Image copyright AFP Image caption Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, was killed by US forces in 2011 
 
 The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been criticised for live-tweeting the killing of Osama Bin Laden as if it were happening today. 
 
 It has shared details of the mission that led to America's most-wanted man being found five years ago in Pakistan. 
 
 But reaction has been largely negative, with one Twitter user calling the move "grotesque and embarrassing". 
 
 Others posted memes and gifs of people rolling their eyes and putting their heads in their hands. 
 
 The CIA's usual tweets mostly concern historical trivia and artefacts. 
 
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 Image copyright @CIA 
 
 The CIA's first 'live tweet', hashtagged #UBLRaid, begins: "1:25 pm EDT-@POTUS, DCIA Panetta, & JSOC commander Admiral McRaven approve execution of op in Abbottabad." 
 
 At 1:15pm "Helicopters depart from Afghanistan for compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan". Just under 90 minutes later, "2 helicopters descend on compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 1 crashes, but assault continues without delay or injury". 
 
 Osama Bin Laden is "found on third floor and killed" at 3:39pm. 
 
 The last tweet, at 7:01pm, reads: "@POTUS [President Obama] receives confirmation of high probability of positive identification of Usama Bin Ladin". 
 
 The tweets prompted an outpouring of criticism among Twitter users: 
 
 Image copyright @zippyman818 
 
 Image copyright @Jef_Konijn 
 
 Image copyright @TheDailyShow 
 
 But some were more supportive: 
 
 Image copyright @Fran_Neena20409 
 
 Image copyright @BegheldoM 
 
 The leader of al-Qaeda, who was thought to have ordered the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, was shot dead at a compound in Abbottabad, in May 2011 after evading capture by the US and its allies for nearly a decade. 
 
 Speaking on the fifth anniversary of his death, CIA director John Brennan said the United States had destroyed a large part of al-Qaeda but "it's not completely eliminated, so we have to stay focused on what it can do". 
 
 He said removing Bin Laden had a great symbolic and strategic effect on al-Qaeda and it was important to do the same thing with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of the so-called Islamic State (IS). 
 
 But, talking to NBC's Meet the Press show, he described IS as a "phenomenon" that had influence in many countries around the world "so we are going to have to remain very focused on destroying all the elements of that organisation". ||||| Michele Asselin / Contour / Getty Images for TIME 
 
 In his first interview since commanding the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, CIA chief Leon Panetta tells TIME that U.S. officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets. Long before Panetta ordered Vice Admiral William McRaven, head of the Joint Special Forces Command, to undertake the mission at 1:22 p.m. on Friday, the CIA had been gaming out how to structure the raid. Months prior, the U.S. had considered expanding the assault to include coordination with other countries, notably Pakistan. But the CIA ruled out participating with its nominal South Asian ally early on because “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets,” Panetta says. 
 
 The U.S. also considered running a high-altitude bombing raid from B-2 bombers or launching a “direct shot” with cruise missiles but ruled out those options because of the possibility of “too much collateral,” Panetta says. The direct-shot option was still on the table as late as last Thursday as the CIA and then the White House grappled with how much risk to take on the mission. Waiting for more intelligence also remained a possibility. (See photos of Obama monitoring the bin Laden mission.) 
 
 On Tuesday, Panetta assembled a group of 15 aides to assess the credibility of the intelligence they had collected on the compound in Abbottabad where they believed bin Laden was hiding. They had significant “circumstantial evidence” that bin Laden was living there, Panetta says — the residents burned their trash and had extraordinary security measures — but American satellites had not been able to photograph bin Laden or any members of his family. The Tuesday meeting included team leaders from the CIA’s counterterrorism center, the special-activities division (which runs covert operations for the agency) and officials from the office of South Asian analysis. 
 
 Panetta wanted to get those aides’ opinions on the potential bin Laden mission, and he quickly found a lack of unanimity among his team. Some of the aides had been involved in the Carter Administration’s effort to go after the hostages held by the Iranians 30 years ago; others had been involved in the ill-fated “Black Hawk Down” raid against Somali warlords in 1993. “What if you go down and you’re in a firefight and the Pakistanis show up and start firing?” Panetta says some worried. “How do you fight your way out?” 
 
