Seymour Hersh blows the lid off the official fable of the bin Laden execution

I knew the official account stunk from the get go.

Nothing but a bunch of Wag the Dog nonsense.

This is a link to the original story:

The Killing of Osama bin Laden

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha 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.

‘When your version comes out – if you do it – people in Pakistan will be tremendously grateful,’ Durrani told me. ‘For a long time people have stopped trusting what comes out about bin Laden from the official mouths. There will be some negative political comment and some anger, but people like to be told the truth, and what you’ve told me is essentially what I have heard from former colleagues who have been on a fact-finding mission since this episode.’ As a former ISI head, he said, he had been told shortly after the raid by ‘people in the “strategic community” who would know’ that there had been an informant who had alerted the US to bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, and that after his killing the US’s betrayed promises left Kayani and Pasha exposed.

The major US source for the account that follows is a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. He also was privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid, and to the various after-action reports. Two other US sources, who had access to corroborating information, have been longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command. I also received information from inside Pakistan about widespread dismay among the senior ISI and military leadership – echoed later by Durrani – over Obama’s decision to go public immediately with news of bin Laden’s death. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Much more at link...

Why Hersh’s Account Is Credible and Why I Believe It Is Correct
Michael S. Rozeff

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/why-hershs-account-is-credible-and-why-i-believe-it-is-correct/#more-547850

The White House denies the accuracy of Hersh’s expose of the real nature of the bin Laden murder. The denial is so far very sketchy, offering only a few assertions and no facts that would show that its story is correct and Hersh’s account false.

Hersh’s account, based heavily on an intelligence source, is credible, however. One reason is that it is an account that EXPLAINS a number of otherwise inexplicable facts; and its explanation is not strained or far-fetched. Furthermore, as shown below, important features of his account agree with conclusions I reached within a few days of bin Laden’s death that were presented in this blog. By contrast, the White House explanation has never explained everything satisfactorily. It did the opposite. It left many critical questions unanswered, and a good many of these questions were raised in my blogs, and presumably in those of others, at the time when bin Laden was killed

At the time, on May 2, 2011, I raised these questions in this blog:

“If bin Laden had actually been found, why would he be killed and not captured? Why wouldn’t he become a prime target for interrogation? Why make him a dead martyr? Wouldn’t it potentially save lives to talk to the man?”

The White House story never addressed these questions except by making up stories that the killers acted in self-defense. There was never any evidence presented, such as photographs of the killed defenders, to back this up. I asked “Is there video of the attack, outside and inside? There must be for such an important event. Where is it? Why has it been not revealed yet? Where is the video of bin Laden’s body and those of his guards?”

Bin Laden was supposedly shot through the head by one early account. I asked “Were the men who invaded that compound, if they did invade it, threatened so that they had to shoot and kill bin Laden? Does the head wound suggest such a struggle, or does it suggest an execution by gunshot?”

I asked “Why in the world was bin Laden’s body (assuming it was his) dumped into the ocean? Anyone who knows anything knows that this is extremely suspicious and can only raise unending questions.”

And this: “The body should have been on display. Many reporters and witnesses should have been called in. Where are the witnesses? Are there at least five independent persons who can visually verify the event? Who did these DNA tests? How were they conducted? Where are the independent verifications of that? Was DNA of bin Laden stored away somewhere? Why aren’t these details reported in full? Why is the reporting so skimpy?”

Hersh’s report provides convincing and sensible explanations of all of these questions.

Shortly thereafter, I wrote a second blog. The available accounts already suggested that bin Laden had been executed, killed summarily. The White House stories, whatever lies they contained, could not cover up certain facts even at that time. A CNN report led me to write “If the CNN news report is accurate, then the operation had the intent of killing bin Laden, not taking him alive. There could not have been much if any resistance from the 4 people in the compound, and bin Laden, we are told, was shot twice in the head.” I concluded that Obama had had bin Laden executed and any resistance was minimal.

The White House even at that time provided extremely lame reasons for bin Laden’s murder. See here. I addressed that in another blog. I didn’t tear apart their explanations as much as they deserved, however. They made no sense, however. The same U.S. government that demanded that the Taliban turn bin Laden over to them, to follow legal procedures, turned right around and, when given the opportunity to capture him in an allied country (Pakistan), killed him instead. The White House could never explain this. They said they didn’t want to risk the lives of the team they sent to do the job. This is a ridiculous explanation. They risked the lives of 10,000 times that many men trying to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan. And isn’t what these exceptional American heroes are paid to do, want to do, volunteer to do and are trained to do? The truth is there was no serious risk because they had solid information supplied by the ISI about the compound and its occupants. They were in friendly territory besides.

My next blog on this used a Reuters report in which an American national security official said that the team had a kill order: “This was a kill operation.”

