On May 1, American commandos helicoptered into Pakistan and killed an unarmed Osama bin Laden, also killing three other men and one woman in his compound, and wounding at least one other woman. (Only one of the men, according to the Obama administration, had fired at the Americans.)

Now, for just $19.95 plus $7.95 shipping, you can commemorate the events of that day with a special brass, gold-plated "Justice Coin." These ads -- which are apparently real -- have been running on various cable channels:

It's a project of Greenberg Direct, which says that a portion of sales is being donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (also a favorite of Glenn Beck's). I've asked the company how much of the profits are going to charity and I'll update this post if I hear back.

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"It's always wrong, that's obvious, but I'm rolling my eyes at all the attention she'll get."

While covering the Egyptian protests back in February, CBS reporter Lara Logan was separated from her crew and endured a horrifying sexual and physical assault. And when the news filtered out from Tahrir Square, New York University Center for Law and Security fellow Nir Rosen fired off a torrent of scathing tweets about the attack, admitting "She's so bad that I ran out of sympathy for her," and adding "it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson [Cooper] too." In the wake a furious backlash, Rosen swiftly deleted the tweets, apologized for his words, and resigned from NYU. Today, he's back on Twitter after a brief sabbatical, but as he wrote for Salon last winter, "with 480 characters I undid a long career."

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In a response late Monday to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group seeking the imagery, Justice Department attorneys said the CIA has located 52 photographs and video recordings. But they argued the images of the deceased bin Laden are classified and are being withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military.

The Justice Department has asked the court to dismiss Judicial Watch's lawsuit because the records the group wants are "wholly exempt from disclosure," according to the filing.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, accused the Obama administration of making a "political decision" to keep the bin Laden imagery secret. "We shouldn't throw out our transparency laws because complying with them might offend terrorists," Fitton said in a statement. "The historical record of Osama bin Laden's death should be released to the American people as the law requires."

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A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them," Eric Margolis writes. "'Bleeding the U.S.,' in his words." The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden's trap... Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction... may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States" -- particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

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The piece, trumpeted as the most detailed account to date of the May 1 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was an instant hit. "Got the chills half dozen times reading @NewYorker killing bin Laden tick tock... exquisite journalism," tweeted the digital director of the PBS show Frontline.  The author, freelancer Nicholas Schmidle, was quickly featured on the Charlie Rose show, an influential determiner of "chattering class" opinion. Other news outlets rushed to praise the story as "exhaustive," "utterly compelling," and on and on.

To be sure, it is the kind of granular, heroic story that the public loves, that generates follow-up bestsellers and movie options. The takedown even has a Hollywood-esque code name: "Operation Neptune's Spear."

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Wednesday, for instance, U.S. officials told us via The Washington Post that Al-Qaida was on the verge of being totally wiped out. The comments echoed earlier ones from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the former C.I.A. director, who earlier said that only a couple dozen more Al-Qaida militants needed to be killed before the war was over.

Last week the officials were talking to the Wall Street Journal. They told the paper that Al-Qaida would likely be shifting the focus of its attacks to Western targets outside of the United States. They said this was because it had become too difficult for them to strike inside the United States.

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Hidden from view, standing just outside the frame of that now-famous photograph was a career CIA analyst. In the hunt for the world's most-wanted terrorist, there may have been no one more important. His job for nearly a decade was finding the al-Qaida leader.

The analyst was the first to put in writing last summer that the CIA might have a legitimate lead on finding bin Laden. He oversaw the collection of clues that led the agency to a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His was among the most confident voices telling Obama that bin Laden was probably behind those walls.

The CIA will not permit him to speak with reporters. But interviews with former and current U.S. intelligence officials reveal a story of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the greatest counterterrorism success in the history of the CIA. Nearly all the officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or because they did not want their names linked to the bin Laden operation.

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Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, two other widows and eight of bin Laden's children were detained following the May 2 U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida chief in the northwestern Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

A Pakistani security official said Friday that Pakistan has granted Abdullfattah permission to go home. An official at the Yemeni embassy in Islamabad confirmed an agreement had been reached on her deportation.

Both officials requested anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity.

The security official says Abdullfattah has fully recovered from a bullet that struck her leg during the raid.

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Faced with these challenges, bin Laden, who hated the United States and decried capitalism, considered a most American of business strategies. Like Blackwater, ValuJet and Philip Morris, perhaps what al-Qaida really needed was a fresh start under a new name.

The problem with the name al-Qaida, bin Laden wrote in a letter recovered from his compound in Pakistan, was that it lacked a religious element, something to convince Muslims worldwide that they are in a holy war with America.

Maybe something like Taifat al-Tawhed Wal-Jihad, meaning Monotheism and Jihad Group, would do the trick, he wrote. Or Jama'at I'Adat al-Khilafat al-Rashida, meaning Restoration of the Caliphate Group.

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In a story posted on the Times website, senior American officials and others briefed on the findings said the discovery indicates bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside Pakistan.

It raises questions about whether the group and others helped shelter and support the al-Qaida leader on behalf of Pakistan's spy agency.