 But Panetta concluded that the evidence was strong enough to risk the raid, despite the fact that his aides were only 60%-80% confident that bin Laden was there, and decided to make his case to the President. At the key Thursday meeting in which President Obama heard the arguments from his top aides on whether or not to go into Pakistan to kill or capture bin Laden, Panetta admitted that the evidence of bin Laden’s presence at the compound was circumstantial. But “when you put it all together,” Panetta says he told the room, “we have the best evidence since [the 2001 battle of] Tora Bora [where bin Laden was last seen], and that then makes it clear that we have an obligation to act.” 
 
 Obama decided that Panetta’s arguments trumped two other options: striking the compound remotely or waiting until more evidence was available to prove bin Laden was there. “If I thought delaying this could in fact produce better intelligence, that would be one thing,” Panetta says he argued, “but because of the nature of the security at the compound, we’re probably at a point where we’ve got the best intelligence we can get.” (See photos of bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout.) 
 
 For weeks, Panetta had been pushing the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to try to get photographic confirmation of the presence of the bin Laden family. “NGA was terrific at doing analysis on imagery of that compound,” he says, but “I kept struggling to say, ‘Can’t you at least try to get one of the people that looks like [bin Laden]?’ ” NGA produced photographs of the two couriers and their families that McRaven’s Navy Seal team used to identify players in the compound as they made their way toward bin Laden. 
 
 Panetta only learned that the President had been convinced by his arguments on Friday, when Obama said he was authorizing the helicopter mission and made his order official in a signed letter. After he received the order, Panetta told McRaven of the President’s decision and instructed him to launch. He told him the mission was “to go in there [and] get bin Laden, and if bin Laden isn’t there, get the hell out!” 
 
 CIA officials turned a windowless seventh-floor conference room at Langley into a command center for the mission, and Panetta watched the operation unfold from there. As he and his team waited for McRaven to report on whether bin Laden was indeed at the compound, Panetta says the room was tense. “I kept asking Bill McRaven, ‘O.K., what the hell’s this mean?,’ ” and when McRaven finally said they had ID’d “Geronimo,” the mission code name for bin Laden, “All the air we were holding came out,” Panetta says. When the helicopters left the compound 15 minutes later, the room broke into applause. (See the moment of triumph at the White House.) 
 
 The aftermath of the mission has been productive. The U.S. collected an “impressive amount” of material from bin Laden’s compound, including computers and other electronics, Panetta says. Panetta has set up a task force to act on the fresh intelligence. Intelligence reporting suggests that one of bin Laden’s wives who survived the attack has said the family had been living at the compound since 2005, a source tells TIME. 
 
 That will raise questions about the Pakistani government’s possible awareness of bin Laden’s location in recent years. But one of Panetta’s predecessors says this can work to U.S. advantage. “It opens up some opportunities for us with Pakistan,” says John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA chief. “They now should feel under some great pressure to be cooperative with us on the remaining issues,” like going after the Taliban elsewhere in the country. “It’s called leverage.” 
 
 Read about the CIA’s rare public victory. 
 
 How Obama is handling the politics of bin Laden’s death. 
 
 America and Pakistan after bin Laden: still “frenemies.” ||||| The US government loves Twitter. For NASA, it's a public relations goldmine. For the State Department, it's a bizarre weapon in the fight on terrorism. For the CIA, it's a chance to revel in kitsch. The agency, which somehow did not yet have a real social media presence, has just posted its first tweet. 
 
 We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet. — CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014 
 
 The Twitter launch comes a few days after the CIA opened a Facebook page, where it recently honored D-Day. The agency will post job listings, photos, trivia from the CIA World Factbook, and "reflections on intelligence history." It's part of what looks like a larger online overhaul, which will include event livestreaming. 
 
 The agency will also participate in Throwback Thursday. 
 
 The CIA has mostly escaped ire during the Edward Snowden leaks, but social media is still a clear way for the agency to humanize itself, drawing attention to tweets instead of drones. That doesn't mean organizations are immune from criticism online, though, and it should probably be careful about its hashtag campaigns. The Defense Department's research wing, meanwhile, has responded with its own quip, linking to a call for "vanishing" electronics that destroy themselves. 
 
 .@CIA, if that was, in fact, your first tweet, welcome! If you change your mind later on, might we recommend http://t.co/DRtDPXjF8O — DARPA (@DARPA) June 6, 2014 
 
 Amnesty International is less amused. "The CIA's first Tweet would be funny if it weren't for the agency's use of torture and extrajudicial executions," says program director Zeke Johnson. "They should put as least as much effort into following the law as they do into social media. The full truth about the CIA torture and drone strikes should be made made public immediately and those responsible for crimes held accountable." The agency is supposed to be close to declassifying a report on its "enhanced interrogation" program, with a release planned on or around July 4th. 
 
