Will the new Bin Laden book break the code of silence among the SEALs?

The reason for the shock and outrage is that inside the world of the SEALs—the Navy’s premier Sea, Air and Land Team force that conducts sensitive missions that are rarely disclosed to the public—talking out of turn is almost never done. While other elements of the U.S. intelligence community has been wracked by leaks from insiders and turncoats like ex-CIA officer Philip Agee, the SEALs throughout their 51-year history have avoided such embarrassing disclosures. This is because the elite officers who comprise the secret SEAL Team Six practice a Mafia-like code of Omerta. In the case of the handful of books written about the SEALs, anything published was reviewed by the Pentagon to scrub the texts of any classified information…

A spokeswoman for the publisher of the book, Penguin Imprint, Dutton, said the book was vetted by a former special-operations attorney provided to the publishing house by the author. It was not, however, reviewed by the military, according to Pentagon spokesmen.

This is important, according to Don Mann, a former member of SEAL Team Six and the author of the book Inside SEAL Team Six, because any kind of information to identify the people in the team, the location of its compound, or any other details could be used by terrorists to target the families of the SEALs.