supersuckers, Susan Sarandon, and Zeke. In the months of June and July 2006, Vedder made live performances jamming with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, singing on many tracks, including lead vocals on "The Waiting" and backing vocals on "American Girl". Vedder performed the songs "Break on Through (To the Other Side)", "Light My Fire" and "Roadhouse Blues" with the remaining members of the Doors at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He also performed with R.E.M. at the 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and with the Stooges at the 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Vedder made a guest appearance at the Ramones' last show on August 6, 1996, at the Palace in Hollywood.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder had a brief acting cameo in the 1992 movie, "Singles", along with Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam. He appeared as himself, playing drums in lead actor Matt Dillon's backing band, Citizen Dick. He was also interviewed for the 1996 grunge documentary, "Hype!" He appears in the 2003 Ramones documentary, "". In 2007, he made a cameo as himself in the comedy film, "". He appears in the 2007 Tom Petty documentary, "Runnin' Down a Dream", the 2008 political documentary, "Slacker Uprising", and the 2009 Howard Zinn documentary, "The People Speak", based upon "A People's History of the United States". He was featured in the 2008 Greg Kohs documentary, "Song Sung Blue", performing with Lightning and Thunder. He had a one-scene cameo in the second episode of the second season of the IFC television show "Portlandia". He also appears in the 2012 documentary "West of Memphis", protesting against the case. Vedder made an appearance in the season 3 episode 16 of David Lynch's Twin Peaks Aug 2017. He was referred to by his birth name, Edward Louis Severson.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: The character of Jackson Maine in the movie 'A Star is Born' was influenced by Eddie Vedder. Bradley Cooper, who wrote the screenplay, produced, directed and starred in the film as Jackson Maine, hung out with Vedder for four or five days to get some tips from him about the character.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Discussing his views on current issues in the United States, Vedder said, "People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world!" In 1992, "Spin" printed an article by Vedder, titled "Reclamation", which detailed his views on abortion. Vedder and Pearl Jam have consistently supported abortion rights and performed at Rock for Choice in 1994. During the band's appearance on MTV Unplugged in 1992, Vedder stood up on his stool during the instrumental break of the song "Porch" and wrote "PRO-CHOICE" on his left arm with a magic marker.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder was outspoken in support of Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000 and played at Green Party super rallies in Chicago and New York City. Pearl Jam played a series of concerts on the 2004 Vote for Change tour, supporting the candidacy of John Kerry for U.S. president. Vedder told "Rolling Stone" magazine, "I supported Ralph Nader in 2000, but it's a time of crisis. We have to get a new administration in." In 2005, during Pearl Jam's first South American tour, Vedder stated, to the immediate and effusive support from the crowd in Rio de Janeiro, that "next time we come to Brazil, the world will be a better place to live, as George Bush will no longer be the President of the United States." Vedder supported the candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020 against Donald Trump.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In his spare time, Vedder is a surfer and active in surf-related conservation efforts, most notably The Surfrider Foundation. In 1993, Vedder supported fellow Surfrider Foundation member/environmentalist, Aaron Ahearn who had gone AWOL from the United States Navy in protest of the Navy's at sea dumping policies. Vedder along with Pearl Jam preformed a concert in San Francisco, donating over $3,000 to the legal fee for Ahearn.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder shows his support for environmental activism by sporting an Earth First! tattoo on his right calf. The logo is of a pipe wrench crossed with a stone hammer.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder was a longtime and outspoken supporter for the Free the West Memphis Three movement, a cause that advocated the release of three young men who were convicted in 1994 of the gruesome murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. In an interview with Larry King on December 19, 2007, Damien Echols, who was then on death row for the murders, said that Vedder had been the "greatest friend a person could have" and that he had collaborated with him while in prison. The song "Army Reserve" on Pearl Jam's 2006 self-titled album features a lyrical collaboration between Vedder and Echols. On August 19, 2011, Vedder and Natalie Maines attended the release hearing of the West Memphis Three.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder is a gun control activist and has performed at benefit anti-gun violence concerts and participated on the 2019 Gun Sense Forum.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Critic Jim DeRogatis describes Vedder's vocals as a "Jim Morrison-like vocal growl". Greg Prato of "AllMusic" said, "With his hard-hitting and often confessional lyrical style and Jim Morrison-esque baritone, Vedder also became one of the most copied lead singers in all of rock." Vedder has inducted the Doors, Neil Young, the Ramones, and R.E.M. into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in his induction speeches he has cited them all as influences. Other influences that Vedder has cited include Pete Townshend and The Who (which the singer considers to be his favorite band of all time), The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Fugazi and The Clash.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder's lyrical topics range from personal ("Alive", from "Ten"; "Better Man", from "Vitalogy") to social and political concerns ("Even Flow", from "Ten"; "World Wide Suicide", from "Pearl Jam"). His lyrics have often invoked the use of storytelling and have included themes of freedom, individualism, and sympathy for troubled individuals. Other recurring themes include the use of water metaphors, as well as the idea of leaving everything behind to start again (featured in such songs as "Rearviewmirror", from "Vs."; "MFC", from "Yield"; "Evacuation", from "Binaural"; and "Gone", from "Pearl Jam").


