Obama reveals moment images of bin Laden’s dead body were beamed to White House & he told joke to ‘lighten mood’
A NEW book by Barack Obama is set to reveal the bizarre moment when photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse were beamed to the White House and he told a joke to “lighten the mood”.
The American president will admit in his upcoming memoir The Promised Land that he was warned when he authorized the 2011 raid on the Pakistan compound that there was a risk the wrong man would be killed, a publishing source revealed.
The CIA was still running facial recognition software when the closeups were sent to Obama but the special operations commander in charge of the mission, General Bill McRaven, assured the then-president that it was definitely bin Laden.
“The book will reveal how McRaven explained over the video conference line that he had a six-foot-two SEAL lie next to the body to compare his height to bin Laden, who reputedly was six-foot-four,” the source told The Sun.
“Obama then broke the tension in the Situation Room by teasing the general, ‘All that planning and you couldn’t bring a tape measure?’
“It was the first lighthearted thing he’d said all day and he wanted to brighten the mood.”
Obama will also talk about how his decision to green-light the raid was agonizing because he couldn’t confide in Michelle.
He spent the night before the raid watching basketball and being teased by his daughters, the source said.
“The night before he told McRaven the raid was on, he ate dinner with the first lady and their daughters,” the insider added.
“They were making fun of how he eats handfuls of nuts at the same time and how he always wore scruffy old sandals around the house.
“He writes about how he tucked his daughters into bed, turned on the TV and watched the Lakers playing the Hornets as he ran through all the various scenarios for the raid in his mind one last time.”
The book will reveal how Joe Biden warned against the bin Laden raid, the Guardian reported.
The book is also set to disclose how Michelle had her own a fit of nerves before her first audience with the Queen during a 2009 London Summit, the source said.
“Obama talks about how Michelle was stressed out about what to wear,” the insider said.
“He told her to wear a little hat and a little handbag but she wore a shapeless black cardigan instead and she got criticised for her appearance.
“She was more concerned about her fashion choices than Obama’s performance at the summit he claims.
“After fashion critics laid into her – Obama told her she should have taken his advice about what to wear.”
The book also reveals how Obama’s team branded Hillary Clinton a “f**king vampire you can’t kill off,” and overlooked her for the vice president job in 2008.
The publishers Penguin Random House paid over $65million in 2017
for the rights to Michelle and Barack’s memoirs – a record for presidential autobiographies.
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Obama’s manuscript was so large that it had to be split into two volumes.
Promised Land is the first of these, covering Barack’s youth and the years 2008 to 2011 up until the assassination of Osama bin Laden.