Seymour M. Hersh has published a blockbuster article on events surrounding bin Laden’s life and death in Pakistan. You need to know that ISI is Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence. Here are a few of the revelations.
1. Bin Laden hid in the Hindu Kush mountains between 2001-2006. Payoffs by the ISI to informants led to his discovery. After 2006, the ISI seized him and placed him in the compound at Abbottabad where he was murdered by the American team. They supplied him with a doctor, Amir Aziz, and kept tabs on him. Bin Laden was under constant ISI observation. The ISI has a covert base 15 minutes away by helicopter. In addition, a Pakistan army battalion headquarters is about a mile away.
2. Bin Laden was very ill, an invalid. Saudi Arabia financed bin Laden’s upkeep. Both the ISI and Saudis had good reasons to keep this information from the Americans. The ISI wanted a quid pro quo from the U.S. They also held a stick against the Saudis. The Saudis didn’t want the U.S. to know because then they’d pressure Pakistan to get bin Laden to reveal the money links between the Saudi’s large scale support of al Qaeda. The Saudis also had a stick. If they did reveal Pakistan’s knowledge of bin Laden, this would cause a political furor and interrupt the large U.S. aid to Pakistan and to the ISI in particular.
3. The ISI knew every detail of the proposed raid and influenced its shape and form. They required bin Laden to be slain. This was to prevent him from talking and revealing the Pakistani role in hiding him.
4. The U.S. learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts from a walk-in in August 2010, a man who tipped the CIA off, in order to get the large $25 million reward. He was a former senior ISI intelligence officer.
5. The U.S. turned off the money spigot to Pakistan to get the ISI to agree to the raid without any interference from Pakistan’s defense systems or military.
6. The ISI used bin Laden as a hostage in order to influence al Qaeda and Taliban operations. The ISI wanted to prevent operations against its interests.
7. The story of bin Laden going for an AK-47 is a fabrication. He was murdered. The team going in knew that it would be a homicide. There was no firefight. There was no armed resistance of any kind. The assassins were guided to his room and murdered him and not just with one or two bullets.
8. The White House account of the entire episode is riddled with one lie after another. There was, for example, no treasure trove of computers or documents found and taken from the compound.
9. Bin Laden’s remains were not flown to a U.S. ship and buried at sea. That story is a total fabrication. His remains, what was left after their near total destruction by gunfire, were flown to Afghanistan. Body parts were tossed into the mountains.
10. Zero Dark Thirty is fiction.
