Osama bin Laden news
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Twenty-five years after 9/11, US outlets revisited the 2011 bin Laden raid and its lessons.
The anniversary coverage centers on what the raid proved and what the US still.
Background
The material clusters around the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. CBS News republished 60 Minutes archive segments — a SEAL Team 6 member recounting the 2011 Abbottabad raid and Barack Obama's first post-raid interview — while the New York Times ran an opinion piece arguing the causes and consequences of 9/11 have faded from memory. Other coverage revisited pre-9/11 events, including the assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the attacks.
How it unfolded
- Sep 6, 2026CBS News republishes a 60 Minutes archive segment in which a former SEAL Team 6 member recounts the 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
- Sep 8, 2026The New York Times publishes an opinion piece arguing that the most important lessons of 9/11 have been forgotten over 25 years.
- Sep 8, 2026Former Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill, who says he fatally shot bin Laden during Operation Neptune Spear, headlines a 9/11 tribute in Idaho Falls.
- Sep 9, 2026NDTV publishes a retrospective on the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, killed by al-Qaeda two days before the September 11 attacks.
Who’s saying what
- Participant
- Rob O'Neill said the bin Laden raid was a great mission because it proved that when the US decides to do the right thing, it can send people to make it happen.
- Analysts
- A New York Times opinion piece argues that over 25 years the causes and consequences of 9/11 have faded from memory, and that many vulnerabilities al-Qaeda and bin Laden revealed are still with us.
- Caution
- A Washington Examiner op-ed argues that 25 years after 9/11, parts of American political culture are embracing bin Laden's logic to justify political violence.
Still unverified
The Washington Examiner op-ed's claim that parts of American political culture are embracing bin Laden's logic is a single-source opinion, not a verified fact. The Newsweek item on bin Laden calling his mother before 9/11 is drawn from a retrospective series and could not be independently confirmed from the material.