The voices of two Obama Cabinet officials who played key roles in
planning the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, then-Defense
Secretary Robert Gates and then-Central Intelligence Agency director
Leon Panetta, were conspicuously absent from Wednesday night's hour-long
NBC News documentary on the subject.
The program included interviews with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, as well as several other White House officials.
The CIA, under Panetta's direction, had official leadership over the raid. Special Operations forces, under Gates's oversight and the Pentagon's command, carried out most of the mission.
It's unclear precisely why Panetta, now Secretary of Defense, and Gates, now Chancellor of the College of William & Mary, were mentioned but not interviewed the broadcast. However,a senior defense official said early Thursday that Panetta wasn't asked to appear.
"They apparently focused on officials in the famous Situation Room photo. Panetta was overseeing the operation from CIA Headquarters and thus wasn't in that photo," the defense official said.
A spokesman for Gates did not immediately respond to queries late Wednesday, nor did an NBC spokeswoman.
Gates's non-appearance could be traceable to the irritation he expressed publicly last May about what he indicated was the White House's failure to abide by a pledge to limit disclosures about the operation.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/05/absent-voices-in-nbc-bin-laden-show-robert-gates-leon-122339.html
The program included interviews with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, as well as several other White House officials.
The CIA, under Panetta's direction, had official leadership over the raid. Special Operations forces, under Gates's oversight and the Pentagon's command, carried out most of the mission.
It's unclear precisely why Panetta, now Secretary of Defense, and Gates, now Chancellor of the College of William & Mary, were mentioned but not interviewed the broadcast. However,a senior defense official said early Thursday that Panetta wasn't asked to appear.
"They apparently focused on officials in the famous Situation Room photo. Panetta was overseeing the operation from CIA Headquarters and thus wasn't in that photo," the defense official said.
A spokesman for Gates did not immediately respond to queries late Wednesday, nor did an NBC spokeswoman.
Gates's non-appearance could be traceable to the irritation he expressed publicly last May about what he indicated was the White House's failure to abide by a pledge to limit disclosures about the operation.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/05/absent-voices-in-nbc-bin-laden-show-robert-gates-leon-122339.html
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