On his Tuesday radio show, conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin told listeners they may not have all the details on what went down in Abbottabad, Pakistan, last week during the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden — notably, who pulled the trigger.
Levin cited a Monday Politico story by Josh Gerstein and Matt Negrin, which used open-ended language to explain details from a “senior White House official” about whether bin Laden was armed during the raid.
“However, during a background, off-camera briefing for television reporters later Monday, a senior White House official said bin Laden was not armed when he was killed, apparently by the U.S. raid team,” Gerstein and Negrin wrote.
Levin advised his listeners to pay attention to the phrasing, “apparently by the U.S. raid team.”
“Now that’s an interesting word,” Levin said. “Politico – the White House news outlet — let me repeat this, ‘bin Laden was not armed when he was killed apparently by the U.S. raid team.’”
And that led to the speculation that bin Laden was killed by his own forces and not by the U.S. military during the raid.
“Now I’m going to tell you something that I held back for two shows,” Levin said. “I’m going to tell you now because I’ve been waiting for the news to play out here. I’m going to tell you what I’ve been told. I have been told, and I have no way of knowing this for a fact, and this person who communicated to me says it is a surmise, but it is based on available information to that person. I’m not talking about Capitol Hill – I don’t care about those guys. Somebody who would be in the know, this person told me that it’s possible that bin Laden was killed by his own security forces because he didn’t want to be taken alive.”
Levin denied he was trying to spread rumors, but said the record should ultimately be set straight.
“He could not confirm that to me and I’m not trying to spread any rumors because it really doesn’t matter to me how he was killed, as long as he was killed,” Levin said. “But for factual and historical reasons, it would be nice to know exactly what took place here. And I’m only raising this now because of this odd reporting going on in Politico and these details put out yesterday that are absolutely inaccurate and details put out today correcting the details put out from yesterday.”
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