# What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden



## Marauder06 (Mar 20, 2014)

A lengthy but interesting read about Freefalling's favorite frenemy and yours, Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/magazine/what-pakistan-knew-about-bin-laden.html?_r=0


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## Ronnoc (Mar 20, 2014)

Wow, very interesting. Now to get going on that run I was going to take 30 minutes ago, prior to opening this article..


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## AWP (Mar 20, 2014)

That article told me water is wet and the sky is blue.

But hey, Pakistan's an "ally"....


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## Flagg (Mar 21, 2014)

Seemed pretty obvious since the Kunduz Airlift in November 2001, or even earlier for some more in the know.

What I simply don't understand is WHY NOW?

The writer's story has her figuring it out in Quetta, Pakistan 7+ years ago with a literal punch in the face. 

The writer's story had her figuring out Pakistani harbouring of OBL 2+ years ago.

Why go to print NOW?

Why not 7+ and 2+ years ago respectively?


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## CQB (Mar 21, 2014)

I guess after the raid there was two answers, either admit they knew or look like fools.


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## AWP (Mar 21, 2014)

Flagg said:


> Seemed pretty obvious since the Kunduz Airlift in November 2001, or even earlier for some more in the know.


 
Boom goes the dynamite. So many people don't know about Kunduz or the open support during the TB campaign from '96 to '01.


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## AWP (May 10, 2015)

To piggyback on the intial story...

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

I'd maybe take some of this with a grain of salt, but Hersh has proven to be at least partially correct in the past with other stories. Much of it sounds very plausible.


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## Salt USMC (May 11, 2015)

Saw this on a friend's FB feed today.  If it wasn't respected journalist Seymour Hersh, I wouldn't believe it.  He's definitely has the credentials: he reported on My Lai, Project Azorian (CIA plan to raise a Soviet sub from the bottom of the ocean), and the abuses at Abu Ghraib, among others.  One bit of caution: most of this information comes from a single source, so approach this story with the proper dose of skepticism.

*The short story*: Pakistan knew about the raid, an ISI walk-in was the principal informant, basically nothing happened like in "Zero Dark Thirty", actions on target in Abbotobad were unopposed, and there was no burial at sea.  Also, Obama lied about a BUNCH of stuff.

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


> *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.’



It's a long read but well worth it.  The story (if true) contradicts nearly everything that came out of the White House and CIA in the months following the raid.  It even (bizarrely) contradicts the accounts of Matt Bissonette and Rob O'Neill, who later published their tell-all books about the raid.  Specifically, it claims that there was no firefight on the target, bin Laden wasn't killed with precision headshots but got totally ventilated, and there was actually an ISI officer with the SEALs directing them through the house.  Also, there was no burial aboard the _USS Carl Vinson_, because bin Laden's body essentially got hacked up by the SEALs and they threw bits of him out of the helicopter as they flew over the mountains.  That last bit is a little tough to swallow.

I'm not buying every part of the story, but the assertion that Obama's press conference messed up efforts at making a cohesive cover story is very plausible.  It also sheds some light on the US' continued support to Pakistan, and it actually makes pretty good sense.  But the same paragraph also exposes why Pakistan was so reluctant to give up bin Laden's whereabouts for so long.

Really fascinating read.


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## AWP (May 11, 2015)

Merged.


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## Viper1 (May 11, 2015)

Freefalling said:


> To piggyback on the intial story...
> 
> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden
> 
> I'd maybe take some of this with a grain of salt, but Hersh has proven to be at least partially correct in the past with other stories. Much of it sounds very plausible.



A single anonymous source makes me take this with a shaker of salt.  I'm not so much concerned about past credentials of the journalist. In truth, I'm not too concerned with how we got bin Laden, whether the Pakistanis wittingly cooperated or not. He's dead, and we have other threat streams -- in addition to AQ--to neutralize or destroy.

Furthermore I wonder what the reaction will be in Pakistan from the government and the public at large.