Within 2 days, we got revised reports and I blogged on those. My lead line was “Reliable news reports inform us today that bin Laden did not fire any weapon at anyone and that he did not use his wife or a woman as a human shield. The White House changed its stories that were put out by some officials.” I cite the supporting sources in that blog.

In other words, certain important features of the new Hersh account were already largely in our grasp a mere 2 days after bin Laden was assassinated. We already knew that the White House was lying about self-defense of the SEAL team. We knew that the story about dumping the body made no sense. We knew that it was implausible for bin Laden to have been “hiding” under the noses of the ISI. It makes perfect sense that they were hiding him and using him for their own purposes. We knew that the SEAL team could not have crossed into Pakistan without being detected, unless they were allowed to enter. We knew more than that.

And now when we hear the White House try to play down this story and/or try to undermine it either by some new stories, some patriotic appeals, by finding some minor inaccuracies in it, or by criticizing Hersh himself, we should not believe them. The Hersh story makes sense. It explains a great deal that was not as clear as it should have been. At the same time, I am saying that news accounts at the time already provided substantial evidence of what had really happened, supporting Hersh’s story today, and my own blogs at that time provide evidence of that and links to some of the pertinent sources.

That's all a bunch of BS!

News Buzzard wrote:That's all a bunch of BS!

Well, what your reply lacks in substance, it makes up for in brevity.

I'm sure Republicans said the same thing when he reported on torture at Abu Ghraib.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/york-times-correspondent-backs-sy-114043504.html

If this scenario is true then it would explain why we didn't tell Pakistan we were going in, and it would also debunk Cheney's theory that we located bin Laden through enhanced interrogation!

News Buzzard wrote:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/york-times-correspondent-backs-sy-114043504.html

If this scenario is true then it would explain why we didn't tell Pakistan we were going in, and it would also debunk Cheney's theory that we located bin Laden through enhanced interrogation!

It certainly doesn't debunk the belief that the President flat out lied to us again.

Sometimes deception is for a greater purpose. If Obama told Pakistan he was sending troops in to get bin Laden we never would have found him, and publicly announcing what Gall is telling us would have dangerously inflamed our relationship with Pakistan even further.

Anti Federalist wrote:I knew the official account stunk from the get go.

Nothing but a bunch of Wag the Dog nonsense.

Like Bill Clinton bombing Serbia?



Like, where are all those Kosovo bodies buried? Those "mass graves" are yet to be found.



Lawyer for Pakistan doctor who helped CIA find bin Laden shot dead

Reuters


A Pakistani lawyer under death threats for defending a doctor who helped CIA agents hunt al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was shot dead on Tuesday, police said, and a Taliban splinter group claimed responsibility.

Samiullah Afridi represented Dr Shakil Afridi, who was jailed in 2012 for 33 years for running a fake vaccination campaign believed to have helped the U.S. intelligence agency track down bin Laden. That sentence was overturned in 2013 and the doctor is now in jail awaiting a new trial.

Samiullah Afridi was shot dead on Tuesday as he was returning to his home in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said. According to local media, he had recently returned there from abroad after leaving Pakistan for his safety.

Anti Federalist wrote:I knew the official account stunk from the get go.

From the most transparent administration in history?

Things must be pretty bad if we can't take the NYTs news or Al Jazeera's.



Another account, from the Pakistani ambassador to the US:

What Pakistan Knew About the Bin Laden Raid

With a litany of unproved claims, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revived discussion about the circumstances in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.

Some of Hersh’s assertions in a 10,000-word London Review of Books article border on fantasy. He claims that bin Laden lived under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was given up for reward money by one of the agency’s officers, and was eventually eliminated in a U.S. raid covertly backed by Pakistan’s army commander and ISI chief.

According to Hersh, the Americans “blackmailed” Pakistan’s generals into helping them kill bin Laden but then stabbed them in the back for political reasons by denying them any credit for assisting in the raid by Navy SEALs. Instead of blaming ISI for sheltering bin Laden in Pakistan (which Hersh claims it did), he points the finger at the Obama administration for not acknowledging ISI’s role in the U.S. operation that killed the terrorist mastermind.

With the exception of the possibility of a Pakistani “walk in” selling information about bin Laden’s location, the other details of Hersh’s story simply do not add up. If the ISI had hidden bin Laden for five years, it would not have cooperated in the U.S. operation to kill him without demanding a serious quid pro quo.
World Affairs Journal -Husain Haqqani
http://pr.aljazeera.com/post/110647184925/former-isi-head-tells-al-jazeera-pakistan-probably

With The New York Times correspondent present, this must be "the true belief"?



.

If the ISI had hidden bin Laden for five years, it would not have cooperated in the U.S. operation to kill him without demanding a serious quid pro quo.

And there is no telling what that might have been.