The most famous photo of the raid on and killing of Osama bin Laden almost didn’t get released by the White House, according to a new book about staging the presidency.
“Off Script” author Josh King, a Clinton-era advance man, wrote that Obama photographer Pete Souza knew he had a winner with the shot showing Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others clearly concerned as they followed the May 2, 2011, attack live.
“I had a series of images, and it wasn’t until the next day that the White House decided, ‘Let’s release some of these photos,'” Souza said.
But he noticed that there was a classified document in front of Clinton. First, he tried to get the document declassified. When that was rebuffed, he “pixelated” the image. “We had never done that before,” he told King, whose book was published by St. Martin’s Press.
At the time, the White House was under fire for blocking news photographers from key shots of the president, and he worried about how the doctored photo would be accepted, making sure to point out the editing when it was released.
His reward: The New York Times gave it six columns on Page One. “They realized it was an important photograph,” Souza said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
