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Agence France-Presse

They are supposedly bound by a code of silence, but several of the US Navy SEALs involved in killing Osama bin Laden published accounts of the raid – to the dismay of fellow fighters who fret the disclosures could put future missions at risk.
Demand is high for tell all stories of how the SEALs killed America’s public enemy number one, and the years since his death have seen a flow of films, books, documentaries and news interviews giving juicy details of the May 2, 2011 raid.
SEALs and other commando units are shrouded in secrecy and, traditionally at least, the special operators have frowned upon talking publicly about past missions.
Details about bin Laden’s death first came from the administration of Barack Obama – dismaying the defence secretary of the time, Robert Gates.

“Why doesn’t everybody just shut the f**** up?” Gates recalls telling Tom Donilon, Obama’s then national security adviser, in his memoirs.
Officials also disclosed secret details of the operation to Mark Boal, the screenwriter of the film about the hunt for bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty.
Then, in a further break with tacit convention, some of the SEALs involved recounted part of the fateful night.
One of the special operators, Matt Bissonnette, published a book in 2012 about his role in the raid, entitled No Easy Day.
Then his former squad mate Robert O’Neill achieved worldwide notoriety by claiming to be the SEAL who fired the fatal shots into bin Laden.
O’Neill said he had wanted to share his story to help give closure to the family of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But for many in the elite special operations forces brotherhood, it all goes against the commando ethos.
Calling themselves the “quiet professionals”, SEALs have long accepted that their work be carried out anonymously.
They worry disclosures from former SEALs could cede vital information to the enemy, and jeopardise future operations.
Lieutenant Forrest Crowell, himself a former SEAL, described the phenomenon in his thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School in California.
“By romanticising and publicising SEAL missions, the government fostered an insatiable curiosity that has driven a lucrative new market for SEAL information,” he wrote.
“Any information that undermines the operational security of the SEALs and limits their ability to surprise the enemy increases their chances of failure and puts American lives at risk.”

According to Sean Naylor, a journalist and author of Relentless Strike, SEAL leaders “are now worried that books, films, all this is going out of control. They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle”.
Such concern isn’t limited to the SEALs.
In December, General Joe Votel, who at the time headed the Special Operations Command, asked the Obama administration to be more discreet.
“I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF (Special Operations Forces) activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote in a memo, parts of which were quoted by Foreign Policy magazine.
General Joe Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also told the military to dial back discussions about commando operations.
But special forces won’t disappear from the public eye completely. Their role in America’s current military engagements is more important than ever.

About 300 special operators and support personnel have been deployed in Syria, advising local troops on how to attack the Islamic State group.
Another 200 or so are in Iraq conducting raids to capture or kill IS leaders.
Many work under the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, the group developed by the administrations of George W. Bush and then Obama.
The Pentagon says little about JSOC, but its units include the Army’s Delta Force, and SEAL Team 6, which killed bin Laden.
The administration and the military must “find the right balance between operational security and the necessity to inform and educate the public,” said retired Army colonel David Maxwell, associate director for the Centre for Security Studies at Georgetown University.
Complete silence is impossible, he said.
“If the press or the entertainment industry is not provided (with information,) they will fill in the blanks,” he added.


Code of silence broken: US Navy SEALs wallow in fame following bin Laden killing

The elite soldiers were once shrouded in secrecy, but since the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, plenty have come out to spill the beans on their ways and means. Photo: AFP

Former U.S. Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill is seen in this handout photo provided on Friday, April 8, 2016, by the Butte-Silver Bow County Undersheriff. Montana authorities have filed drunken driving charges against the former U.S. Navy SEAL who says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. Butte-Silver Bow County Undersheriff George Skuletich says officers found O'Neill asleep early Friday in a running car parked at a convenience store in his hometown. (Butte-Silver Bow County Sheriff's Office via AP)

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