Book: Obama had hoped to try bin Laden

WASHINGTON -- A new book says President Barack Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on trial, showing the U.S. commitment to due process under law if the al-Qaida leader had surrendered during a raid in Pakistan last year.

In "The Finish," journalist Mark Bowden quotes Obama as saying he thought he would be in a strong political position to argue in favor of giving bin Laden the full rights of a criminal defendant if bin Laden went on trial for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.

But Bowden says Obama expected bin Laden to go down fighting. Navy SEALs raided bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 and killed the terrorist leader.

The Associated Press purchased a copy of "The Finish," which is due to come out Oct. 16, a few weeks before the presidential election. The revelation that Obama hoped to capture and prosecute bin Laden may provide political fodder for Republicans who have criticized the administration for trying to bring terrorists from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and overseas to trials in U.S. courts.

"Frankly, my belief was, if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaida, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr," Obama is quoted saying to Bowden.

Obama believed that affording terrorists "the full rights of criminal defendants would showcase America's commitment to justice for even the worst of the worst," Bowden writes. Obama had expressed similar views as a presidential candidate.

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said he would have been "totally opposed" to a trial. "To give him a forum and all the constitutional protections that a U.S. citizen would receive when he was clearly a war criminal is part of the defensive and apologetic attitude" of the Obama administration, King said yesterday.

U.S. officials have said the Navy team was ordered to capture bin Laden if he surrendered or kill him if he threatened them. Bowden asserts that the SEALs could have taken bin Laden alive but had no intention of doing so.

In a separate account of the raid published last month, a member of the Navy team, Matt Bissonnette, wrote that the SEALS climbed a stairway inside the compound and opened fire when bin Laden poked his head around a doorway. Bissonnette wrote that bin Laden's hands were concealed and the SEALS presumed he was armed, so they shot him.