CIA Relives Osama Bin Laden Raid With 'Live' Tweets

The nation's most clandestine and enigmatic agency is doing something entirely enigmatic and not at all clandestine today: The Central Intelligence Agency is "live-tweeting" the 2011 raid on the Abbottabad compound of Osama Bin Laden.

Setting aside for a moment that you can't really live-tweet something that happened five years ago, the agency's Twitter feed set off a collective global internet head-scratching Sunday. Had the CIA been hacked? Is this football-spiking of the assassination of one of the world's most notorious terrorists inappropriate, no matter who the bad guy?

And, really, "Shouldn't the @cia call its anniversary tweeting of the Osama Bin Laden raid a 'dead-tweet' instead of a 'live-tweet'?" asked Politico's Jack Shafer, in a missive of his own.

The agency offered little explanation beyond the hashtag #UBLRaid and a 140-character march through history. "We will tweet the raid as if it were happening today," came the first tweet, at 1:30 p.m. A few minutes later, " @POTUS , DCIA Panetta, & JSOC commander Admiral McRaven approve execution of op in Abbottabad. #UBLRaid ." And 25 minutes after that, "Helicopters depart from Afghanistan for compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan #UBLRaid .'"

The feed isn't exactly riveting, so far. Partly because we know how the story ends and partly because there've been only four tweets over a two-hour time span. The latest, at 3:30 p.m., included "3:30 pm EDT - 2 helicopters descend on compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 1 crashes, but assault continues without delay or injury #UBLRaid " and then the well-circulated photo of the situation room, depicting a stern-faced President Obama and his cabinet in the situation room, watching the raid on satellite feed.

For an agency whose social media manager is known as "Khaleesi" by others in her department, the unusual decision to reminisce in this way might not come as a surprise. But on Twitter, the reaction was mixed, at best.

"CIA doing a rendition of their 'greatest hits' for May Day," tweeted @Nellalou. "Tacky af. The Imperium congratulates itself."

Added @CillianSheridan: "Waiting for the CIA to give us the 'one of my mates took my phone and was tweeting from my account.' "