In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his re-election victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete or a lie.

This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media and still leaves many difficult questions unanswered concerning Barack Obama’s presidency as well as the success of the international diplomacy conducted by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.