Was that Panetta?
to blame for jailing of hero Bin Laden doctor, says Pakistani report
It was the Obama administration that sealed the fate of the Pakistani doctor jailed for helping nail Usama Bin Laden, by divulging key details after the fact and dooming any chance Shakil Afridi's cover story could win his freedom, according to a confidential Pakistani report.When former Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly acknowledged Afridi's role in the ruse which helped the CIA pinpoint Bin Laden's presence in an Abbottabad compound, any chance that Pakistani authorities could help him get out of the country vanished, according to what some have called Pakistan’s version of the 9/11 Commission, a 357-page report from an independent body set up to probe the aftermath of the 2011 raid by Navy SEALs in which the Al Qaeda leader was killed.
“The statement by the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was the CIA Director when May 2 happened, confirming the role of Dr. Afridi in making the U.S. assassination mission a success, rendered much of what Afridi told the Commission very questionable if not outright lies,” states the report, which has not been released, but which FoxNews.com has viewed.
Indeed, Panetta and others in the Obama administration were sharply criticized domestically for discussing the raid and efforts involving Afridi to obtain DNA from the compound's occupants by posing as a medical team offering vaccinations. Nearly five months before Afridi’s sentencing, while the doctor was being held and interrogated by Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence agency , Panetta spoke on record in an interview to CBS “60 Minutes” confirming Afridi's role in late January 2012. The statements came after Afridi had testified to the commission, and sharply contradicted his story.
“This was an individual, in fact that helped provide intelligence, that was very helpful in regards to this operation and he was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan,” Panetta told the program in January, 2012, in the first acknowledgement of Afridi's role.
That prompted the Pakistani commission to conclude in its report that "Dr. Afridi had been cultivated by the CIA and ultimately used in its project to assassinate Usama Bin Laden.”
Panetta did not respond to multiple requests for comment. His spokesman, Jeremy Bash, had earlier told a Fox News Channel correspondent that Panetta wasn’t willing to talk to media.
-PJ