A new book says PresidentBarack Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on trial, showing the U.S. commitmentto due process under law, if the al-Qaida leader had surrendered during a U.S.raid in Pakistan last year.
In "The Finish," journalistMark Bowden quotes the president as saying he thought he would be in a strongpolitical position to argue in favor of giving bin Laden the full rights of acriminal defendant if bin Laden went on trial for masterminding the Sept. 11attacks.
But Bowden says Obama expected bin Ladento go down fighting. A team of Navy commandos, known as SEALs, raided binLaden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011 and killed the terroristleader.
The Associated Press purchased a copy of"The Finish," which is due to come out Oct. 16, a few weeks beforethe presidential election. The revelation that Obama hoped to capture bin Ladenmay provide political fodder for Republicans who have criticized the Obamaadministration for trying to bring terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, andoverseas to trials in U.S. courts.
"Frankly, my belief was if we hadcaptured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here,to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weaponagainst al-Qaida, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr," Obama isquoted saying in an interview with Bowden.
Obama believed that affording terrorists"the full rights of criminal defendants would showcase America'scommitment to justice for even the worst of the worst," Bowden writes.
Obama had expressed similar views as apresidential candidate.
Congressman Peter King said he wouldhave been "totally opposed" to a trial.
"To give him a forum and all theconstitutional protections that a U.S. citizen would receive when he wasclearly a war criminal is part of the defensive and apologetic attitude"of the Obama administration, the Republican said Wednesday.
U.S. officials have said the Navy teamwas ordered to capture bin Laden if he surrendered or kill him if he threatenedthem. Bowden asserts that the SEALs could have taken bin Laden alive but had nointention of doing so.
In a separate account of the raid thatwas published last month, one member of the Navy team, Matt Bissonnette, wrotethat the SEALS climbed a stairway inside the compound and opened fire when binLaden poked his head around a doorway. Bissonnette wrote that bin Laden's handswere concealed and the SEALS presumed he was armed, so they shot him.
Bowden's extensive access to topfigures, including the president and high-ranking officials in the Pentagon andCIA, may revive criticism from Republicans that the White House allegedly leaksabout the raid to burnish its foreign policy record during an election year.
Bowden, known for the book "BlackHawk Down" about a 1993 U.S. military operation in Somalia, details howthe White House planned the mission and explains that the specific Americanteam was chosen because it had "already successfully conducted about adozen secret missions inside Pakistan."
The recounting of the raid matches mostprevious versions. But Bowden also offers new insights in what sounds like thefirst-person perspective of the officer who commanded it on the ground, Adm.Bill McRaven. Scott Manning, a spokesman for the publisher, says "McRavenis not identified as a source in the book."
McRaven was able to monitor allPakistani communications during the raid from his command post at a base inAfghanistan, according to Bowden. The account shows that Pakistani authoritieswere unaware of the raid as it happened, giving the Americans breathing room tofly in a backup helicopter to replace the one that had crashed while depositingthe first batch of SEALs in the compound.
After McRaven told then-CIA directorLeon Panetta he had a "Geronimo" call — the radio code that meant theSEALs had found bin Laden — the admiral realized he had not asked whether binLaden was dead or had been captured.
McRaven checked again with the SEALs onthe ground before relaying that bin Laden had likely been killed. But McRavencautioned Panetta to "manage his expectations" until they had moredefinitive proof, by comparing his photographs with the dead man.
Later, McRaven told the president thathe felt sure that they killed bin Laden but said the military needed tocomplete DNA analysis to be certain, Bowden writes.
The book's publication may complicatethe Pentagon's attempts to punish Bissonnette for his book. Writing under thepseudonym Mark Owen, Bissonnette published "No Easy Day" withoutsubmitting it for a security review by the Pentagon. Bowden was under no suchrequirement to have the book vetted because he was not a government or militaryemployee.
"The Finish" is published byGrove/Atlantic Inc.'s Atlantic Monthly Press imprint.