The officials and analysts told the Times that Pakistan's intelligence agency had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years.

In tracing the calls on the cellphone, U.S. analysts have determined that Harakat commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the senior American officials said. One said they had met. The officials added that the contacts were not necessarily about bin Laden and that there was no "smoking gun" showing that Pakistan's spy agency had protected bin Laden.

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The order was made public Friday, more than six weeks after bin Laden was killed by the U.S. military in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan. Such requests are procedural and routine in case where defendants named in indictment die.

The al-Qaida leader was indicted in June 1998 in federal court in Manhattan on charges related to the terrorist attacks on the two U.S. embassies in Africa. It's the only federal indictment to charge him.

The charges included conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens, conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and use of a weapon of mass destruction.

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Who is he? Al-Zawahri was born into a family of wealthy doctors and religious scholars in Cairo, but from a very young age became involved in Islamist activism. Al-Jazeera notes in a detailed profile that he "was reportedly arrested as young as 15 for being a member of the then-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood." al-Zawairi met Bin Laden in Saudi Arabia in 1986 and helped him found al-Qaida in the Pakistani city of Peshawar two years later.

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Ayman al-Zawahri, who turns 60 on Sunday, has long brought ideological fire, tactics and organizational skills to al-Qaida. The surgeon by training was first behind the use of the suicide bombings and independent terror cells that have become the network's trademarks.

He is believed to be living somewhere near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and has appeared in dozens of videos and audiotapes in recent years, increasingly becoming the face of al-Qaida as bin Laden kept a lower profile.

Al-Zawahri had been considered the most likely successor because of his long-time collaboration with bin Laden, and analysts had said that few were likely to challenge the al-Qaida deputy leader for the top spot.

He and bin Laden first crossed paths in the late 1980s in the caves of Afghanistan, where al-Zawahri reportedly provided medical treatment to bin Laden and other Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces. Their alliance would develop years later into the terror network blamed for America's worst terror attack in its history.

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While Gates did not directly confirm the reports, he is telling senators that "most governments lie to each other," sometimes they arrest people, and sometimes they spy on us. He says it's the "real world we deal with."

Gates was responding to sharp questions from Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy during a Capitol Hill hearing.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the U.S. is struggling to rebuild its badly broken relationship with Pakistan.

A Western official in Pakistan has confirmed that five Pakistanis were arrested by Pakistan's top intelligence service.

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The Times, in a story posted on its website late Tuesday, said Pakistan detained five CIA informants, including a Pakistani army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in the weeks before the raid. The fate of the CIA informants who were arrested was unclear.

U.S.-Pakistani relations have been strained, but a CIA spokeswoman and Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. told the newspaper the two countries continue to fight against terrorism.

The ambassador said it was not appropriate to reveal details now.

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The New York Times, which first reported the arrests of five Pakistani informants Tuesday, said an army major was detained who copied license plates of cars visiting the al-Qaida chief's compound in Pakistan in the weeks before the raid.

A Western official in Pakistan confirmed that five Pakistanis who fed information to the CIA before the May 2 operation were arrested by Pakistan's top intelligence service.

But Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied an army major was arrested, saying the report was "false and totally baseless." Neither the army nor Pakistan's spy agency would confirm or deny the overall report about the detentions.

The group of detained Pakistanis included the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, an army town not far from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, a U.S. official said. The owner was detained along with a "handful" of other Pakistanis, said the official.

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Shortly after the CIA decided to close the secret prisons, the U.S. intelligence agency returned al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul in 2006 to his native Pakistan, which had been demanding his release since his capture about two years earlier.

Pakistan held Ghul for at least a year before he was released, eventually making his way back to al-Qaida to help with operations against the U.S., the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because details about Ghul's case remain classified.

Pakistan's decision to free Ghul, a midlevel al-Qaida operative, is yet another troubling revelation in a time when the U.S. is rethinking its relationship with the Pakistan and whether it can be a trusted ally in the war on terror. Members of Congress have talked about ending aid to Pakistan after bin Laden was found inside Pakistan, hiding out in an urban area not far from a military garrison. Last week, CIA Director Leon Panetta confronted Pakistan's intelligence service about tipping off militants running bomb factories aimed at killing U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

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Mueller made the comments Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee where he got a favorable reception from Republicans and Democrats who are considering legislation that would extend his job for up to two more years, a proposal initiated by President Barack Obama.

Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expressed confidence that Congress would agree to the extension. A co-sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said continuity in the arenas of national security and counter-terrorism is important, especially in light of increased threats.

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Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's likely next leader and long considered its operational head, heaped praise on bin Laden, killed in the May 2 U.S. raid in Pakistan.

Al-Zawahri, who is believed to be operating from somewhere near the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, also blasted the United States for burying bin Laden at sea and urged the Pakistani people to rise against the country's military rulers and politicians, describing them as "traitors."

Al-Zawahri appeared in a white Arab robe and turban, a Kalashnikov at his side, in a 28-minute video posted on militant websites on Thursday.

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