Release photos of dead Osama bin Laden? Harry Reid, Joe Heck disagree

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 | 5:17 p.m.

WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden is dead. They know he is, the White House says, because they have confirmed it through DNA evidence and photos that prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But they won’t show the world that proof; and as conflicting reports of what happened on that moonless night in Abbottabad throw some doubt as to exactly what transpired, a growing number of lawmakers are pressing the president to release the pictures to nip any budding doubts and rumors about the deadness of Osama bin Laden before they bloom.

“The photos have to be released, most definitely,” Nevada Rep. Joe Heck told ABC Tuesday, “to make sure we get rid of any conspiracy theorists that think that we didn’t take care of bin Laden.”

Heck, who is a member of the House’s Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee, just returned from a tour of Pakistan over the congressional recess.

The White House has refrained from publishing the photos in the 48 hours since bin Laden’s death was confirmed, attempting to placate public curiosity by saying that facial recognition made a 95 percent definitive match with the photos of the dead target, who was shot in the head; and a 99.9 percent definitive match on bin Laden’s DNA, determined by cross-referencing samples taken from bin Laden’s relatives, including a late sister’s brain sample, retrieved at a Boston hospital where she once sought treatment.

But seeing is believing -- especially when reports are emerging that senior officials may have embellished a few details about the raid.

Bin laden was not brandishing a weapon, as it turns out -- though senior administration officials had indicated early Monday morning, following the president’s address to the nation, that he had been armed. Neither was his wife killed -- another detail that emerged in the first few hours.

The revelations of those errors potentially expose President Obama, and by extension, the Democratic Party, to political criticism in what should otherwise be his finest hour. The president’s ratings saw a bump in the aftermath of the bin Laden news, both in measures of general approval and public confidence in his leadership.

It’s not clear if the errors made are just mistakes of translation -- the senior officials speaking early Monday, just hours after the raid took place certainly hadn’t been on the ground in Pakistan -- or zealous dramatization. And while no one’s accusing the administration of posturing like the George W. Bush administration did in staging the Jessica Lynch "rescue," the new uncertainty about an event that seemed so sure is whetting appetites for hard proof.

Not everybody is, though.

“I personally think it’s morbid, and I’m not one that's going to be yelling to make the photo public,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said to reporters Tuesday. “But this is a decision that has to be made by the president.”

Reid, as the senior Democrat in Congress, has been closer to the events leading to bin Laden’s demise than most. He was kept in the loop through a series of individual meetings with CIA director Leon Panetta for months leading up to last Sunday, hearing finally on Saturday that the raid on the compound was a go. He was also one of the first non-Cabinet members to be notified that the raid had resulted in the death of bin Laden -- news the president communicated to Reid personally at about 9:30 p.m. Eastern time Sunday night.

“Osama bin Laden was the most wanted and most hunted man in the world,” Reid said on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, prior to a vote in which the Senate unanimously recognized the participants in the operation that killed bin Laden with an official acclaim. “His was the face of our enemy and the face of evil. There were few faces more recognizable to the American people and to citizens of the world.”

Closure from that sort of revulsion may be what the White House ultimately decides to harness when and if they release the photos, which CIA director Leon Panetta indicated Tuesday he believed it would ultimately do.

“I don’t think you have to convince the world because of the DNA involved,” he told reporters following briefings with members of the House and Senate. “I just think it’s important they know we have it.”

“The White House makes the final decision,” he said.