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Osama bin Laden
Elite navy unit had spectacular success with killing of al-Qaida leader but its story has included deadly blunders
Share Sam Jones and agencies http://www.guardian.co.uk/, Wednesday 4 May 2011
US navy Seals on a night mission in the Middle East.
Seal Team 6, which killed Osama bin Laden, is a secret elite unit that works intimately with the CIA. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images
The US navy's elite Seal Team 6, which stormed Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound and killed the al-Qaida leader, prides itself on two things: efficiency and secrecy.
However, the whole has enjoyed a somewhat mixed reputation since a bloody raid in Pakistan three days ago and the botched rescue attempt that led to the end of the British aid worker Linda Norgrove in 2010.
A standard of its allegiance to secrecy came when the question of the navy Seals sent the Bin Laden team a congratulatory email reminding them to hold their mouths shut afterwards. "Be extremely careful about operational security," added Rear Admiral Edward Winters. "The battle is not over."
The whole is made up of just a few hundred personnel based in Dam Neck, Virginia. It is known formally as Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru, and is region of a special operations brotherhood, members of which call themselves "the quiet professionals".
The whole works so much with the CIA that it is sometimes called the agency's Praetorian Guard. The partnership started in Iraq as an offshoot of the merger of special operations forces and news in the search for militants there.
Although the volume of Seal Team 6 missions are now in Afghanistan, it has raided targets in countries including Yemen and Somalia in the final 3 years.
Until Sunday its most recent high-profile deployment stood in complete contrast to the Bin Laden success. In October last year sailors from the whole were dispatched to deliver the British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who had been kidnapped by militants in Afghanistan.
Norgrove died during the raid after one of the Seals threw a fragmentation grenade close to where she was sheltering.
Initial reports suggested she had been killed by an insurgent's suicide bomb vest. But when the Seal commanding officer reviewed surveillance video recordings he saw an explosion after one of the Seals threw something in Norgrove's direction. A bit of the Seals were disciplined as a result.
The final time the world was made mindful of a Seal raid on Pakistani soil was 3 days ago, when the raiders flew a knot over the march to the township of Angurada. Their high-value targets had fled and those remaining behind in the compound fought back, resulting in a bit of civilian casualties, according to US and Pakistani officials.
The US usually does not remark on covert actions - especially those that go wrong. But the 2008 incident was caught on mobile phone video, so the Americans confirmed it and apologised publicly.
In the aftermath of the cleanup of Bin Laden a US publisher is racing out a behind-the-scenes account of Seal Team 6.
The issue of Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper, by navy Seal Howard E Wasdin and co-author Stephen Templin, had been originally planned for 24 May after St Martin's Press bought the rights almost a twelvemonth ago.
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