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Although best known as a vocalist, Vedder also plays guitar on many Pearl Jam songs, beginning with the "Vs." songs "Rearviewmirror" and "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town". When the band started, Gossard and McCready were clearly designated as rhythm and lead guitarists, respectively. The dynamic began to change when Vedder started to play more rhythm guitar during the "Vitalogy" era. McCready said in 2006, "Even though there are three guitars, I think there's maybe more room now. Stone will pull back and play a two-note line and Ed will do a power chord thing, and I fit into all that." Vedder's guitar playing helped the band's sound progress toward a more stripped-down style; the songs "Rearviewmirror" and "Corduroy" (from "Vitalogy") feature Vedder's raw, punk-influenced guitar playing. As he had more influence on the band's sound, Vedder sought to make the band's musical output less catchy. He said, "I felt that with more popularity, we were going to be crushed, our heads were going to pop like grapes." He has also contributed performances on the ukulele, harmonica, accordion, and electric sitar to various Pearl Jam recordings.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Throughout Pearl Jam's career, Vedder has interacted with the crowd during the band's concerts. Early in Pearl Jam's existence, Vedder and the band became known for their intense live performances. Vedder participated in stage diving as well as crowd surfing. During the early part of Pearl Jam's career, Vedder was known to climb the stage lighting rig and hang from the stage roof. Looking back at this time, Vedder said, "It's hard for us to watch early performances, even though that's when people think we were on fire and young. Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force...a different kind of energy. And I find it kind of hard to watch those early performances because it's so just fucking, semi-testosterone-fueled or whatever. But it didn't come from jock mentality. It came from just being let out of the gates."


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder began incorporating social commentary and political criticism into his lyrics and performances early in his career with Pearl Jam. He usually comments on politics between songs, often to criticize U.S. foreign policy. During Pearl Jam's 1992 appearance on "MTV Unplugged", Vedder stood atop his stool, took out a marker pen, and wrote "pro-choice" down his arm in large letters when the band performed the song "Porch". During Pearl Jam's 2007 Lollapalooza headlining show, Vedder and the band played a song telling the crowd in Chicago to boycott the oil company B.P. Amoco because they had been polluting Lake Michigan.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder is known to use a Mike Lull - modified, vintage Fender Telecaster that features a single coil and a P - 90 pickup, as well as various stickers as a tribute to The Who; furthermore, he is known to use three vintage Fender Tweed amplifiers (including a 1959 Deluxe and a 1957 Custom Twin). His two main acoustic guitars are a 1930s - era Martin 00-17 and a vintage Gibson Pete Townshend Signature SJ - 200.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Lamenting the constant waning of rock 'n roll from the music scene, Bono, in 2017, expounded that "Rage" is the fundamental component of rock 'n roll and said, "Some great rock’n’roll tends to have that, which is why the Who were such a great band. Or Pearl Jam. Eddie has that rage."


