 "Pakistan knew about US raid to kill Osama bin Laden, writes Seymour Hersh")
The top echelons of Pakistan’s military and intelligence community knew that Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad and that the Pakistani government actively colluded with the US for the early morning raid in which a US SEAL team killed the al Qaeda leader, an article in the London Review of Books has claimed.
Investigated and written by legendary journalist Seymour Hersh, the article quotes intelligence officers both on the US and Pakistani side, and alleges that the US government has been lying about how it got to bin Laden.
“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,” Hersh writes.
“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,” he adds.
Until now, the Pakistani government has maintained that the US raid – in which two helicopters carrying a SEAL team flew under the radar from across the border in Aghanistan to the bin Laden residence, only a few miles north of Pakistan’s military academy – was and violated Pakistan’s nation sovereignty. Both sides have also maintained that it was an all-American project and that the Pakistani side was neither aware of bin Laden’s presence, nor was it involved in the covert operation in any way.
Hersh claims that Pakistani’s notorious intelligence agency, Inter State Intelligence, or ISI, was in fact holding bin Laden hostage in the Abottabad compound after they captured him from the Afghan border when tribal leaders there betrayed his presence.
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He also goes on to say that a former Pakistani intelligence officer was the first to betray bin Laden’s location to the Americans, in return for the $25 million bounty on the Qaeda leader’s head.
Hersh also claims that his source told him that bin Laden was seriously ill and practically invalid at the time of his death.
He also claims that the Pakistanis were holding on to bin Laden so they could use that information to strike a deal with the Americans at the right time.
‘It didn’t take long to get the co-operation we needed, because the Pakistanis wanted to ensure the continued release of American military aid, a good percentage of which was anti-terrorism funding that finances personal security, such as bullet-proof limousines and security guards and housing for the ISI leadership,’ the retired official is quoted as saying.
Complicating the picture was Saudi Arabia, according to Hersh. Apparently, the Saudis wanted Pakistan to keep bin Laden hidden away from the US. On the other hand, the Pakistanis feared that the US might come to know from the Saudi side that they were hosting bin Laden and that there would be severe repercussions.
The Americans, and especially President Barack Obama, was particularly tentative about the information and wanted absolute certainty before reaching a decision. Also, Obama was entering re-election mode and any failure would have ended any chance of re-election. The US finally got its evidence from a DNA sample provided by the Pakistani side.
A key reason for the Pak side to keep bin Laden’s presence was that they were using it as leverage against al Qaeda and the Taliban; there would be hell to pay if they found out they’d been betrayed, Hersh writes.