概要:据英国《每日邮报》报道,美国总统奥巴马的前私人助理雷吉·拉夫日前爆料称,美军在巴基斯坦猎杀“基地”组织头领本·拉登时,奥巴马曾和他躲到一边打扑克。
拉夫回忆说,当时很多人都在战况室里,奥巴马也一样,但他们受不了一直呆在房间里观看整个追捕过程,于是他和奥巴马总统、白宫摄影师皮特·苏扎、奥巴马另一名助理马文·尼科森一起躲到餐厅打起了扑克。
今年32岁的拉夫在奥巴马还是参议员时就担任他的私人助理,他在2011年底离开白宫到宾州大学沃顿商学院读书。
拉夫还回忆说,2008年总统大选时,奥巴马阵营一度坏消息不断,以至于大家最后一致同意,只谈体育,不谈新闻报道。“只要我们不是在选举活动中,我们就绝不谈政治。”
President Obama played cards during the bin Laden raid says his longtime aide Reggie Love
President Obama's longtime aide Reggie Love says he and the president played cards during part of the raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
'Most people were like down in the Situation Room and [President Obama] was like, "I’m not going to be down there, I can’t watch this entire thing,"' Love recalled of the May 2011 raid during a forum hosted by the D.C.-based Artists & Athletes Alliance in Los Angeles last month.
He said that he and the president, along with White House photographer Pete Souza and Obama aide Marvin Nicholson, gathered in the private dining room to play a couple rounds of cards.
'We must have played 15 games of spades,' Love said.
Obama has previously said that he watched the raid in real time in the Situation Room with members of his national security team. It's not clear when he stepped away to play cards.
'This was the longest 40 minutes of my life,' the president told NBC News a year after the raid, referring to the amount of time the Navy SEALs had to complete their mission after landing at the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad.
Love, 32, has worked for Obama as a personal assistant since the president was a junior senator. He was invited to the forum last month to reflect on his time as one of the president's closest aides. The Weekly Standard first reported on his remarks.
Love left his position at the White House at the end of 2011 to complete his Master of Business Administration degree at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
He said that during the 2008 campaign, the news was always so negative regarding Obama's campaign so 'We came up with this rule - there's like no MSNBC, no CNN - only sports.'
'If we're not at a campaign event, no politics talk,' he recalled.
Asked about what he learned from his time working for the president, he said‘The thing I learned the most from working with the president, I think, [is] empathy.' |
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