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder has been ranked at number 7 on a list of "Best Lead Singers of All Time", compiled by "Rolling Stone". Loudwire put him at number 35 on their Top 66 Hard Rock + Heavy Metal Frontmen of all time. He has been ranked at number 5 on a list of "Singer with the Most Unique Voice", compiled by Rolling Stone.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Other singers like Roger Daltrey of the Who and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden have praised him for his singing ability. Hit Parader magazine placed him at number 23 on their list of the ""Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time"". His solo album Into the Wild was ranked at no. 20 on the list of "Top 20 Rock 'n' Roll Solo Albums" by Consequence of Sound.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder attended San Dieguito High School, now called San Dieguito Academy. Vedder donated proceeds from a 2006 Pearl Jam concert in San Diego toward the construction of a theater for the school in the name of his former drama teacher, Clayton E. Liggett. Liggett was Vedder's mentor in high school. Vedder wrote the song "Long Road" (from "Merkin Ball") upon hearing of Liggett's death in 1995.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: While living in the basement of Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis' house in Seattle in the early 90s, Vedder was roommates with Alice in Chains guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell. Vedder was also friends with Alice in Chains' lead singer Layne Staley, and wrote the song "4/20/02" (from "Lost Dogs") on the night that he found out about Staley's death, on April 20, 2002 (though Staley had actually died over two weeks earlier on April 5, his body was found on April 19). Vedder also paid tribute to Staley during a Pearl Jam show in Chicago on August 22, 2016, which would have been Staley's 49th birthday; "It's the birthday of a guy called Layne Staley tonight, and we're thinking of him tonight too. 49 years old", Vedder told the crowd before dedicating the song "Man of the Hour" to his late friend.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: In 1994, Vedder married Hovercraft bass player Beth Liebling, whom he was dating since he was a teenager, circa 1984. Vedder was Hovercraft's drummer during their opening slot for Mike Watt's U.S. tour in 1995. The couple divorced in September 2000. In an interview published in the June 29, 2006 edition of "Rolling Stone" magazine, Vedder said that his divorce from Liebling had devastated him. The divorce happened around the same time as the biggest tragedy of Pearl Jam's career, when nine fans were crushed to death during the band's set at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark on June 30, 2000. In an interview with Chris Cornell's daughter Lily in 2020, Vedder explained that their show started on a high because they had just been told about her birth, until about 40 minutes into their performance when the tragedy happened. Vedder revealed that Pete Townshend helped him through the early stages of dealing with the tragedy.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: On September 18, 2010, Vedder married his longtime girlfriend, model Jill McCormick, whom he had been dating since 2000. They have two daughters, Olivia, born in 2004, and Harper, born in 2008. In 2011, McCormick appeared in the music video for Vedder's solo single, "Longing to Belong". In 2014, Vedder and McCormick co-founded the EB Research Partnership, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding a cure for the genetic skin disorder epidermolysis bullosa. They have raised over $25 million to fund research to find a cure.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder was a close friend of the late Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman, Chris Cornell. Aside from Vedder's Pearl Jam bandmates, Cornell was one of the first people Vedder met after moving to Seattle in 1990. The two were neighbors for a while and shared vocal duties in Temple of the Dog. In the 2009 book "Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music", Soundgarden manager Susan Silver recalled that Cornell carried Vedder onstage on his shoulders at Pearl Jam's second show in Seattle (the band was known as Mookie Blaylock at the time): "Everyone was still reeling from [Andrew Wood]'s death... The band came on and Chris carried Eddie onto the stage – he was on his shoulders. It was one of those super powerful moments, where it was all a big healing for everybody. He came out as this guy who had all the credibility in the world – in terms of people in Seattle – and Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone were loved bands. Andy was such an endearing personality. It was a hard thing to do – to show up after people die. And Chris bringing Eddie out, and pointing at him, as much Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready recalled that Cornell had helped welcome the "'super, super shy'" Vedder to Seattle: "He was like, 'Hey, welcome to Seattle. I love Jeff [Ament] and Stone [Gossard]. I give you my blessing". From then on [Vedder] was more relaxed. It was one of the coolest things I saw Chris do'". In a 2009 interview with "Uncut" magazine, Vedder stated that Cornell is "the best singer that we've got on the planet". About the impact that Cornell had in his life, Vedder told a crowd in Alpine Valley before performing "Hunger Strike" with him in September 2011; "I had no idea how he would affect my life and my views on music and my views on friendship and what a big impact he would have. These guys [the other members of Pearl Jam] know him much longer than me and his impact is profound". The friendship between Vedder and Cornell is featured in the 2011 documentary "Pearl Jam Twenty". During his solo concert in London on June 6, 2017, Vedder talked for the first time about Cornell since his death on May 18, 2017, saying that "he wasn't just a friend, he was someone I looked up to like my older brother" and "I will live with those memories in my heart and I will love him forever".


