Congress members are some of the select few Americans allowed to view the photographic evidence of Osama bin Laden's death and the video below of Senator James Inhofe's description of those photos comes from The Daily Caller.
“They are gruesome, of course, because it was taken right after the incident,” he said. “And so, of the 12, three of them were older pictures so that we could actually compare what he looked like when he had the black beard and what he looked like after he was killed. And that was part — the good way of making that presentation. Then they had some of his ear. Now, what had happened in those, I couldn’t tell whether the bullet went through the ear and out the eye cavity or through the eye and out the ear because a lot of brains were draped out from the socket. But it clearly — what we saw there was it was him. There is no question he was dead. But, the more revealing pictures really were the ones on the USS Vinson and the North Arabian Sea.”
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“See, the beard is a moving target because he dyes it all the time,” Inhofe said. “And the pictures we had older pictures had a black beard. His beard this time was a little bit shorter and it was more salt-and-pepper. You could tell it’s probably the actual color of the beard. Now, what he was dressed in, some of these were just headshots so you only had the head shot. Only two of them showed that he was partially, I would say you would call underwear on, that was about it.”
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“It appeared that way at first,” Inhofe said “Then when you saw the other pictures later, you could tell it wasn’t that way. Now, what happened was if the bullet went into the eye socket, then it was an explosive, it detonated once it was in so that caused the brain to come back out of the eye socket. That’s what made it look so gruesome.”
The description by Inhofe indicates there are no national security issues, such as operational information, classified operatives etc... so what exactly makes Congress members "the chosen" more so than the average American voter that is not a politician, where they are allowed even the option to view what we, as citizens, can not?
Recently it was reported that the Associated Press as well as Politico, Fox News, Judicial Watch and Citizens United have all also filed Freedom of Information Act request to force the Obama administration to keep it's promise of transparency.The Freedom of Information Act, commonly known as the FOIA, was enacted by Congress in 1966 to give the American public greater access to the federal government's records. The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996 expanded the scope of the FOIA to encompass electronic records and require the creation of "electronic reading rooms" to make records more easily and widely available to the public.
How To File a FOIA Request
The general public can make the decision for themselves whether they want to click a link and view the actual photos but Barack Obama has no legal right to arbitrarily decide that information or photographic evidence of bin Laden's death that does include classified information, be hidden from the American public.
Dan Metcalfe who headed the Justice Department’s office of information and privacy for 25 years says the Obama administration could eventually be forced to hand-over photos of a dead bin Laden through Freedom of Information requests.
[Update] Metcalfe also indicated that the White House could have bypassed the FOIA law by bringing the photos under White House control but since members of congress had to go to CIA Headquarters to view the photos and the CIA is legally bound by the FOIA laws, that point is now moot.
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