Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011
Sohaib Athar Live-Tweets bin Laden Raid
In early May, Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual), an IT consultant, began to tweet about the sounds of helicopters and blasts from his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He had no idea that he was logging history. He learned some nine hours later that he had inadvertently live-tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound by SEAL Team 6, which led to the al-Qaeda leader's death. The attention around Athar swelled, and he clarified, "I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That's all." His humility did little to fend off attention as news outlets swarmed him with interview requests in the days following his tweets, a serendipitous window into a top-secret event.