May 4, 2011 - Boys who lived across the street from Osama Bin Laden's home (shown in picture) said that they could hear the voices of the children living in Bin Laden's compound, but said they never saw them leave the house. During the raid, they heard the screams and crys of the children. Photo: Charla Jones for The Globe and MailCharla Jones/The Globe and Mail
The account of the killing of the world's most wanted man has changed dramatically over the course of just three days. From whether Osama bin Laden was armed when he was shot dead to whether he used his own wife as a human shield, the official narrative seems to change by the minute.
White House officials have said the discrepancies in their accounts of the nighttime raid on a Pakistani compound are the result of a rush to relay the story of a complex, quick-moving military operation.
As more of the assault team's 79 members returned to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, they were questioned about the attack. Each person's version was crosschecked with that of their comrades. Over time, a clearer picture emerged, administration officials said.
However, divergent explanations of what actually happened inside the Abbottabad compound also speak to the unusual and relatively new pressures of releasing information about an unprecedented story in a hyper-accelerated news cycle, where tools such as Twitter play an important role.
As the United States changes its story, here is a reality check:
How much was Mr. bin Laden's hideout worth?
The White House first described the house where Mr. bin Laden lived in Abbottabad as an upscale, million-dollar mansion in an affluent suburb. A U.S. government-supplied illustration confirmed a sprawling, triangular compound consisting of a three-storey house, a satellite dish and guardhouse all surrounded by privacy walls. The tumbledown building was ringed by surveillance cameras and barbed wire, but the paint was peeling and the walls were water-damaged. There was no air conditioning.
Now, property assessors in Abbottabad offer a much different valuation, saying the house was worth half that. The television pictures of the hideout reveal nothing of the opulence suggested by the White House. Its rooms are strewn with trash and dirty mattresses where the bin Laden family presumably slept.
The property was probably worth just $80,000 when purchased about eight years ago as an empty field, one property dealer told The Globe, but would fetch about $500,000 in the current market.
"This is not a posh area. We call it a middling area," another property dealer, Muhammad Anwar, said.
Asked about the American estimate, he scoffed: "Maybe that's the assessment from a satellite. But here on the ground, that's the price."
What did the U.S. commandos find inside the house?
When reporters asked John Brennan, assistant to the President for Homeland Security, what kind of intelligence Navy Seals found inside the bin Laden compound, he demurred.
"I'm not going to go into details about what might have been acquired," he said Monday afternoon in a news conference.
"We are trying to determine exactly the worth of whatever information we might have been able to pick up, and it's not necessarily quantity - frequently it's quality," he continued.
It has now emerged that the commando team found a number of computer drives and disks, which an unnamed U.S. official dubbed "the mother lode of intelligence."
The website Politico says commandos seized personal computers, thumb drives and electronic equipment. Exactly what that data contains is now the subject of intense speculation, as analysts comb through the files in Afghanistan.
The information could reveal anything from specific details on al-Qaeda's finances to the terrorist network's planned attacks. Some say the data could include fresh information on Mr. bin Laden's involvement in previous attacks. The files could be encrypted or totally empty, others warn.
When senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was captured in 2002, the intelligence haul included his bank cards, computer disks, diary, notebooks and phone numbers.
Why won't Washington release the photos?
U.S. President Barack Obama was under pressure to release graphic images of Mr. bin Laden's corpse to dispel doubts that he is indeed dead.
The President ultimately decided against it because he believed such a move would create a threat to national security, inflaming anti-American sentiment among al-Qaeda's supporters.
The dilemma is really a double-edged sword: If he doesn't release the photos, Mr. bin Laden's followers might not even believe that he's dead.
"There is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden," Mr. Obama said in an interview with the CBS News program 60 Minutes, according to an excerpt of an interview read to reporters by Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.
"We don't need to spike the football."
Once Mr. Obama's presidency ends, however, all bets could be off.
