The Bin Laden operation was a success. But the spin control has been a total muddle.
After intoning that the terrorist leader died in a “firefight” late Sunday, the White House has been forced to backtrack with an amended storyline that is less the stuff of myth and more the ugly truth.
"I don't see any evidence of a deliberate plan to mislead, but they should have maintained tighter controls of the message," Bill Schneider, former CNN Senior Political Analyst, told TheWrap. "In this poisonous political atmosphere, both sides are always bound to see plots and conspiracies."
Some pundits and journalists are amazed that the administration even took the trouble to correct the record surrounding Osama Bin Laden's killing.
"I'm not giving them a pass, but from a coldly calculated political view I'm surprised they were willing to revise anything because I don't think the costs were that great either way," Marc Cooper, professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, told TheWrap. "It was a small field team and there wasn't any great risk of being discredited."
TheWrap chronicled the changing story, day by day, as facts have emerged to strip the Hollywood sheen off a story that's become -- like Bin Laden -- a moving target.
Sunday, May 1, 11:30 p.m. (ET) | President Obama Addresses the Nation, in Which We Learn of a "Firefight":
The president kept his account of the terrorist leader's death in Abbottabad, relatively short and to the point.
However, his account of the circumstances that ultimately led to Bin Laden's death would later draw scrutiny -- particularly his use of the phrase firefight.
"No Americans were harmed," Obama said in his address. "They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body."
Monday, May 2, 2:00 p.m. (ET) | John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Introduces "Human Shield" Myth:
Addressing the press the day after the news broke, it is Brennan who introduces the idea that Bin Laden had used a woman living in the compound as a "human shield" -- an account that has been subsequently been disproved.
"Thinking about that from a visual perspective, here is Bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," Brennan said.
The top aide goes on to insist that the Navy SEALs conducting the operation were not tasked with killing Bin Laden and would have captured him if possible. But Brennan maintains the president's line that Bin Laden's death happened as the result of a firefight.
"The concern was that Bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation," Brennan said. "Indeed, he did. It was a firefight."
