9/11 Museum Is Now Showing the Shirt Worn by a SEAL in Bin Laden Raid
Days ahead of the 13th anniversary of the attacks, the National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum has unveiled two additions to their collection: the dusty, tan shirt worn by a member of SEAL Team Six during the raid that took out Osama bin Laden and a commemorative coin given to "Maya," the CIA operative who served as the basis for Jessica Chastain's character in Zero Dark Thirty.
The museum describes their new trophies, which will join an existing display that includes a brick taken from Bin Laden's compound, in a press release:
The shirt has an American flag patch on the sleeve colored black and brown. The flag is backwards, as done on such military shirts in a symbolic gesture referencing the era when the flag-bearer led soldiers behind him on the charge to battle.
The exhibition is also comprised of a so-called challenge coin, which was donated by "Maya," the alias for the CIA operative who pursued bin Laden, and a brick recovered from the compound where the al-Qaeda leader was killed... The challenge coin was created to commemorate the successful operation that eliminated bin Laden. One side of the coin is marked "May 1, 2011," the U.S. date when the operation occurred. The other side shows a red "X" mark.
The museum's president, Joe Daniels, acknowledged that these new items might rouse a different set of emotions in visitors than the mangled steal beams and ashen helmets. But, he stands by his decision to include them. "I think most people will believe it belongs there. It is part of the story, whatever you think of its symbolism or its meaning," he says.
[Photo Credit: AP Images]