The Schmidle Muddle of the Osama Bin Laden Take Down

http://www.registan.net/index.php/2011/08/04/the-schmidle-muddle-of-the-osama-bin-laden-take-down/comment-page-1/

by danso • 15 years ago

154 29 15 years ago

joejohnson2• 15 years ago

In the discussion of the New Yorker article (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2830998), a few commenters (including myself) objected to the (original) article on the basis that it heavily relied on one source. All of these comments were downvoted to hell, and a unfriendly argument about conspiracy theories ensued.

Why is it instantly deemed a conspiracy theory when people are questioning of matters such as this? Healthy skepticism is good in most discussions, and I would hope that the HN crowd would be open to having a good debate about these topics.

ellyagg• 15 years ago

The criticisms leveled here against this article are a bit more conservative than the ones you seemed to be hinting at and which were made in comments you supported in the other thread.

The author having more details than seems plausible is one thing. The idea that fundamental parts of the story are wrong is quite another and would of course be a charge made against the official story disseminated at every news outlet thus far. Since the "official" (if we are taking this to be the official story now) is already fairly damning if you are an Osama sympathizer (it was a kill only mission, he was shot unarmed, body was dumped in the ocean), I don't see any reason for it to be appreciably false and I certainly wouldn't spend any thought on it unless extraordinary evidence came to light. The simplest explanation is almost always right and conspiracy theories are almost always wrong.

joejohnson2• 15 years ago

What I was trying to say in the original discussion (and what I'll try to reiterate here) is that the story is relying on a single source: government press releases. This makes me hesitant to believe that I am being presented with the entire story. Have we learned nothing from the past year? It is clearly not farfetched to believe the military would release false information or propagate misinformation. (See anything WikiLeaks has released re:US Military).

As for "The simplest explanation is almost always right", I would tend to agree with you on matters of science. But in the tense and complex political landscape of US foreign policy in the Middle East, the true story is almost certainly going to be far more complex then what will be presented in the news. If your final judge of accuracy is simplicity, then I can fool you easily by telling you a simpler lie then the one you are currently believing.

showerst2• 15 years ago

Warning: HN Meta commentary follows

I'm one of the original downvotes, and I also (rather rudely) replied to one of your comments.

I think the reason for the squelching of most of the discussion was because the tone of the questioning comments _was_ pretty conspiratorial. Comments like "Bollocks. Pics or it didn't happen", comments that treat "the government" like one coherent person, accusing people who believe the story of acting in a way that's "unscientific" and undirected "look deeper" sentiment tend to get shot down pretty quickly. (Note that these weren't all made by the same person, but they all got downvoted in the same thread.)

The posts that started with "Why did they report that XYZ?", instead of "Why should we believe that this happened at all" generated pretty good discussion. The distinction is somewhat subtle, but it's important for community management.

flipbrad• 15 years ago

I was the poster of 'pics or it didn't happen'. I am not a conspiracy theorist, raging internet commenter, etc. I was actually fairly upset by the reaction to my post. I found the replies, and the downvoting, for the most part failed to take my point (though it wasn't spelled out) for what it was: 'pics or it didn't happen' is meant to be the reaction of both an assiduous journalist, and an intelligent reader when faced with a story given like this. I am not more informed as to the facts of the story than the author was - I can't offer counterpoints. What I can do, and what I didn't see displayed by a community I broadly have high respect for, is spot telltales of very bad journalism when I see it. Any scientific article posted here that doesn't link to the original paper, that doesn't question or review what it is discussing, generally attracts similar points. Why, on a story about the US seizing and executing Osama (in quite an unexpected manner!), does anybody effectively doing the same get turned upon so severely? You'll notice that the 'bollocks' post starts with an explanation of something in the story gives cause for concern as to consistency which neither author nor readers seem concerned with. Is the distinction even subtler than the one you highlighted, or is it in fact less real, or applicable to this situation, than you think it is?

smackfu• 15 years ago

Interesting... I heard that NPR report that got corrected.

ryanwhitney• 15 years ago

It did, the article mentions "NPR subsequently issued a correction for reasons noted below" and links to: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/01/138884570/details-of-the-bin-l... which has the correction.

hammerzeit2• 15 years ago

It's totally appropriate to raise questions about a story as detailed and important as this one, but this article seems more tendentious than the evidence suggests.

