Does a real photo show then-President George W. Bush, then-Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Osama bin Laden sitting together? No, that's not true: The image is an edited version of a photo taken at the Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden was edited into the original photo, replacing then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, while then-Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White is misidentified as Cheney.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @GuidoZaccaglino account on X on Oct. 12, 2026. It read:
•@grok•
Is this a real photo of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bin Laden?
•YES or NO•
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @GuidoZaccaglino on X.)
Original photo
The image above is an edited and low-resolution photo from a Pentagon meeting the day after 9/11. Lead Stories found the original (archived here) on the Department of Defense (DoD) website. This is what the photo looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: photo by Helene C. Stikkel/DoD.)
It included this caption:
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (second from left) introduces his staff members to President George W. Bush at their Pentagon meeting on Sept. 12, 2001. Counterclockwise from Rumsfeld is Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton, U.S. Army, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza [sic] Rice. Bush inspected the site of the terrorist attack on the building to thank the men and women who assisted in containing the fires and rescuing victims.
Lead Stories cropped the original version of the photo to approximately match the edited, low-res version in which bin Laden appears. The images are stacked below (original on top and edited below):
(Image sources: photo by Helene C. Stikkel/DoD and post by @GuidoZaccaglino on X.)
Lead Stories found another photo of the same meeting but from a different angle on the DoD website (archived here). It shows the same people from the other side of the table:
(Image source: photo by DoD.)
The alternative-angle photo included this caption:
President Bush meets with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his staff at the Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001. From left to right is Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bush, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza [sic] Rice. Bush inspected the site of the terrorist attack on the building to thank the men and women who assisted in containing the fires and rescuing victims.
Neither caption mentions Cheney.
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from established news outlets using the search terms: "Bush," "Cheney," "Rumsfeld," "Bin Laden" and "photo."
