- Ben Smith, former SEAL, says: 'It is my civic duty to tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy. It will get Americans killed.'
- Video released by OPSEC - short for Operational Security - which claims to be nonpartisan
A group of former U.S. Navy SEALs, other Special Forces troops and CIA operatives is to launch a national campaign to tell Barack Obama: ‘Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden, America did.’
The group, calling itself OPSEC, short for Operational Security, will also highlight the slew of national security leaks from the Obama administration, which Mitt Romney has also focused on.
And in May, former and serving SEALS told MailOnline of their dismay that Obama had begun to use the killing of the terror mastermind to his own political advantage.
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Not in my name: Navy SEAL Ben Smith speaks out against the Obama administration's leaking of classified material
Spreading the message: OPSEC insists it is nonpartisan and not connected to any presidential campaign or political party
'Intelligence and Special Operations members are angry and frustrated at how our work has been used for political advantage by officials across government, including President Obama himself who bears special responsibility as Commander in Chief,' Scott Taylor, chairman of OPSEC and a former SEAL, told Reuters.
'We want the American people to understand the cost of these leaks and politicization both on those who serve and on our national security and to hold those in positions of leadership accountable if it doesn’t stop.'
Last month, Ryan Zinke, a retired SEAL commander and Republican state senator, launched a new super PAC to run ads in swing states against Obama.
In 2004, the famous Swift Boat ads of 2004 cast doubt on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam service and could well have cost him the White House.
Savvy: Obama pictured having breakfast today with military veterans in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Former Navy SEALs are to launch a national
campaign criticizing him for using their work to his political
advantage
Leaders of the OPSEC insist it is nonpartisan and not connected to any presidential campaign or political party.
Its opening attack on Obama is a 22-minute film. In it, Ben Smith, a former SEAL, says: 'Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden, America did. The work that the American military has done killed Osama bin Laden. You did not.
'As a citizen, it is my civic duty to tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy. It will get Americans killed.'
MailOnline was the first to report dissatisfaction among SEALs with what they saw as Obama's unseemly attempts to highlight his own role in the death of bin Laden.
Zinke was among those interviewed.
Sacrifice: Debbie Lee (left) speaks on the OPSEC video. Her son Marc Alan Lee (right, with his mother) was the first Navy SEAL killed in Iraq
Their dismay was triggered by an Obama campaign ad entitled 'One Chance'. In it President Bill Clinton was featured saying that Obama took 'the harder and the more honorable path' in ordering that bin Laden be killed. The words 'Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?' were then displayed.
The White House also marked the first anniversary of the SEAL Team Six raid that killed bin Laden inside his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan with a series of briefings and an NBC interview in the Situation Room designed to highlight the 'gutsy call' made by Obama.
In a press conference, Obama trumpeted his personal role and implied that Romney, who in 2008 expressed reservations about the wisdom of sending troops into Pakistan, would have let bin Laden live.
Critical: a group of former Navy SEALs has slated Obama for national
security leaks including information surrounding the death of Osama bin
Laden
Compromised: The video released by a group of military experts believes that the assassination of Osama bin Laden (left) was compromised by the speed in which President Obama (right) announced it to the country
'I said that I'd go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did,' Mr Obama said. 'If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they'd do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it.'
Obama has sought to capitalise on his foreign policy record on the stump, emphasising the death of bin Laden, the end of the Iraq war and his plans to pull troops out of Afghanistan.
But Romney and other Republicans have pointed to media stories reports about secret drone attacks, informers within al Qaeda and cyber warfare attacks against Iran that have helped boost image as a strong leader.
Combat: The new video suggests that Obama is fighting personal political battles using the work of the U.S. military
Intelligence: Retired CIA officer Dave LaMorte (left) and operative Simon (right), who could not reveal his identity, spoke of the dangers that the American military were being placed in because of government leaks
Scott Taylor, president of Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Incorporated and a former SEAL who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for a congressional seat in Virginia in 2010, said his group was a 'watchdog organisation' but added that the Obama administration 'has certainly leaked more than others'.
Fred Rustmann, a former CIA case and now OPSEC spokesman, said its focus on leaks was 'not a partisan concern' but the Obama administration had been leaking ‘to help this guy get re-elected, at the expense of peoples' lives', adding: 'We want to see that they don't do this again.'
The Obama administration is pointing to a CNN interview last month in which Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the raid, said: 'At the end of the day, make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions, that was instrumental in the planning process, because I pitched every plan to him.'
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