Early bird prices are coming to an end soon... ⏰ Grab your tickets before January 17

This article was published on May 2, 2016

The CIA’s recap of the the night Bin Laden was shot on Twitter is just weird


The CIA’s recap of the the night Bin Laden was shot on Twitter is just weird

On Sunday, while many of you were relaxing and generally fretting about Monday, the CIA and its Twitter account decided it wanted to commemorate the death of Osama Bin Laden, on Twitter.

Yep. It did that.

For anyone who finds that a bit strange, the CIA, as the Tweet above indicates, were attempting to mark the fifth anniversary of an event some legal professionals call a war crime.

Lasting more than seven hours, the account brought in logistics on how it was planned and executed without dwelling too long on things like a fatal helicopter crash.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

As you can imagine, there were a lot of people who found this #throwbackThursdaybutonaSunday in poor taste. The majority of the Web’s ire can be found under #UBLRaid

The Daily Show gave its two cents.

We can’t really fathom it. ABC News managed to dig up a CIA spokesperson to explain why. “The takedown of bin Laden stands as one of the great intelligence successes of all time. History has been a key element of CIA’s social media efforts,” CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani said.

“On the fifth anniversary, it is appropriate to remember the day and honor all those who had a hand in this achievement.”

There’s marking it, and then there’s faux live tweeting it. A lot of people died that night. But then again, to be fair to the CIA Twitter account, it does have a fondness for the macabre.

Man-made disasters.

And bungled CIA operations to overthrow Fidel Castro.

The CIA spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that the account does like to recall historical events. So, you can chalk that one up to the CIA hearing people’s criticisms and responding with a massive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with