NYT Magazine digs into claims the story of Osama bin Laden raid was mythologized

Was the story of Osama bin Laden’s death yet another example of American mythmaking? Had [Mark] Bowden [who literally wrote the book on the raid] and, for that matter, all of us been seduced by a narrative that was manufactured expressly for our benefit? Or were these questions themselves just paranoid?

‘‘The story stunk from Day 1,’’ [Seymour] Hersh told me. It was a miserably hot summer day in Washington, and we were sitting in his office, a two-room suite in an anonymous office complex near Dupont Circle, where Hersh works alone. There’s no nameplate on the door; the walls of the anteroom are crowded with journalism awards. ‘‘I have a lot of fun here,’’ he said, amid the clutter of cardboard boxes and precariously stacked books. ‘‘I can do whatever I want.’’