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder is a friend of The Who guitarist Pete Townshend, who discouraged Vedder from retiring in 1993. In late 2007, Vedder wrote the foreword to a new Pete Townshend biography, "Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend". The book was published in the UK in March 2008 and in the U.S. in October 2008. Vedder was a close friend of the late Ramones guitarist Johnny Ramone, with Vedder being at his side when he died. Since Ramone's death, Vedder and Pearl Jam have played the Ramones' "I Believe in Miracles" regularly at live shows. While driving home from Ramone's funeral, Vedder wrote the lyrics for the Pearl Jam song "Life Wasted" (from "Pearl Jam").


title: Eddie Vedder

text: While surfing with Tim Finn in New Zealand on March 25, 1995, Vedder was carried off the coast and had to be rescued by lifeguards. He also has paddled outrigger canoes on occasion and in 2005 was nearly lost at sea trying to paddle from Moloka'i to Oahu.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: Vedder frequently writes songs and lyrics that question religious authority. Vedder is a Chicago Bulls and Chicago Bears fan and a long-time, die-hard fan of the Chicago Cubs. In November 1993, Vedder and White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell were involved in a barroom brawl in New Orleans, Louisiana that resulted in Vedder being arrested for public drunkenness and disturbing the peace. Vedder sang the national anthem before the third game of the 1998 NBA Finals in Chicago, and has sung "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at six Cubs games, including Game 5 of the 2016 World Series. In 2007, a few days before performing with Pearl Jam in Chicago for Lollapalooza, he threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs. Vedder wrote a song at the request of former Cubs shortstop and first baseman Ernie Banks paying tribute to the Cubs called "All the Way". The day after the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, the Cubs' official Twitter account posted a montage video backed by Vedder's song in a tribute to Cubs fans.


title: Eddie Vedder

text: The singer is also a great admirer of the late American science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut. During an interview with "Uncut Magazine", he stated that the novel "Cat's Cradle" is his favorite book of all time.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Equatorial Guinea (; ; ), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea (, , ), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa, with an area of . Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name evokes its location near both the Equator and the Gulf of Guinea. , the country had a population of 1,468,777.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Equatorial Guinea consists of two parts, an insular and a mainland region. The insular region consists of the islands of Bioko (formerly "Fernando Pó") in the Gulf of Guinea and Annobón, a small volcanic island which is the only part of the country south of the equator. Bioko Island is the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea and is the site of the country's capital, Malabo. The Portuguese-speaking island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe is located between Bioko and Annobón. The mainland region, Río Muni, is bordered by Cameroon on the north and Gabon on the south and east. It is the location of Bata, Equatorial Guinea's largest city, and Ciudad de la Paz, the country's planned future capital. Rio Muni also includes several small offshore islands, such as Corisco, Elobey Grande, and Elobey Chico. The country is a member of the African Union, Francophonie, OPEC and the CPLP.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: After becoming independent from Spain in 1968, Equatorial Guinea was ruled by President for life Francisco Macías Nguema until he was overthrown in a coup in 1979 by his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo who has served as the country's president since. Both presidents have been widely characterized as dictators by foreign observers. Since the mid-1990s, Equatorial Guinea has become one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producers. It has subsequently become the richest country per capita in Africa, and its gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita ranks 43rd in the world; however, the wealth is distributed extremely unevenly, with few people benefiting from the oil riches. The country ranks 144th on the 2019 Human Development Index, with less than half the population having access to clean drinking water and 7.9% of children dying before the age of five.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: As a former Spanish colony, the country maintains Spanish as its official language alongside French and recently (as of 2010) Portuguese, being the only African country (aside from the largely unrecognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) where Spanish is an official language. It is also the most widely spoken language (considerably more than the other two official languages); according to the Instituto Cervantes, 87.7% of the population has a good command of Spanish.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Equatorial Guinea's government is authoritarian and has one of the worst human rights records in the world, consistently ranking among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights. Reporters Without Borders ranks President Obiang among its "predators" of press freedom. Human trafficking is a significant problem, with the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report identifying Equatorial Guinea as a source and destination country for forced labour and sex trafficking. The report also noted that Equatorial Guinea "does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so."


