Pentagon Argues Value of Yemen Raid Using Old Evidence
Pentagon Argues Value of Yemen Raid Using Old Evidence by Paul Sonne, Wall Street Journal
A U.S. military effort Friday to demonstrate the intelligence value of a weekend commando raid in Yemen ended in a snafu, when video clips the military released from a computer seized during the operation turned out to be years old and already public.
The foul-up came as the White House and the Pentagon face public pressure to prove that the raid on an al Qaeda site—which resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy SEAL, six injured U.S. service members, likely civilian casualties and a ruined $70 million U.S. aircraft—was successful, despite those costs.
Commandos carrying out the raid, which was the first counter-terror operation known to have been ordered by President Donald Trump, came under fire as soon as they landed, raising questions over whether al Qaeda operatives had known about it in advance.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East and plans to host President Trump at its Tampa headquarters for a visit on Monday, released abridged clips of five longer videos from a computer that U.S. commandos seized during the raid on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.
“The videos are one example of the volumes of sensitive al Qaeda terror-planning information recovered during the operation,” Central Command Spokesman Col. John Thomas said in a statement when the videos were released on a Defense Department network on Friday morning. “What was captured from the site has already afforded insights into al Qaeda leadership, AQAP methods of exporting terror, and how they communicate.” …
