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Seymour Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden

posted by takyon on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:35AM   
from the buried-truth-at-sea dept.

"gewg_" writes:

Vox Media reports:

[May 10], the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh finally released a story that he has been rumored to have been working on for years: the truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden. According to Hersh's 10,000-word story in the London Review of Books, the official history of bin Laden's death--in which the US tracked him to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan; killed him in a secret raid that infuriated Pakistan; and then buried him at sea--is a lie.

Hersh's story is amazing to read, alleging a vast American-Pakistani conspiracy to stage the raid and even to fake high-level diplomatic incidents as a sort of cover. But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies.

Zero Hedge says:

In a nutshell--and one really needs to read Hersh's magnum opus, as no amount of abbreviation will do it justice--Hersh accuses Obama of not only taking credit for the al Qaeda leader's death, but fabricating the story that resulted from what has been widely reported to have been a Navy SEAL incursion into bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. As a result the military and intelligence communities were forced to scramble and then corroborate the president's version of events.

Needless to say, the White House did not respond to Hersh's requests for comment.

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.

[...] bin Laden was murdered, plain and simple: [...] A former SEAL commander, who has led and participated in dozens of similar missions over the past decade, assured me that 'we were not going to keep bin Laden alive--to allow the terrorist to live. By law, we know what we're doing inside Pakistan is a homicide. We've come to grips with that. Each one of us, when we do these missions, say to ourselves, "Let's face it. We're going to commit a murder."'

The big, slow, noisy helicopters they used had me convinced from the start that the official narrative was garbage... and I think everyone recognizes that these "special operations" teams are simply assassination squads.

takyon adds:

• R.J. Hillhouse Reported Essentials of Hersh's bin Laden Story in 2011 - With Seemingly Different Sources
• The Detail in Seymour Hersh's Bin Laden Story That Rings True
• A Crank Theory of Seymour Hersh: To understand the legendary national security reporter, you need to understand an archetype of the intelligence world: the crank.
• Seymour Hersh Details Explosive Story on Bin Laden Killing & Responds to White House, Media Backlash

• Re:What, this is an expose? (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:42PM

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:42PM (#182534) Journal

  SEYMOUR HERSH: I mean, look, that’s childish. The reality is the Pakistanis told — there were meetings between the head of the Pakistani intelligence service, General Pasha, and Leon Panetta, that I write about. And I write about them based on, well you have to read the article to find out. The — I write about them very carefully. One of the questions always asked is, why did you do this to us? In particular, why bring in the Saudis. What happened is the Pakistanis, as some of you may know, are very close with Saudi Arabia. There’s always been a chronic fear that the great Islamic bomb — at some point Pakistan might even give the Saudis a bomb. That’s been written about constantly. That’s a great concern. We really have a serious concern about maintaining great relations with — they’re very good right now with us and the Pakistani military. Anyway.

  And so the answer that was given, I’ll just tell you exactly what it was. The way they explained it was, first of all, the — they went to — they told the Saudis and the Saudis immediately said, do not tell the Americans about him. Why? And I can only give you the obvious reason that was given, because the last thing that Saudi Arabia wants is the United States to be — the begin interrogating Osama bin Laden and discover who might have been giving him money, which sheikh, where, in Saudi Arabia in 2001 and 2002, and before or even after. That’s not completely illogical.

  The second reason, of course, is, once the Pakistanis have bin Laden, they have leverage. They can let both the Taliban, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, know that they have him. They can let the jihadists in both countries also know that they have him. And they get leverage. They can make it clear to both those groups you have to talk to us more than you do. We want to know more about what’s going on or we’ll string this guy up. That’s all — that was the explanation given. Nobody liked it, but there was an understanding that Pakistan has its own point of view about the world and it isn’t only the same as ours. So we accepted it. We had not much choice, we wanted their help.

  But — so it’s not a of case Darth Vader and sort of silly talk like that. This is serious stuff I’m talking about. This is the President of the United States, if not knowing the wrong information was given, certainly countenancing it, in fact triggering a whole sequence of lies that had to be — a whole story that had to be recreated. And nobody is talking about what I wrote about, this poor Dr. Afridi, the one that’s now in jail on charges — he was convicted of treason, reviewed and now in jail on charges of murder for 33 years or something like that. This is the guy that was going around in — providing vaccinations for various kinds of illnesses; hepatitis, I think among them. I don’t think it was polio, but he was providing that kind of service to the community. A physician, and he was also an asset of the CIA, and we were so worried, in America, that the story about — we got DNA via the Pakistanis before the end of — before 2010.

  You needed DNA. You needed the Pakistanis to get into Abbottabad, to get into — and take some DNA from bin Laden — we had other samples from his family — and make sure — the President wanted to know that was really bin Laden. And so a doctor — a Pakistani doctor had — was assigned to — his name was [Aziz]. Amir [Aziz] was assigned to move next door to the house in Abbottabad. In fact, journalists, after the raid, found his name in Urdu on a doorplate in one of the houses next to it. They had to protect Aziz and so they created a story, the CIA in their wisdom, that Afridi was the one that went in and tried to get into the compound to take, unsuccessfully, to take —- to get a DNA sample from bin Laden, which, of course, led to a huge outcry against the idea that the Western intelligence, media, the CIA and the Brits also often criticized for the same way, are behind some of the vaccination programs. This is a belief that certainly prevalent in Africa. And we’ve had tremendously adverse consequences for the health of -—

  AMY GOODMAN: Sy, we have ten seconds.

  SEYMOUR HERSH: Well the implications for the health, the well being of a lot of people, are pretty negative from this — a very dumb move by the CIA. These are all things to be considered. It’s not a Darth Vader moment, I’m sorry to say.

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