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Pygmies probably once lived in the continental region that is now Equatorial Guinea, but are today found only in isolated pockets in southern Río Muni. Bantu migrations started probably around 2,000 BC from between south-east Nigeria and north-west Cameroon (the Grassfields). They must have settled continental Equatorial Guinea around 500 BC at the latest. The earliest settlements on Bioko Island are dated to AD 530. The Annobón population, originally native to Angola, was introduced by the Portuguese via São Tomé island.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The Portuguese explorer Fernando Pó, seeking a path to India, is credited as being the first European to see the island of Bioko, in 1472. He called it "Formosa" ("Beautiful"), but it quickly took on the name of its European discoverer. Fernando Pó and Annobón were colonized by Portugal in 1474. The first factories were established on the islands around 1500 as the Portuguese quickly recognized the positives of the islands including volcanic soil and disease-resistant highlands. Despite natural advantages, initial Portuguese efforts in 1507 to establish a sugarcane plantation and town near what is now Concepción on Fernando Pó failed due to Bubi hostility and fever. The main island's rainy climate, extreme humidity and temperature swings took a major toll on European settlers from the beginning, and it would be centuries before attempts restarted.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: In 1778, Queen Maria I of Portugal and King Charles III of Spain signed the Treaty of El Pardo which ceded Bioko, adjacent islets, and commercial rights to the Bight of Biafra between the Niger and Ogoue rivers to Spain in exchange for large areas in South America that are now Western Brazil. Brigadier Felipe José, Count of Arjelejos sailed from Uruguay to formally take possession of Bioko from Portugal, landing on the island on 21 October 1778. After sailing for Annobón to take possession, the Count died of disease caught on Bioko and the fever-ridden crew mutinied. The crew landed on São Tomé instead where they were imprisoned by the Portuguese authorities after having lost over 80% of their men to sickness. As a result of this disaster, Spain was thereafter hesitant to invest heavily in its new possession. However, despite the setback Spaniards began to use the island as a base for slave trading on the nearby mainland. Between 1778 and 1810, the territory of what became Equatorial Guinea was administered by the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, based in Buenos Aires.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Unwilling to invest heavily in the development of Fernando Pó, from 1827 to 1843, the Spanish leased a base at Malabo on Bioko to the United Kingdom which the UK had sought as part of its efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade. Without Spanish permission, the British moved the headquarters of the Mixed Commission for the Suppression of Slave Traffic to Fernando Pó in 1827, before moving it back to Sierra Leone under an agreement with Spain in 1843. Spain's decision to abolish slavery in 1817 at British insistence damaged the colony's perceived value to the authorities and so leasing naval bases was an effective revenue earner from an otherwise unprofitable possession. An agreement by Spain to sell its African colony to the British was cancelled in 1841 due to metropolitan public opinion and opposition by Spanish Congress.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: In 1844, the British returned the island to Spanish control and the area became known as the "Territorios Españoles del Golfo de Guinea". Due to epidemics, Spain did not invest much in the colony, and in 1862 an outbreak of yellow fever killed many of the whites that had settled on the island. Despite this, plantations continued to be established by private citizens through the second half of the 19th century.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The plantations of Fernando Pó were mostly run by a black Creole elite, later known as Fernandinos. The British settled some 2,000 Sierra Leoneans and freed slaves there during their rule, and a trickle of immigration from West Africa and the West Indies continued after the British left. A number of freed Angolan slaves, Portuguese-African creoles and immigrants from Nigeria and Liberia also began to be settled in the colony where they quickly began to join the new group. To the local mix were added Cubans, Filipinos, Jews and Spaniards of various colours, many of whom had been deported to Africa for political or other crimes, as well as some settlers backed by the government.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: By 1870 the prognosis of whites that lived on the island was much improved after recommendations that they live in the highlands, and by 1884 much of the minimal administrative machinery and key plantations had moved to Basile hundreds of meters above sea level. Henry Morton Stanley had labeled Fernando Pó "a jewel which Spain did not polish" for refusing to enact such a policy. Despite the improved survival chances of Europeans living on the island, Mary Kingsley, who was staying on the island still described Fernando Pó as 'a more uncomfortable form of execution' for Spaniards appointed there.