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## 0699 (May 11, 2015)

Viper1 said:


> A single anonymous source makes me take this with a shaker of salt.  I'm not so much concerned about past credentials of the journalist.



Even Moore got scammed by Idema.  If this guy was old enough to cover the Vietnam War, he's far from a spring chicken.


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## AWP (May 11, 2015)

Viper1 said:


> A single anonymous source makes me take this with a shaker of salt.  I'm not so much concerned about past credentials of the journalist. In truth, I'm not too concerned with how we got bin Laden, whether the Pakistanis wittingly cooperated or not. He's dead, and we have other threat streams -- in addition to AQ--to neutralize or destroy.
> 
> Furthermore I wonder what the reaction will be in Pakistan from the government and the public at large.



Some of the article I could care less about. We murdered UBL? Yawn. The political machinations, spin, and cover ups are interesting to me and I have so little regard for the PK gov't/ mil/ ISI I wouldn't be surprised if that angle is true.


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## pardus (May 11, 2015)

Who is the source? Without that, I couldn't care less about the "details".  

I'm making a phone call tomorrow exposing the JFK killings. Bro it's going to be an epic read!


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## CDG (May 12, 2015)

Very interesting read.  It makes sense, but who knows.  I suspect the UBL hit is one of the things that we will never know the full truth about, which is fine by me.


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## Ooh-Rah (May 12, 2015)

A year ago I would have written, NBC News is backing the claims of Obama taking the credit and editing out Pakistan...that's good for something.  

Instead I am writing NBC News is backing the claims of Obama taking the credit and editing out Pakistan...that's good for nothing.  Thanks Brian Williams.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...an-killing-Bin-Laden-change-facts-credit.html

I am absolutely willing to believe parts of this story.  Specifically that the Op did not take place without Pakistan knowing anything, and the press conference being put together so quickly as to ensure that "we" got all the credit.  Hell, I remember watching it live thinking Obama was practically skipping down that long hallway.


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## CDG (May 12, 2015)

And the response: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/...officials-criticism-117826.html#ixzz3ZsoL0VE8

Officials at the White House, Pentagon, and CIA are not happy and are calling Hersh FOS.


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## DA SWO (May 12, 2015)

pardus said:


> Who is the source? Without that, I couldn't care less about the "details".
> 
> I'm making a phone call tomorrow exposing the JFK killings. Bro it's going to be an epic read!


Maybe Petraeus is exacting his revenge...

LOL.


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## devilbones (May 14, 2015)

Why didn't any of the SEALS mention the disposal in one of their books?  If they were to add credibility to their stories, wouldn't this be an important detail?


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## pardus (May 14, 2015)

devilbones said:


> Why didn't any of the SEALS mention the disposal in one of their books?  If they were to add credibility to their stories, wouldn't this be an important detail?



Why? What makes you think it was SEALs that were tasked to dispose of the body?


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## devilbones (May 14, 2015)

Deathy McDeath said:


> Also, there was no burial aboard the _USS Carl Vinson_, because bin Laden's body essentially got hacked up by the SEALs and they threw bits of him out of the helicopter as they flew over the mountains.



Just from this.  Not sure if it was taken directly from the article, I cannot get to it from here at work.


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## HOLLiS (May 14, 2015)

Contradictions and not knowing everything is understandable.    UBL could have been used to harvest information from him for years.  Possible when his value went to zero or something else, then a decision was made to get him.    How many clandestine operations in WWII was kept secret for decades way after the end of the war?   Same reason here.   Any real information will benefit the tangos and our enemies. So why provide that information?       

IMHO, the best information and the only information I needed to know is UBL is Dead....( or working selling slushies at a quick mart in the mid-west.. or in cell at Area 51. )


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## 0699 (May 14, 2015)

pardus said:


> Why? What makes you think it was SEALs that were tasked to dispose of the body?



Is there anyone more high speed than SEALs? :-/


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## DA SWO (May 14, 2015)

0699 said:


> Is there anyone more high speed than SEALs? :-/


NASCAR Drivers....


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