Obama canceled bin Laden raid 3 times, claims new book
President Barack Obama walks with his senior adviser Valerie Jarrett on June 2, 2012.
A new book claims that US President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden three times on the advice of senior political adviser Valerie Jarrett, before finally approving the successful Navy SEALs raid on May 2, 2011.
Journalist Richard Miniter makes the allegations in his forthcoming book “Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him,” according to the conservative Daily Caller, which claims to have seen the relevant chapter of the book due to be released next month.
The White House today dismissed the report as a “fabrication.”
"That is an utter fabrication. It's seems pretty clear that Mr Miniter doesn't know what he's talking about," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters, Politico said.
"Ms Jarrett, like the vast majority of the president's senior staff was not read in on the operation on the mission against Osama bin Laden."
Miniter, citing an unnamed source at the Joint Special Operations Command who he says had direct knowledge of the operation, said Obama called off the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in January, February and March on the advice of Jarrett.
This contradicts an account of the raid published by The New Yorker last August, which says Obama first saw a plan for the mission at the end of March.
According to the blurb on Amazon.com, Miniter’s book – his fourth about the US war against Al Qaeda – “reveals a president who is indecisive, moody, and often paralyzed by competing political considerations.”
The successes and failures during the Obama administration were due to the work of “strong women,” such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Jarrett, it says.
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