I interpret it as that as we have sources that are conflicting on basic information. While each of the sources appears reliable enough none of them can be reliably, and verifiability, traced back to either reports written by the people involved with the operation or someone that interviewed them. There does seem to be wide agreement that OBL was hit twice with the first shot being somewhere in the chest/trunk (depending on the report), and the second in the head. There are conflicting reports on the number of shooters and the number of shots fired.

 We have a couple of options for the article. 1) Only report those items that seem to have wide agreement and to be silent on those details where our sources offer conflicting data. 2) Document the conflicting details along with the sources. I'd personally go with #1 as it'll be a cleaner article. We'd have a constant battle with people trying to inject a POV such as "OBL was shot twice by one person - look at all these sources."

 I have a personal concern with the New Yorker version of the events in that it mentions the assault team blowing their way through doors and walls. For the first couple of days after the mission it appeared the public was allowed to wander around the compound and were only restricted from the innermost courtyard. Lots of people took photos. I never saw a photo of a hole blown into a wall nor did I see any apparent damage to the doors. Visible evidence of the assault would have been of great interest and no one took a photo? Thus, I'd say the New Yorker and other articles article is wrong on that detail. The assault team likely found the inner doors were unlocked and/or scaled the walls to get into the compound and to move between the walled off sections of the compound.

 There are other concerns about the New Yorker article in that it switches from great detail which appears to build credibility and the impression that this is an "inside account" to an absence of information on basic things such as what team #1 was doing immediately after they landed. I suspect the entire thing was spun together out of speculative opinions by others. Unfortunately, many of the articles about this incident have similar issues. |talk