KBL: Kill Bin Laden
A Novel Based on True Events
John Weisman

William Morrow
November 15, 2011 / ISBN: 978-0-06-211951-3
Biography / History
Amazon

Reviewed by Elise Cooper

Most people know that on May 1 of this year America’s Public Enemy Number One, Osama Bin Laden, was killed, John Weisman has written a riveting novel about the mission, KBL: Kill Bin Laden, A Novel Based on True Events. Included in this book commentary is an interview with the author about the event and his book.

The book covers a timetable between December 2010 and May 2011 and imagines how events might have unfolded, explaining the thinking and planning behind the mission. He wrote a novel because there were facts that could not be presented correctly. To represent the points of view of those that were involved in the decision making of the operation the book became a novel based on true facts.

Readers will learn the intricate planning and execution of Operation Neptune Spear, the killing of Bin Laden (OBL), and how SEALs prepared for the mission. The first few chapters in the book introduce a CIA operative, Charlie Becker, who is in Abbottabad, Pakistan, undercover as a beggar, seeking leads about OBL. The book delves into the different options considered including an aerial bombing and a helicopter insertion mission. Not having a solid determination that Bin Laden was in the compound a bombing mission was eventually ruled out, since the collateral damage would be too great and it would be hard to get OBL’s DNA to prove he was killed. The planning of the mission was based on keeping things simple: insert, assault, exploit, and extract.

Weisman takes the reader through the circumstantial evidence that a CIA analyst could have gone through to determine if Bin Laden was in the compound. In the book, the analyst, Spike, mirrors the real-life career analyst, John, whose job for the past decade was finding the al-Qaeda leader. They both were extremely confident and gave a high probability percentage that the person in the compound was indeed Bin Laden.

Besides Spike there are other characters that represented real life players. An Attorney General who is described in the book as someone who spends “most of his time trying to indict CIA officers for doing their job but turned terrorists loose so they could kill more Americans.” The “idiot” Vice-President who “never engaged his brain before he put his mouth in gear.” There was the President who is all “’show me,’ and no ‘tell me.’” Someone who, as with President Obama, needed to be pushed into giving a go-ahead which was done by the CIA Director.

Weisman wrote the book as a “tribute to the grunts: those in the safe houses, and those special ops people who were the intricate part of the mission. These are the folks who have the passion and the grit no matter how bad the administration treats them. …. I wanted to write about it in a way that does not jeopardize them but allows the general public to get an understanding of the mission.”

He certainly did that and more. This book is very believable and well developed with clear and concise details. If for no other reason, people should read the book for the truth behind OBL’s burial at sea which Weisman asserts is factual and exclusive to his book. What a reader will take away from this novel is an increased appreciation of the job that intelligence and Special Forces do: their passion, diligence, perseverance, and grit.