Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a former congressman and ex-chair of the House intelligence committee, claimed in a recent fundraising email that he saw Osama bin Laden's dead body with his own eyes. However, Rogers was not present at the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed on 1 May 2011, nor was he in the White House Situation Room during the operation. Instead, as he later told reporters, he was at home in Washington DC, where he was informed about the raid in a phone call from Leon Panetta, then the CIA director.
Fundraising email claims and reality
In the email, Rogers wrote: "When I served as a US army officer and an FBI special agent, I swore a sacred oath to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I dedicated my life to keeping our families safe – working in the shadows, hunting down terrorists, and standing on the frontlines of our national security." He then added, in bold: "I saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with my own eyes, knowing that together, we had delivered justice for America."
The email was first reported by Azi Paybarah, a former Washington Post reporter now with Straight Arrow News, who shared a screenshot online. Paybarah suggested that Rogers was likely referring to the fact that he was one of a select few US officials who had seen a photograph of bin Laden's dead body. The Rogers campaign did not respond to requests to explain the claim.
Rogers' past statements and political context
Days after the raid, Rogers said the photograph he had seen made it clear bin Laden was dead, but he supported Obama's decision not to release the graphic images. "The risks of release outweigh the benefits," Rogers said in a statement at the time. "Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East."
In the years since, Rogers has frequently referred to his role as a congressman who helped provide funds for US intelligence agencies in vague terms that seemed to exaggerate his role. Since Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim doctor and former public health official, became his opponent in the Senate race, Rogers has repeatedly cited his own role in the US war on Islamist terrorism.
False statement about El-Sayed
Rogers said the night El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination: "Abdul doesn’t represent a vision for the future. He’s leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism. I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11."
A New York Times factcheck pointed out that the second part of Rogers' statement was false: it was not El-Sayed, but one of his supporters, the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that America deserved 9/11, before retracting and apologizing for that statement seven years before he endorsed El-Sayed. El-Sayed has clearly denounced the 9/11 attacks for years. In a recollection of that day written in 2021, El-Sayed wrote: "I watched terrorists with names like mine attack my country in the name of my faith. Three thousand of my fellow Americans were killed in the craven terrorist attacks in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. The attack devastated me."
