Minutes before the operation to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan began, US President Barack Obama was playing golf so that he could "distance himself" in case the raid went wrong, claims a new book.
President Obama was actually playing golf until 20 minutes before the raid to kill al-Qaeda chief began, claims Chuck Pfarrer, a former SEALs, in his latest book "Seal Target Geronimo" that hit the stands today.
Only then did he down his clubs and return to the White House to watch what he later trumpeted as a great success of his presidency, the Daily Mail reported quoting the book. The book claims that the official account was riddled with errors and that bin Laden was referred to as 'Bert' and not just 'Geronimo'.
The book paints a very different picture to the official photo released at the time which shows Obama and his advisers huddled round a table in the White House Situation Room as footage was beamed from a drone 15,000 ft above the al-Qaeda leader's mansion hideout in Pakistan's Abbottabad on May 2.
Pfarrer says Obama's role was largely inflated and suggests he stayed out on the golf course for so long so he could distance himself in case it went wrong. "If this had completely gone south, he was in a position to disavow," he wrote. He says the White House photographs did not show the moment that bin Laden was killed, but the moment a helicopter went down, which happened after the shooting.
Obama is known to be a keen golfer. He played golf four times during his week-long family holiday on Martha's Vineyard. Pfarrer also claims that bin Laden was known as Bert to the Seals, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri was Ernie – a reference to the Sesame Street puppets.