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: There was also a trickle of immigration from the neighboring Portuguese islands, escaped slaves, and prospective planters. Although a few of the Fernandinos were Catholic and Spanish-speaking, about nine-tenths of them were Protestant and English-speaking on the eve of the First World War, and pidgin English was the "lingua franca" of the island. The Sierra Leoneans were particularly well placed as planters while labor recruitment on the Windward coast continued, for they kept family and other connections there and could easily arrange a supply of labor. The Fernandinos proved to become effective traders and middlemen between the natives and Europeans. A freed slave from the West Indies by way of Sierra Leone named William Pratt established the cocoa crop on Fernando Pó.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Spain had not occupied the large area in the Bight of Biafra to which it had right by treaty, and the French had busily expanded their occupation at the expense of the territory claimed by Spain. Madrid only partly backed the explorations of men like Manuel Iradier who had signed treaties in the interior as far as Gabon and Cameroon, leaving much of the land out of 'effective occupation' as demanded by the terms of the 1885 Berlin Conference. More important events such as the conflict in Cuba and the eventual Spanish–American War kept Madrid busy at an inopportune moment. Minimal government backing for mainland annexation came as a result of public opinion and a need for labour on Fernando Pó.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The eventual treaty of Paris in 1900 left Spain with the continental enclave of Rio Muni, a mere 26,000 km out of the 300,000 stretching east to the Ubangi river which the Spaniards had initially claimed. The tiny enclave was far smaller than what the Spaniards had considered themselves rightfully entitled to under their claims and the Treaty of El Pardo. The humiliation of the Franco-Spanish negotiations, combined with the disaster in Cuba led to the head of the Spanish negotiating team, Pedro Gover y Tovar committing suicide on the voyage home on 21 October 1901. Iradier himself died in despair in 1911, and it would be decades before his achievements would be recognised by Spanish popular opinion when the port of Cogo was renamed Puerto Iradier in his honour.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The opening years of the twentieth century saw a new generation of Spanish immigrants. Land regulations issued in 1904–1905 favoured Spaniards, and most of the later big planters arrived from Spain after that. An agreement made with Liberia in 1914 to import cheap labor greatly favoured wealthy men with ready access to the state, and the shift in labor supplies from Liberia to Río Muni increased this advantage. Due to malpractice however, the Liberian government eventually ended the treaty after embarrassing revelations about the state of Liberian workers on Fernando Pó in the Christy Report which brought down the country's president Charles D. B. King in 1930.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The greatest constraint to economic development was a chronic shortage of labour. Pushed into the interior of the island and decimated by alcohol addiction, venereal disease, smallpox, and sleeping sickness, the indigenous Bubi population of Bioko refused to work on plantations. Working their own small cocoa farms gave them a considerable degree of autonomy.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: By the late nineteenth century, the Bubi were protected from the demands of the planters by Spanish Claretian missionaries, who were very influential in the colony and eventually organised the Bubi into little mission theocracies reminiscent of the famous Jesuit reductions in Paraguay. Catholic penetration was furthered by two small insurrections in 1898 and 1910 protesting conscription of forced labour for the plantations. The Bubi were disarmed in 1917, and left dependent on the missionaries. Serious labour shortages were temporarily solved by a massive influx of refugees from German Kamerun, along with thousands of white German soldiers who stayed on the island for several years.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Between 1926 and 1959 Bioko and Rio Muni were united as the colony of Spanish Guinea. The economy was based on large cacao and coffee plantations and logging concessions and the workforce was mostly immigrant contract labour from Liberia, Nigeria, and Cameroun. Between 1914 and 1930, an estimated 10,000 Liberians went to Fernando Po under a labour treaty that was stopped altogether in 1930.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: With Liberian workers no longer available, planters of Fernando Po turned to Rio Muni. Campaigns were mounted to subdue the Fang people in the 1920s, at the time that Liberia was beginning to cut back on recruitment. There were garrisons of the colonial guard throughout the enclave by 1926, and the whole colony was considered 'pacified' by 1929.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The Spanish Civil War had a major impact on the colony. 