The claims against his character that the journalist makes at the beginning do not seem substantial enough to cast him as a liar.

Even more so, the parts of the story that do not add up, in the author's eyes, seem problematic but not totally unresolvable. For example, I don't think it's too farfetched to think that they may inventory the contents of the SEALs' pockets before departing on a mission.

The author of this piece also seems to imply that there is no good reason for the journalist not to reveal his sources, which is of course totally wrong, especially for something like this.

Lastly, the author totally ignores the fact that she is accusing of complicity a magazine known for the quality of its fact-checking. I would think it's safe to say the author's deception would have either have had to be astonishingly good or the new yorker to be particularly malicious for the accusations here to be true. One of those may be the case, but she should explicitly say that she is questioning the ability of the New Yorker's fact-checking team.

I guess at the end of the day, it's still worthy of questioning and investigating, but to me this article comes off as the argument of someone with an ax to grind more than an investigation.

danso3• 15 years ago

Sure, but her point still stands: the disclosure should've been upfront, and the gripping quality of the narrative should've been toned down in the name of precision. The writer is very careful to note his sourcing, and a very careful reader would see that certain declarative statements are coming from the specops officer, or of, say, "A former helicopter pilot with extensive special-operations experience..."

It's not to say that these background sources are wrong. But they're getting pretty filtered info...the after-action report which consists of the compiled recollection of the actual operators.

Again, that report may be 100% truth, and it may even contain known unknowns and concerns of the operators. But can the spec ops officer who talked to the reporter be trusted to have summarized that summary correctly?

Let's say Obama was the New Yorker's secret source. No one would argue that he is not an authoritative and extremely important source regarding the OBL killing. But he is just one source, far removed from the action (remember that there was no helmet cam or otherwise-indoor video), with a definite vested interest in having the first detailed examination of the incident looking good for the WH.

grandalf2• 15 years ago

Good point. Access to a confidential source (Obama, a seal, a parent, etc.) would seem to motivate the author to point out its nature and possible fallibility of the account while still enjoying the license to use the account as the basis for a gripping article.

That this author did not do the former suggests a lack of precision that is quite unlike the New Yorker, particular insofar as the subtle "tropes" that its articles occupy are concerned. Even a byline like "Rumors from Pakistan" could have allowed the article to be appreciated at face value without the claim to factual detail that was made.

hammerzeit2• 15 years ago

I guess a lot of this comes back to the fact that this was published in the New Yorker. The New Yorker stakes their brand on the quality of their fact-checking, which to me requires less upfront disclosure. If this story was in fact fabricated, the reality of the story would be the smaller controversy, I'd argue. The real controversy would be the immediate destruction of one of America's most prestigious journalism brands.

To wit, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/freelance-jour...

"[New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David] Remnick says he’s satisfied with the accuracy of the account. 'The sources spoke to our fact-checkers,' he said. 'I know who they are. Those are the rules of the road around here. We have the time to do this. There isn’t always time' for publications with shorter deadlines to do the same checking."

Gaussian• 15 years ago

I read the story and I enjoyed it. But I immediately wondered where he was getting some of his very detailed nuggets. There's no doubt that this was written to give most readers the impression that SEALs were, in some form, primary sources. So now we know, definitely, they weren't.

The real question: how in the heck did the New Yorker vet this thing, from a fact-checking standpoint? The New Yorker has what's likely the most venerable fact-checking process in the magazine business. Most magazines have dismantled much of their dedicated fact-checking staffs to cut costs. The New Yorker, however, has soldiered on (as far as I know). So how were these details squared? How is it possible to ensure veracity of details, such as those fingering the events inside the helicopter, without a primary source?