Sarah Palin, one possible 2012 GOP presidential hopeful, tweeted her dissent. "Show photo as warning to others seeking America's destruction. No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama; it's part of the mission," she wrote.
Within hours of news breaking that Mr. bin Laden had been killed, fake pictures of his bullet-ridden face started surfacing on the Internet. Some of those were broadcast on Arab stations in the Muslim world and posted to jihadist websites.
Was the killing of Mr. bin Laden an act of self-defence?
The White House flip-flopped on the crucial question of whether Mr. bin Laden was armed when he was killed.
On Monday, Mr. Brennan suggested the al-Qaeda leader had a gun when Navy Seals burst into his third-floor room and shot him dead.
"He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. And whether or not he got off any rounds, I'd - quite frankly don't know," he told reporters.
Mr. Brennan further said the commandos were not ordered to shoot on sight and would have captured the world's most wanted man if they had had the chance: "There was a firefight. He therefore was killed in that firefight," he said.
On Tuesday, however, the White House offered a very different picture of the assault, after the team that stormed the compound briefed officials and rested back at Andrews Air Force Base.
In fact, Mr. bin Laden did not have a gun when he was killed, suggesting he was not killed by the commandos in self-defence.
He did, however, have €500 and two phone numbers sewn into his clothes when he was shot dead, suggesting he was ready to flee at a moment's notice.
"He was not armed," White House spokesman Jay Carney said, reading from an account provided by the State Department.
Mr. bin Laden's lack of a weapon, however, did not mean he was ready to surrender. There was heavy fire from others in the house, Mr. Carney said.
Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the raid show three dead men, none of them Mr. bin Laden, lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.
Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted that the Navy Seals who raided the compound did not make great efforts to persuade him to surrender.
"The authority here was to kill bin Laden," Mr. Panetta said in a television interview.
"Obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him," Mr. Panetta said.
In another television interview, he said the opportunity to capture Mr. bin Laden alive "never developed."
Was Mr. bin Laden's wife used as a human shield?
One of the most fascinating aspects of the initial nighttime raid narrative was the suggestion that Mr. bin Laden had used his own wife as a human shield.
The detail revealed a level of cowardice on the part of al-Qaeda's ringleader that American officials suggested was revealing.
But officials corrected the account the following day, saying the death of another woman in the crossfire on another floor led them to draw a false conclusion.
Mr. bin Laden's fifth wife, Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, had actually been shot in the calf during the assault.
She was taken to the Pakistani town of Rawalpindi along with Safia, Mr. bin Laden's daughter, who was also wounded in the attack, possibly caused by fragments from a grenade thrown by the assault team as they attacked.
The girl's account also differed from the official White House version: She has apparently told by Pakistani authorities that her father was shot at the beginning of the 40-minute operation, not at the end.
And while American news reports cite U.S. officials saying Ms. Fatah had told Pakistani authorities her husband had lived in Abbottabad since 2005, yesterday reports in the Pakistani press contradicted them.
They said survivors of the raid told officials Mr. bin Laden had arrived at the compound just five or six months ago.
What happened to Mr. bin Laden's body?
U.S. officials initially said Mr. bin Laden's body was handled in keeping with Islamic tradition, which involves ritual washing, shrouding in a white sheet and burial within 24 hours.
"Traditional procedures for Islamic burial were followed," a senior administration official said.
Religious rites were performed on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson. Mr. bin Laden's body was placed in a weighted bag and was then positioned on a flat board, tipped up and eased into the Arabian Sea.
The burial was said to have occurred at 6 a.m. GMT, about 12 hours after the firefight in which he was killed.
"A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker," a U.S. Defence official said.
U.S. officials have cited two reasons for a sea burial: First, they did not want his grave to become a shrine; second, they did not feel any country would accept his remains.
Conspiracy theorists were quick to jump on the burial at sea: Since there was no physical evidence of his body, they claim, his killing could have been faked.