 Update June 6th, 2014 3:15pm: Added followup tweet from DARPA and statement from Amnesty International. ||||| The Central Intelligence Agency's media wing is facing a social media backlash after tweeting a "real time" account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden - five years after the event. 
 
 In an unusual decision taken to mark the five year anniversary of the 2011 raid, the agency's Twitter account is publishing an hour by hour description of the top secret mission against the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. 
 
 The decision to tell the story using the same timings as the day of the raid, "as if it were happening today" was designed to mark what will be a key part of President Barack Obama's legacy - and remind the public of the agencies role in the historic operation. ||||| "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet." 
 
 And with that, the Central Intelligence Agency finally came in from the digital cold and joined Twitter and Facebook. 
 
 "By expanding to these platforms, CIA will be able to more directly engage with the public and provide information on CIA's mission, history, and other developments," CIA Director John Brennan said in a public release today. "We have important insights to share, and we want to make sure that unclassified information about the Agency is more accessible to the American public that we serve, consistent with our national security mission." 
 
 We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet. - CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014 
 
 The Agency said that in addition to posting "the latest news, statements, and career information from CIA, the Agency's social media updates will also feature artifacts and other information from the CIA's Museum - the best museum most people never get to see." 
 
 Within an hour of the CIA's announcement, the CIA Twitter account had more than 40,000 followers. 
 
 "Welcome to Twitter! Can't wait to work with you on [REDACTED] :-)" the Twitter account for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency said, before retweeting the CIA's tweet. 
 
 Others weren't laughing. 
 
 "The CIA's first Tweet would be funny if it weren't for the agency's use of torture and extrajudicial executions," Zeke Johnson, Director of Amnesty International USA's Security and Human Rights Program, said in a statement to the media. "They should put as least as much effort into following the law as they do into social media. The full truth about the CIA torture and drone strikes should be made public immediately and those responsible for crimes held accountable." 
 
 The CIA's latest foray into social media - adding to its existing accounts on Flickr and Youtube - follows a public relations push by the American intelligence community (IC) at large, including the establishment of the website IC On the Record, in the wake of the flood of disclosures about the National Security Agency's domestic and foreign surveillance programs by disillusioned contractor Edward Snowden. 
 
 Read More: The CIA's Secret History of the Phrase 'Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny' 
 
 Other U.S. government departments have attempted to use social media to not only get their message out, but at times to actively combat America's enemies in sometimes bizarre online spats. The State Department's Think Again Turn Away Twitter account, for instance, directly engages in arguments with pro-jihadi computer users. Terrorist groups, like the Taliban and the al Qaeda-allied group al-Shabab in Somalia, already have a robust social media presence, which they use to spread their own propaganda. 
 
 The CIA's (verified) Twitter account, @CIA, shows only the one tweet as of publication of this report. Similarly, its Facebook page, Facebook.com/Central.Intelligence.Agency, has only posted a single picture of its headquarters. 
 
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– The CIA decided to relive one of its greatest hits on Sunday by "live-tweeting" the raid that killed Osama bin Laden to mark its fifth anniversary—but social media users turned out to be a tough crowd. "Stop trying to be cool on twitter and get.on with your job," tweeted "Lame Monk" as the CIA tweets began, the Telegraph reports. "2 helicopters descend on compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 1 crashes, but assault continues without delay or injury," read a typical entry as the CIA recounted the 2011 raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, starting with its approval by "POTUS, DCIA Panetta, & JSOC commander Admiral McRaven" and continuing until the body was identified. The agency, which calls the al-Qaeda leader "Usama bin Ladin," used the hashtag #UBLRaid. "This is grotesque and embarrassing. You should fire your web team," tweeted another user, per the BBC. Others described the effort as "unprofessional" and "totally unnecessary." The CIA rejected suggestions that the "victory lap" was inappropriate. "The takedown of bin Laden stands as one of the great intelligence successes of all time. History has been a key element of [the] CIA's social media efforts," a CIA spokesman tells ABC News. "On the fifth anniversary, it is appropriate to remember the day and honor all those who had a hand in this achievement." (Recently released documents include bin Laden's will and letters about his fear of drones.)