usama bin laden dead- DNA confirmed his body

Twitter first revealed osama's death!


May 1, 2011 9:44 PM PDT

Twitter delivers news of bin Laden's death first

by Greg Sandoval

Once again, Twitter carried vital information to Americans ahead of traditional news outlets.





Keith Urbahn, once chief of staff for former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld is credited with breaking the story about the death of Osama bin Laden.



(Credit: Twitter) The news that American special forces had killed Osama bin Laden, perhaps the most wanted man in the world, first began to leak when the White House communications director posted on Twitter that President Obama planned to address the nation at 10:30 p.m. eastern time, according to a report in The New York Times.



Word that the president would address the nation live from the White House also touched off speculation on Twitter and other social networks--much of it erroneous, before--broadcast TV or news agencies could react.



According to the Times, the first scoop didn't come from that paper, the Washington Post, or ABC News. Keith Urbahn, once chief of staff for former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, posted this note on Twitter: "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn."



Chalk another one up again for citizen journalism and micro blogging. Twitter already has a load of scoops to its credit, such as being home to some of the first reports and photographs on the heroic crash landing of a U.S. Airways commercial jet on New York's Hudson River. Nonprofessional journalists using Twitter were first to report about the fatal shooting at Fort Hood in November 2009.



But tonight's news was by far the weightiest story that Twitter has ever helped to break.



Bin Laden was the head of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization and the architect of behind the September 11, 2001, airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., resulting in the immediate death of more than 3,000 Americans.



During his speech, President Obama told the country that a small group of American troops had staked out a compound in Pakistan where a tip led them to believe bin Laden was hiding out. He authorized a small team of U.S. forces to assault the compound. A firefight ensued and bin was killed. U.S. authorities are now in possession of bin Laden's body.