Operation Neptune Spear

 

The President's National Security Team Monitors Operation Neptune Spear
Sunday - May 1, 2011

It used to be that the general public and mainstream news media only learned about special covert operations when they failed - like the Bay of Pigs, the Iranian hostage rescue fiasco, the Iran-Contra plane crash, and Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu.

Only recently, with the close examination of the MOSSAD assassination of the Hamis leader in Dubai and now the execution of Osama Bin Laden by US Navy SEALs, do we see the nearly complete exposure of some successful assassination missions.

We actually only came to know about the Dubai hit because the doctor performing the autopsy learned who the man was, and looked closer to learn that he didn't actually die of natural causes as originally suspected, and was murdered. This led to the local police investigation turning to their intricate closed circut vidio surveillance system used by the hotels and at the airport to identify more than two dozen agents who were involved in the assassination or support activities.

With Operation Neptune Spear, it was kept totally secret without any leaks as far as I can tell, until it was over, but now we are getting a flood of information, and some disinformation about what went down in Pakistan that Sunday night.

We not only learn the secret code name for the mission, but the team is identified - SEAL Team Six, as well as its commander - Vice Admiral Wiliam H. McRaven, the locaton of their home base in Virginia, that 24 men participated in the mission as well as specially trained K9 dog.

They took off from a base in Afghanistan in two helicopters, with two backups, two specially adapted STEALTH blackhawks and two larger Chinooks, with one of the blackhawks malfunctioning and crashing and being partially destroyed at the scene, but not enough to keep photos from indicating some of the special STEALTH characteristics.

The first Tweet was posted during the attack by a young neighbor who complained about the helicopter noise, and then posted the fact that the helicopter had apparently crashed.

The entire mission lasted 38 minutes, and at least one of the soldiers had a live video camera mounted on his helmet that fed the feed witnessed at the White House Situation Room, and the Special Ops HQs in Florida, Virginia and the Pentagon.

The announcment "Geronomo KIA" was the code that the tall man the CIA surveillance team called "the Pacer" was indeed Osama Bin Laden and that he was killed, along with, we later learned, one of OBL's sons and two brothers who were couriers and close associates whose careless use of cell phones helped lead the CIA to this compound in Pakistan.