NEW YORK, Aug 24, (Agencies): US Navy SEALs are used to bullets and bombs, but a book by one of the commandos who killed Osama bin Laden has deployed the secretive unit into the even bigger electoral battle for the White House.
“No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account Of The Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden” is due to come out on the politically charged date of Sept 11, less than two months before President Barack Obama and Republi-can Mitt Romney face off at the polls.
Dutton, an imprint of Penguin, says the author was one of the SEALs who entered bin Laden’s hideout in May 2011 “and was present at his death.”
The writer is identified by the pseudonym Mark Owen and is said to have left the military after 13 consecutive combat deployments, culminating with Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The book is co-written with Kevin Maurer, a US journalist.
In the book, Owen says, he wants “to set the record straight about one of the most important missions in US military history. ‘No Easy Day’ is the story of ‘the guys,’ the human toll we pay, and the sacrifices we make to do this dirty job.”
The cover of the book, already advertised on Amazon, shows the ghostly figure of a soldier holding a rifle, but gives little away about what’s inside.
Speculation is rife over how the likely sensational story will play in a tight election where Obama is touting the al-Qaeda founder’s killing in Pakistan as one of his major achievements.
As commander-in-chief, Obama at a minimum signed off on a mission that would have been a huge embarrassment had it ended badly. With success, Obama accomplished what his supposedly more hawkish predecessor, George W. Bush, failed to do in eight years.
However, Obama’s critics — ranging from Romney to a group of former special forces and CIA operatives — accuse the president of leaking sensitive information to milk the mission for political gain.
Another challenge has appeared in a new book by journalist Richard Miniter, “Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him,” which claims that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to prod an indecisive Obama to order the raid.
Leslie Feldman, professor of political science at Hofstra University, said the White House will be waiting anxiously for the SEAL’s account.
“My gut feeling is it’s not good,” she told AFP. “Mitt Romney’s people will be scouring every page of that book and if they come up with one little sentence they can use, one little fact, then they’re going to throw that at President Obama.”
“It’s not good for him, but it depends on what the guy says,” Feldman added.
The White House had no comment about the book on Thursday.
At the Pentagon, officials appeared to have been taken by surprise.
Books by former servicemen are meant to be checked for sensitive information and in this case, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Gregory said, “we did not receive any requests to review.”
The author could face prosecution if the book reveals information that compromises national security, he said, noting: “A decision has to be made as to the seriousness of the disclosure and the Department of Justice would be the department to follow up.”
The CIA also said it had not been asked to review the text.
The politically explosive nature of the bin Laden raid was already highlighted when film producer Kathryn Bigelow agreed to push back her film “Zero Dark Thirty” to a date after the November election. The Oscar winner had come under fire from Republicans who said she was too close to the White House.
But the political loyalties of Owen remain a mystery, even if his true identity may already have been blown.
Fox News reported that Owen is in fact Matt Bissonnette, a 36-year-old from Alaska, a revelation that one Pentagon official called “disturbing.”
The CBS news program “60 Minutes” said on Twitter that it had interviewed the author, and would carry his “1st person account” of bin Laden’s killing on September 9, two days before the book’s release.
Bloggers on sofrep.com, a site with connections to people in the special forces, said former comrades were turning on the soldier-turned-author.
“It’s not a secret (the bin Laden raid) and their mission (is being) exploited by politics,” one person identified as a special forces operative wrote. “But for one of our own to cash in is simply unprofessional and disrespectful to those that didn’t cash in.”
Brandon Webb, sofrep.com’s president, wrote in a blog post that he knew the author and sympathized with his desire to make money after leaving the forces.
However, “this former DEVGRU operator has been ostracized by the men of DEVGRU for good. I hope his royalty advance was worth it,” Webb said.
The man writing under the name Owen says that his main goal is simply to inspire young men to achieve things. The publisher says that “the majority of the proceeds” from the book will be donated to charities helping the families of killed SEALs.
Meanwhile, the US special operations chief has warned his troops, current and former, that he would take legal action against anyone found to have exposed sensitive information that could cause fellow forces harm.
“We will pursue every option available to hold members accountable, including criminal prosecution where appropriate,” Adm. Bill McRaven wrote in an open, unclassified letter emailed to the active-duty special operations community Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press.
McRaven also took former special operators to task for “using their ‘celebrity’ status to advance their personal or professional agendas.”
He acknowledged that former service members are “well within their rights to advocate for certain causes or write books about their adventures,” but he cautioned against claiming to speak for all special operations troops and endangering troops by what they write.
McRaven’s plea for discretion comes as a number of special operators publish memoirs or appear in the media.
Best-seller “American Sniper,” was published this year by recently retired SEAL Chris Kyle, detailing his 150-plus kills of insurgents from 1999 to 2009.
Many of the special operations advocacy groups that are critical of Obama also openly identify members. One group is run by retired Navy SEAL Ryan Zinke, who touts his time years ago at SEAL Team 6, the top secret unit that carried out the bin Laden raid.
Even Special Operations Command made an exception to its normal reticence with the media when it signed off on this year’s movie “Act of Valor,” which followed active duty SEALs carrying out training exercises that were turned into what looked like real action scenes for the film.
McRaven wrote that there was a difference between “Act of Valor,” which was approved by the command as a recruiting tool, and some other recent works.
“There is, in my opinion, a distinct line between recounting a story for ... education or entertainment and telling a story that exposes sensitive activities just to garner greater readership and personal profit,” he wrote.