I tend to believe much of the spirit of the story. But this is not a ripping book account of the raid (where more liberties are expected to be taken), this is the New Yorker. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds...

grandalf2• 15 years ago

The New Yorker has been the publisher of the best investigative journalism about the wars, and so it does seem like quite a change that it would publish a sloppy article that implied a firsthand account when none existed.

danso3• 15 years ago

I wouldn't say it was "sloppy". The sourcing is more or less precise. And all of their most gripping stories put the reader "there"...For example, this phenomenal piece about a Texas execution of a likely innocent man:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...

But in that case, most of the main players had died, and so the reader already knows that he's getting details that come from letters and interviews...but we know that because we know who the main players are in the first place...In the New Yorker piece, all sources have been muddied up, deliberately, so that even if you know that no SEALs were talking, it still seems like this is a comprehensive report. But for all we know, this could be the Navy's public information officer. Or Pres. Obama himself. Neither of which would be considered the best sources for an end-all what-really-happened in-depth article.

jimmyjim• 15 years ago

The journalist here was Nicholas Schmidle -- who was interviewed by Newshour and talked about how he got the information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DGwWg4hlK0#t=5m04s (deep-linked to 5:04)

anamax• 15 years ago

> The New Yorker has what's likely the most venerable fact-checking process in the magazine business.

Note that "fact-checking" is actually quote verification and/or finding someone else who says that she believes the same thing.

For example, the "rockets can't work in space because there's nothing to push against" bit in the 13 January 1920 NYT editorial trashing Goddard (mentioned in http://astronauticsnow.com/history/goddard/index.html) could easily have survived "fact checking".

The society and sports pages are the only places where you can rely on journalists wrt facts.

9999• 15 years ago

Be right back, need to cancel my New Yorker subscription...

shareme• 15 years ago

Before we jump to conclusions..

Active Military/Security Types with that high level of security clearance do not direct or indirectly talk to the press no matter what country they serve..it does not happen.

In the US there is several layers of liaisons to the press in the Military forces.

At no time would there be primary sources for this story..so that means that New Yorker did not just fail to run fact checking but ran duck and covered knowing full well there were no primary sources.

Let's stop lying NewYorker as there are times when non primary sources is all you have to a story..

zwieback• 15 years ago

When I was reading the article I had the impression I was reading a screenplay, since the author didn't mention specific interviews I was assuming all along that there was some embellishment going on.

I'm surprised too that the NY published such a weakly fact-checked account but a lot of the Christine Fair commentary reads like scoop envy.

reemrevnivek• 15 years ago

I had the impression that I was reading Clive Cussler. I also assumed that there was some embellishment going on.

Honestly, I was just waiting for a "Based on a true story" disclaimer at the end.

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

Schmidle has demurred from tackling this serious issue of credibility, integrity and veracity directly.

A flat lie. I saw him interviewed last Monday on PBS's Newshour program and the interviewer asked him how he developed the story and whether he had talked to the SEALs on the mission in person. Schmidle replied to the latter question with a categorical and unambiguous denial; he could not have been more straightforward. This article is a hit piece that attempts to deceive its readers for traffic, but which has no basis in fact.

See for yourself: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec11/binladen_... at 05:05-05:30

eurohacker• 15 years ago

in the country where i live in Europe it is quite widely believed that Bin Laden was not killed in that operation in Pakistan, or at least there is great suspicion

and that in fact the Bin Laden probably was dead years ago already, waiting to be exposed when government needs a popularity boost

The main things why its not believed that he was killed then is that no part of the body was shown to the public ( remember Saddam Husseins teeth and examination was shown all over the world ) and the burial was suspicious too ( thrown into the ocean within hours ? )

troels• 15 years ago

So, the Bush regime would defer this for Obama to get a popularity boost? Doesn't make sense.

The Schmidle Muddle of the Osama Bin Laden Take Down

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