The events that led to the al-Qaida leader’s death in 2011 continue to inspire speculation. Here, the theory of the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is disputed by former CIA deputy director Michael Morell
The Bin Laden Conspiracy? (BBC2) is a weirdly interrogative title for a documentary: the question mark implies the viewer will be none the wiser by the end. And I wasn’t, really. Better informed, perhaps. More suspicious, certainly. But not a jot wiser.
Jane Corbin’s investigative film for the This World series set out to examine an alternative narrative of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. The US government’s version of events, faithfully dramatised in the film Zero Dark Thirty, is that intelligence about a trusted al-Qaida courier led them to the compound in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was shot and killed by navy Seals in a daring helicopter raid – Operation Neptune Spear – that took place without the Pakistani government or their intelligence service knowing anything about it.
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