Navy SEAL’s firsthand account of Osama Bin Laden's death

A former Navy SEAL’s first hand account of the raid that took down Osama Bin Laden is about to hit bookstores and likely best sellerdom. It should not be published, says the Department of Defense.

The Pentagon has told Matt Bissonnette that he is violating a pledge to maintain secrecy unless granted permission to go public with events that transpired during his service. If true, Bisso nnette broke a code of honor.

Bissonnette’s attorney responded Friday that the non disclosure agreement he signed merely “invites” but did not require him to submit the book for review before publication.

However this unseemly dispute gets resolved, Americans will find a lot to like in “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden.”

Bissonnette wrote under the pseudonym Mark Owen, with an assist from Kevin Maurer. His identity was outed by the media in a wholly acceptable act of journalistic enterprise. A copy of the volume was provided by publisher Dutton.

The story traces Bissonnette’s life from learning to shoot .22s with his father in the Alaskan wilderness to Virginia Beach, where he returns after “one of the most important missions in U.S. military history,” and then into retirement from SEAL Team Six after service in Iraq, Afghanistan and helping to rescue an American hostage from Somali pirates on the Indian Ocean.

As for the Bin Laden raid, Bissonnette describes impressive action from planning to execution. The SOB didn’t have a chance.

Early reports focused on “contradictions” with the account of Bin Laden’s last moments issued by the government. Those had said that while Bin Laden was “not armed,” he did “resist,” according to White House statements after the operation.

In Bissonnette’s account, a man’s head emerged from a doorway as the SEALs were approaching up a stairway. The point man fired and hit the man, who fell back into the room, where Bissonnette and a fellow team member finished him. The man proved to be Bin Laden.

“He hadn’t even prepared a defense,” writes Bissonnette. “He had no intention of fighting.”

The differing circumstances are of no moment, except as a corrective to history if Bissonnette’s version is indeed accurate. What the lead man had in front of him was an enemy combatant who had to be killed for the safety of the team.

Noting that the book might be found to disclose classified information, the Pentagon has also raised the possibility of criminal prosecution. That would be a tragedy — one that is likely unwarranted. If the book contains secrets that demanded to be kept, they weren’t readily apparent.

As for the notion of a SEAL going commercial — “selling out,” as it were — it’s a little late to worry about that, since the White House cooperated with filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow on a movie about the raid, due out this fall.