Government confronted with demand for Osama images

Osama bin Laden

The images and video of terrorist Osama bin Laden – dead or alive – taken by members of the U.S. military during their strike on his fortified Pakistani compound must be made public, according to a demand from officials with the public interest organization Judicial Watch.

As President Obama was announcing this week that he would not authorize the release of any of the images, the organization was submitting its requests to the Defense Department and the CIA for the images under the Freedom of Information Act.

Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton told WND he fully expects the images ultimately to be released, just like the video the organization earlier fought in court to obtain that revealed a jetliner crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11.

"Judicial Watch, Inc., hereby requests that the U.S. Department of Defense produce, within twenty (20) business days, all photographs and/or video recordings of Osama (Usama) Bin Laden taken during and/or after the U.S. military operation in Pakistan on or about May 1, 2011," the letter said.

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"The particular records requested herein are sought as a part of Judicial Watch's ongoing efforts to document the operations and activities of the federal government and to educate the public about these operations and activities.

"Once Judicial Watch obtains the requested records, it intends to analyze them and disseminate the result of its analysis, as well as the records themselves," the letter said, "It also will make the records available to other members of the media or researchers upon request."

The agencies have 20 days to respond.

"President Obama's decision not to release the bin Laden photos is at odds with his promises to make his administration the most transparent in history. Judicial Watch hopes its FOIA requests will provide a mechanism to release these records in an orderly fashion in compliance with the FOIA law," said Fitton.

"President Obama's reluctance to 'spike the football' is not a lawful reason for withholding these historic public documents from the American people. We are prepared to go to court to obtain this information," he said.

Editor's Note: The images are extremely graphic.

The only images that apparently are genuine that have been released so far have been posted on Reuters and came from a Pakistani security official who entered the bin Laden compound about an hour after the U.S. assault.

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The extremely graphic images show several men, dead and lying in pools of blood.

According to CBS, it was in a taping for this weekend's "60 Minutes" television program that Obama announced he would not release the images to prove bin Laden's death.

He suggested it would be sort of "spiking the football" by the American people.

"It is important to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool," Obama said in the interview. "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies."

He said the graphic nature of the images "would create a national security risk."

"We discussed this internally," he said in the interview. "Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain that this was him. We've done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden."

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, later tried to explain.

"The fact of the matter is, as the president described, these are graphic photographs of someone who was shot in the face – the head, rather. It is not in our national security interests to allow those images, as has been in the past been the case, to become icons to rally opinion against the United States. The president's No. 1 [concern] is the safety and security of American citizens at home and Americans abroad. There is no need to release these photographs to establish Osama bin Laden's identity. And he saw no other compelling reason to release them, given the potential for national security risks. And further, because he believes, as he said so clearly, this is not who we are."

As reported earlier, however, Obama had no issue with releasing hundreds, even thousands, of graphic images when they dealt with the allegations of prisoner abuse by American troops.

Fitton noted the incongruity.

"He releases information if it makes us look bad. But in this astonishing victory, he doesn't want to release information," he said. "This is arguably the most significant military action in a generation."

Fitton said he's confident ultimately of obtaining access to the images.

"We had to sue to obtain the the plane hitting the Pentagon," he said. "They had told us they wanted to keep it secret for law enforcement purposes. All that did was fuel the conspiracy theories out there that it was a missile."

He said, "We obtained the tape, put it on the Internet for everyone to see. The video depicted a plane hitting the Pentagon."

"This is a straightforward FOIA request," he said. "There's nothing I've heard from the president I would think would survive court scrutiny."

Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch Inc. is a constitutionally conservative, nonpartisan educational foundation that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. It has been pursuing government records through FOIA requests for 17 years.