150 Spanish whites, including the Governor-General and Vice-Governor-General of Río Muni created a socialist party called the Popular Front in the enclave which served to oppose the interests of the Fernando Pó plantation owners. When the War broke out Francisco Franco ordered Nationalist forces based in the Canaries to ensure control over Equatorial Guinea. In September 1936 Nationalist forces backed by Falangists from Fernando Pó, similarly to what happened in Spain proper took control of Río Muni, which under Governor-General Luiz Sanchez Guerra Saez and his deputy Porcel had backed the Republican government. By November the Popular Front and its supporters had been defeated and Equatorial Guinea secured for Franco. The commander in charge of the occupation, Juan Fontán Lobé was appointed Governor-General by Franco and began to exert more effective Spanish control over the enclave interior.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Rio Muni had a small population, officially a little over 100,000 in the 1930s, and escape across the frontiers into Cameroun or Gabon was very easy. Also, the timber companies needed increasing numbers of workers, and the spread of coffee cultivation offered an alternative means of paying taxes. Fernando Pó thus continued to suffer from labour shortages. The French only briefly permitted recruitment in Cameroun, and the main source of labour came to be Igbo smuggled in canoes from Calabar in Nigeria. This resolution to the worker shortage allowed Fernando Pó to become one of Africa's most productive agricultural areas after the Second World War.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Politically, post-war colonial history has three fairly distinct phases: up to 1959, when its status was raised from 'colonial' to 'provincial', following the approach of the Portuguese Empire; between 1960 and 1968, when Madrid attempted a partial decolonisation aimed at keeping the territory as part of the Spanish system; and from 1968 on, after the territory became an independent republic. The first phase consisted of little more than a continuation of previous policies; these closely resembled the policies of Portugal and France, notably in dividing the population into a vast majority governed as 'natives' or non-citizens, and a very small minority (together with whites) admitted to civic status as "emancipados", assimilation to the metropolitan culture being the only permissible means of advancement.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: This 'provincial' phase saw the beginnings of nationalism, but chiefly among small groups who had taken refuge from the "Caudillo"s paternal hand in Cameroun and Gabon. They formed two bodies: the Movimiento Nacional de Liberación de la Guinea (MONALIGE), and the Idea Popular de Guinea Ecuatorial (IPGE). The pressure they could bring to bear was weak, but the general trend in West Africa was not, and by the late 1960s much of the African continent had been granted independence. Aware of this trend, the Spanish began to increase efforts to prepare the country for independence and massively stepped up development. The Gross National Product per capita in 1965 was $466 which was the highest in black Africa, and the Spanish constructed an international airport at Santa Isabel, a television station and increased the literacy rate to a relatively high 89%. At the same time measures were taken to battle sleeping sickness and leprosy in the enclave, and by 1967 the number of hospital beds per capita in Equatorial Guinea was higher than Spain itself, with 1637 beds in 16 hospitals. All the same, measures to improve education floundered and like in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the end of colonial rule the number of Africans in higher education was in only the double digits, and political education necessary to a functioning state was negligible.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: A decision of 9 August 1963, approved by a referendum of 15 December 1963, gave the territory a measure of autonomy and the administrative promotion of a 'moderate' group, the (MUNGE). This proved a feeble instrument, and, with growing pressure for change from the UN, Madrid was gradually forced to give way to the currents of nationalism. Two General Assembly resolutions were passed in 1965 ordering Spain to grant independence to the colony, and in 1966 a UN Commission toured the country before recommending the same thing. In response, the Spanish declared that they would hold a constitutional convention on 27 October 1967 to negotiate a new constitution for an independent Equatorial Guinea. The conference was attended by 41 local delegates and 25 Spaniards. The Africans were principally divided between Fernandinos and Bubi on one side, who feared a loss of privileges and 'swamping' by the Fang majority, and the Río Muni Fang nationalists on the other. At the conference the leading Fang figure, the later first president Francisco Macías Nguema gave a controversial speech in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler had 'saved Africa'. After nine sessions the conference was suspended due to deadlock between the 'unionists' and 'separatists' who wanted a separate Fernando Pó. Macías resolved to travel to the UN to bolster international awareness of the issue, and his firebrand speeches in New York contributed to Spain naming a date for both independence and general elections. In July 1968 virtually all Bubi leaders went to the UN in New York to try and raise awareness for their cause, but the world community was uninterested in quibbling over the specifics of colonial independence. The 1960s were a time of great optimism over the future of the former African colonies, and groups that had been close to European rulers, like the Bubi, were not viewed positively.