Posted on 05/11/2015 7:44:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is vigorously defending a controversial new story that claims the White House lied about crucial details of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Hersh's story, published in the London Review of Books on May 10, alleges that the US government misled the public about many of the details surrounding the 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abottabad, Pakistan.
Relying largely on a single anonymous source, described only as a retired senior US intelligence official, Hersh claims that Pakistani intelligence officials were aware of and actively hiding bin Laden.
He claims that the intelligence tip that led the CIA to bin Laden didn't come from tracking the Al Qaeda leader's network of couriers, but from a Pakistani intelligence official who walked into the US embassy in Islamabad and received most of a $25 million in exchange for divulging bin Laden's location.
During a contentious interview on CNN on Monday, Hersh defended his story.
"I'm not out on a limb on this," Hersh said.
"Think about this: a team of SEALS — and our SEALs are the best, there is no question — 24, 25 guys go in to the middle of Pakistan, take out a guy with no air cover, no protection, no security. Are you kidding me?" Hersh said.
CNN host Chris Cuomo remained skeptical of Hersh throughout the interview, questioning him on the motivations of the Pakistanis in his account.
"Look, I don't mean to tell you the trade, you've been doing it at such a high level for such a long time," Cuomo said.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I just saw ‘white house is lying’ in title and automatically agreed! Now have to go back and read article!
I don’t care which version of the story is true. This is about nothing except maybe Hersh getting into the news.
From Zero Hedge:
Among the many allegations of Hersh’s report are that:
* bin Laden had been a prisoner of the Pakistan intelligence at the Abbottabad compound since 2006 (something revealed previously in “Osama bin Laden ‘protected by Pakistan in return for Saudi cash”)
* that the two most senior Pakistani military leaders knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms;
* that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US,
* and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.
I just watched this interview online. Seems credible.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/11/politics/seymour-hersh-obama-bin-laden-raid-lied/
I disagree.
This story has a lot of legitimacy.
And if true, it has a lot of implication on our relationship with Pakistan.
“many other aspects of the administration’s account were false”
Like the fact that they shot him and threw his corpse in the ocean instead of locking him away in a secret prison and interrogating him for the rest of his life?
Why bring this up now ? something smells
RE: locking him away in a secret prison and interrogating him for the rest of his life?
So, what ever happened to “Bin Ladin is dead and GM is alive?”
RE: Why bring this up now ?
If not now, when?
Pakistan has never been a particularly reliable partner, and especially uncertain since Al Qaeda made a de facto alliance with some of the higher-ranking Pakistani army generals. High US officials have called again and again for a regime change there, yet when they have one, it is almost always because of some sinister criminal cabal getting into a distance-and-direction urination contest with another sinister criminal cabal. Pakistan is a notoriously ungovernable country, even on the best of days, and the territory is in a state of anarchy only slightly more organized than Afghanistan.
I wonder too. Even if certain details of the mission are not clear, the mission succeed in taking out Bin Laden. So why go back and talk about this now? Wonder what they aren’t telling us yet.
Seymour Hersh is a liar and a snake. Other than that I have no problem with the story.
Bet it's Panetta who is spilling the beans on Obama.
Given the situation, “prisoner” may be a rather malleable term. Given age & notoriety, he really couldn’t go anywhere whether anyone let him or not. Those who did know he was there undoubtedly were, um, suitably funded to facilitate preserving his reclusive conditions. It’s not like he had a safe full of cash to fund the compound’s operations, somebody had to know of his financial resources and maintain them; whoever that was surely made arrangements to ensure he stayed there, and those nearby who might know were persuaded to remain quiet, and they in turn ensured OBL stayed within his walls.
The points made satisfy the recurring & bewildered questions of the time regarding “how could someone as high-profile as OBL live amid the capital of Pakistani military intelligence without being noticed?” and “how could helicopters, even ‘stealth’ ones, get that far in & out without being noticed (undeniable crash aside)?” and “did they really do ALL that, with 100% certainty (a point clearly made in _No_Easy_Day_), based on observing one courier?”. Answers: “money”, “strings pulled”, and “plausibly deniable betrayal; $20M rewards work.”
I would still like to see Osama’s death certificate.
A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. ‘The Saudis didn’t want bin Laden’s presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden’s imprisonment from a walk-in was not the worst thing.’
>”Think about this: a team of SEALS — and our SEALs are the best, there is no question — 24, 25 guys go in to the middle of Pakistan, take out a guy with no air cover, no protection, no security. Are you kidding me?” Hersh said.
Now find out why they’re dead.
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