If You Hunted Osama, Would You Brag to the Press About It? I'd Keep that Shit a Secret

WASHINGTON - On the clear September morning when the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City, Edina native Mike Hurley was working a desk job in the basement of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., one of the potential targets of the attacks. Almost immediately, he decided to join the hunt for Osama bin Laden and volunteered for Afghanistan. Within months, Hurley found himself in a remote tribal area packing body armor, an M-4 rifle and an Edina High School cap. Outside Gardez, near the border with Pakistan, he was one of 25 Americans representing special forces and the CIA in a ceremony burying part of the steel wreckage. The hunt for Bin Laden was on. Hurley would do three classified deployments to Afghanistan and serve as a senior staffer on the commission that studied the terrorist attacks.

Mike Hurley has to be the most scared guy in America, right? Like, what the hell was he thinking here, releasing his name...why not just throw out your cellphone number and twitter handle too, bro?  No way in hell I'd be running around bragging about this. Yea its cool as shit and I'd be itching to tell people, but the fear of having my capa-detated is just too much.

In all seriousness though, it was probably a tough decision for him.  The whole thing is one big catch 22, damned if he did, a loser if he didn't.  Yea now he's got to worry about every Tom, Dick, and Mohammed waging jihad on his house or SUV, but on the other hand if he'd just kept quiet he'd have never been able to cash in on the fame that comes with hunting Osama. All his family members, friends and neighbors would still just assume that Mike went about his days reporting to whatever boring ass cover job the CIA gave him, just thinking he was a standard 9-5er. That would suck.  The guy probably slaves away 16 hours a day in some Pentagaon basement room, only coming up for fresh air and to scarf down some Buffalo Wild Wings.  There's only so many stories this guys got, so ultimately no, I can't blame him for spilling his guts on this one.