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: Independence from Spain was gained on 12 October 1968, at noon in the capital, Malabo. The new country became the Republic of Equatorial Guinea (the date is celebrated as the country's Independence Day). Macías became president in the country's only free and fair election. The Spanish (ruled by Franco) had backed Macías in the election due to his perceived loyalty, however while on the campaign trail he had proven to be far less easy to handle than they had expected. Much of his campaigning involved visiting rural areas of Río Muni and promising young Fang that they would have the houses and wives of the Spanish if they voted for him. In the towns he had instead presented himself as the urbane leader who had bested the Spanish at the UN, and he had won in the second round of voting; greatly helped by the vote-splitting of his rivals.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The euphoria of independence became quickly overshadowed by problems emanating from the Nigerian Civil War. Fernando Pó was inhabited by many Biafra-supporting Ibo migrant workers and many refugees from the breakaway state fled to the island, straining it to breaking point. The International Committee of the Red Cross began running relief flights out of Equatorial Guinea, but Macías quickly became spooked and shut the flights down, refusing to allow them to fly diesel fuel for their trucks nor oxygen tanks for medical operations. Very quickly the Biafran separatists were starved into submission without international backing.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: After the Public Prosecutor complained about "excesses and maltreatment" by government officials, Macías had 150 alleged coup-plotters executed in a purge on Christmas Eve 1969, all of whom happened to be political opponents. Macias Nguema further consolidated his totalitarian powers by outlawing opposition political parties in July 1970 and making himself president for life in 1972. He broke off ties with Spain and the West. In spite of his condemnation of Marxism, which he deemed "neo-colonialist", Equatorial Guinea maintained very special relations with communist states, notably China, Cuba, and the USSR. Macias Nguema signed a preferential trade agreement and a shipping treaty with the Soviet Union. The Soviets also made loans to Equatorial Guinea.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The shipping agreement gave the Soviets permission for a pilot fishery development project and also a naval base at Luba. In return the USSR was to supply fish to Equatorial Guinea. China and Cuba also gave different forms of financial, military, and technical assistance to Equatorial Guinea, which got them a measure of influence there. For the USSR, there was an advantage to be gained in the War in Angola from access to Luba base and later on to Malabo International Airport.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: In 1974, the World Council of Churches affirmed that large numbers of people had been murdered since 1968 in an ongoing reign of terror. A quarter of the entire population had fled abroad, they said, while 'the prisons are overflowing and to all intents and purposes form one vast concentration camp'. Out of a population of 300,000, an estimated 80,000 were killed. Apart from allegedly committing genocide against the ethnic minority Bubi people, Macias Nguema ordered the deaths of thousands of suspected opponents, closed down churches and presided over the economy's collapse as skilled citizens and foreigners fled the country.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: The nephew of Macías Nguema, Teodoro Obiang deposed his uncle on 3 August 1979, in a bloody "coup d'état"; over two weeks of civil war ensued until Macías Nguema was captured. He was tried and executed soon afterward, with Obiang succeeding him as a less bloody, but still authoritarian president.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: In 1995 Mobil, an American oil company, discovered oil in Equatorial Guinea. The country subsequently experienced rapid economic development, but earnings from the country's oil wealth have not reached the population and the country ranks low on the UN human development index. 7.9% of children die before the age of 5 and more than 50% of the population lacks access to clean drinking water. President Teodoro Obiang is widely suspected of using the country's oil wealth to enrich himself and his associates. In 2006, Forbes estimated his personal wealth at $600 million.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: In 2011, the government announced it was planning a new capital for the country, named Oyala. The city was renamed Ciudad de la Paz (""City of Peace"") in 2017.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: On 7 March 2021, there were munition explosions at a military base near the city of Bata causing 98 deaths and 600 people being injured and treated at the hospital.


title: Equatorial Guinea

text: In November 2022 Obiang was re-elected in the 2022 Equatorial Guinean general election with 99.7% of the vote amid accusations of fraud by the opposition.