CIA Mocked For Live-Tweeting Osama Bin Laden Raid On 5-Year Anniversary Of Al Qaeda Leader's Killing

The Central Intelligence Agency’s decision to commemorate the killing of Osama bin Laden five years ago by live-tweeting the mission “as if it were happening today” was heavily criticized Sunday.

On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy Seals raided Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan and killed the al Qaeda leader. In honor of the anniversary, the CIA planned to share the experience with its followers on Twitter, complete with “updates” about the mission’s status at various points, photos of officials from 2011 and diagrams of Bin Laden’s compound.

The CIA said on Twitter that the mission’s success was the “culmination of years of complex, thorough & highly advanced intel ops & analyses led by CIA.”

The agency also described how the team trained to take Bin Laden’s compound and said the terrorist leader’s death “marked significant victory in US-led campaign to disrupt, dismantle, & defeat al-Qa`ida.”

Although the raid was one of the high points of President Barack Obama’s administration and was widely seen as a success, many thought the Twitter re-enactment was in poor taste. Soon after the CIA’s Twitter account began broadcasting play-by-play updates about the mission, people began responding to its tweets with jokes, memes and requests for the CIA to stop.

One of the most common responses was the “Michael Jordan crying” meme, in which Twitter uses photoshopped an image of the basketball star crying over a photo of Bin Laden.

Some people were more angry than amused, saying the CIA had made a bad PR move and should stop the tweet storm.

A CIA spokesman defended the live-tweeting, saying the agency has done similar postings to recall other historical events, including the U-2 spy plane shootdown over the Soviet Union in 1960, the Glomar operation to recover wreckage of a Soviet submarine in the 1960s and 1970s, the evacuation of Saigon in 1975 and the rescue of Americans from Tehran in 1979, ABC News reported.

“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," spokesman Ryan Trapani told ABC News. “On the fifth anniversary, it is appropriate to remember the day and honor all those who had a hand in this achievement.”