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ASSOCIATED PRESS

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency normally deals in stealth and secrecy, but to many Twitter users, there was little discreet about their use of social media on Sunday.

May 1 marked the five-year anniversary of the U.S. Special Forces operation that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a firefight at his hideout in Pakistan. (If you need a refresher on how those events unfolded, here's The Globe's report from the night of the 2011 killing, and the full text of U.S. President Barack Obama's speech in which he announced it to the world.) The CIA commemmorated the event by tweeting the operation in real time, using the hashtag #UBLRaid (they spelled his name "Usama Bin Ladin," hence the acronym).

The tweet-up provoked some mockery of the U.S. intelligence agency:

Others used the occasion to recirculate some 2011 tweets from Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant in Abbottabad, Pakistan, who had unwittingly livetweeted the raid:

Here, for the record, are some of the CIA's tweets from Sunday: