SODOM & GOMORRAH: In a story fit for The Onion, the CIA decided to commemorate the five year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden by live-tweeting the events as if they were happening today.
On May 2, 2011 a raid by Navy SEALs took place on bin Laden’s residence in Abbottabad, Pakistan ultimately killing the leader who had been responsible for some of the most horrific terrorist attacks in recent memory. The social media team in Langley decided to relive each crucial event in that raid this year.
After facing some criticism that the live-tweeting of the operation’s events weren’t in spirit with the intelligence community, Glenn Miller, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement to military.com that “The takedown of bin Ladin stands as one of the great intelligence successes of all time”. Miller defended the action saying that they’ve posted about other events such as the evacuation of Saigon. No doubt Miller feels that there is occasion to be enormously proud that it took the United States intelligence community about ten years to hunt for an elderly man of above-average height who required frequent access to a kidney dialysis machine, just as they’re enormously proud about retreating out of Vietnam.
CIA Director John Brennan further stated that the US has been successful because it’s destroyed a large part of al-Qaeda.
Responses to the social media marketing campaign ranged from laughter to criticism, with a small but vocal group of Twitter users calling on the agency to indict Hillary Clinton.