Posted on 05/16/2015 8:08:19 PM PDT by robowombat
What Pakistan Knew About the Bin Laden Raid
Husain Haqqani
With a litany of unproved claims, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revived discussion about the circumstances in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.
Some of Hershs assertions in a 10,000-word London Review of Books article border on fantasy. He claims that bin Laden lived under the protection of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was given up for reward money by one of the agencys officers, and was eventually eliminated in a U.S. raid covertly backed by Pakistans army commander and ISI chief.
According to Hersh, the Americans blackmailed Pakistans generals into helping them kill bin Laden but then stabbed them in the back for political reasons by denying them any credit for assisting in the raid by Navy SEALs. Instead of blaming ISI for sheltering bin Laden in Pakistan (which Hersh claims it did), he points the finger at the Obama administration for not acknowledging ISIs role in the U.S. operation that killed the terrorist mastermind.
With the exception of the possibility of a Pakistani walk in selling information about bin Ladens location, the other details of Hershs story simply do not add up. If the ISI had hidden bin Laden for five years, it would not have cooperated in the U.S. operation to kill him without demanding a serious quid pro quo.
Hersh explains the Obama administrations eagerness to claim sole credit for finding and killing bin Laden in terms of domestic U.S. politics. But he offers no explanation as to why, after covertly helping the Americans, Pakistans generals would keep quiet about their role. The veteran reporter alludes to the idea that this might have been because of bin Ladens popularity among the Pakistani public. But by 2011, bin Laden was no longer that popular and in any case Pakistans military leaders have consistently ignored public opinion to ensure the flow of American aid. Hershs suggestion that Pakistans generals covertly helped Americans eliminate bin Laden simply to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars to the country but kept it secret so as not to incur the wrath of the Pakistani street does not hold water.
For several years before the bin Laden raid, Pakistans military and the ISI had been criticized in the U.S. media and Congress for double-dealing in the fight against terrorism. If the ISI had protected bin Laden (or held him prisoner) for five years before being found out by the Americans, the United States would have increased its leverage by going public with accusations of hiding bin Laden. But theres no evidence that Washington held Islamabads feet to the fire.
If, however, a backroom deal had been negotiated to secure Pakistani cooperation in the raid on Abbottabad in return for U.S. silence, the ISI would have demanded some glory for its cooperation. Facilitating the raid, as narrated by Hersh, would have provided Pakistans military and ISI an opportunity to redeem themselves in American eyes. Hersh wants us to believe an entirely improbably scenario. According to him, Obamas political requirements denied Pakistanis any credit and senior generals in Islamabad simply accepted that without pushing back.
Was the walk-in real?
To this day, there is no solid evidence of Pakistanis at the highest level of government knowing about bin Laden being in Pakistan though there have been widespread suspicions. If, after being tipped off by a rogue Pakistani intelligence officer looking for personal reward, the United States planned a raid with covert help from Pakistani intelligence, why didnt the cooperating Pakistani officials demand credit for assisting in targeting bin Laden in order to mitigate the bad press for previously protecting him? And what prevented the U.S. government from publicly acknowledging that they knew bin Laden had been officially protected? Was the need to keep the relationship with Islamabad on solid footing so important that the Obama administration would risk telling a lie this massive?
Hershs story is based on the fundamental premise that the U.S. government had bad intentions, including in their interactions with the Pakistan Army and the ISI. In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Hersh defends Pakistans generals. Pakistan has a good army, not a bad army, he declared, adding that the Obama administrations cover story made the Pakistan army look incompetent because it didnt know that bin Laden was residing in a garrison town just two miles from the countrys main military academy. But he still does not offer an explanation for why the Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, went along with the cover story.
The only point in Hershs story that seems plausible relates to the Pakistani officer who tipped off the Americans about bin Ladens location. Further reporting by AFP and a story by NBC affirm the role of a Pakistani defector though NBC later amended its story to clarify that while the defector provided information, it didnt lead to finding bin Laden. The rumor that the CIA learned about bin Ladens location through an ISI officer has been around since the Abbottabad raid. But Ive also heard another version of the same story from Pakistani officials.
According to this version, the ISI officer only facilitated the CIAs on-ground operation in Abbottabad after the U.S. spy agency started planning an operation based on intelligence obtained through other means. The CIA relocated the Pakistani officer not because he was the man who tipped them off on bin Ladens location but because he acted without authority from his superiors in enabling the CIA to conduct an operation on Pakistani soil.
The NBC story also repeats the suspicion of U.S. officials about Pakistani complicity in hiding bin Laden though, obviously, there isnt enough evidence for the U.S. government to formally and publicly make that charge. As a witness to Pakistans response after the bin Laden raid I find it difficult to believe Hershs conspiracy theory about so many people in both the U.S. and Pakistani governments and militaries telling a big coordinated lie.
In the middle of a diplomatic dance
I was serving as Pakistans ambassador to the United States at the time of the SEAL raid in Abbottabad. I was on my way to Islamabad via London and Dubai when the operation took place; I first found out about it upon landing at Heathrow airport in the early morning of May 2, 2011. My superiors in Islamabad instructed me to turn around immediately. I was back in Washington by around 5 p.m. local time.
My instructions were clear: to ensure that the U.S. government, Congress, and the media did not blame Pakistans government, armed forces, or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Ladens presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1373. My bosses, both civilian and military, were obviously concerned that Pakistan would be taken to task. But nothing in the conduct of Generals Kayani and Pasha (both of whom later forced me to resign as ambassador) hinted at their collusion with the U.S. in the Abbottabad raid.
They attributed their lack of response to the incursion by U.S. helicopters from Afghanistan to the absence of adequate radar coverage on the western border a symptom of Pakistans view of India as the only threat to its national security. Kayani and Pasha also wanted to ensure that there would be no reprisals against Pakistan over allegations of official complicity in hiding bin Laden.
A bevy of damage diplomacy followed. A few days after the Abbottabad raid, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry visited Islamabad. Gen. Kayani was eager during that visit for a statement by the U.S. senator emphasizing Pakistans position as an American ally in the war against terrorism. Kerry agreed to the reassuring language proposed by Kayani. The Kerry visit was followed by a visit by Pasha to Washington during which he was keen to convince the CIA that the ISI had no knowledge of bin Laden being in Pakistan. In a meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta, Pasha listed the CIAs own failures over the years to advance his argument that intelligence gathering is often imperfect and that the enemy can hide within plain sight.
Notwithstanding my own disagreements with Kayani and Pasha, I found no reason to believe that either general was feigning ignorance or outrage while being secretly in league with the Americans. The Foreign Office also asked me to protest the violation of Pakistans sovereignty by U.S. forces in conducting the operation and to point out how it violated the norms of international conduct between two sovereign countries that were, at least officially, allies. I didnt make much headway.
The U.S. officials I interacted with were not only unwilling to apologize for violating Pakistani sovereignty but demanded that Islamabad cooperate in giving Americans access to data and persons found at the house in Abbottabad where the raid was conducted. They also demanded the return of the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that had been damaged and left behind during the operation. Pakistan handed over the wreckage a few days later, though not without prodding by the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.
Security Council cover
Immediately after the raid, the U.S. government persuaded the president of the U.N. Security Council to issue a statement, welcoming [the] end of Osama bin Ladens ability to perpetrate terrorist acts. Obama administration officials I spoke with pointed to UNSC resolutions and this statement by the Security Council president to justify their unilateral action in Abbottabad in disregard of Pakistani sovereignty.
Pakistans protests about violation of its sovereignty and against the U.N. Security Council presidents statement came within hours of the Abbottabad raid. Our side was stunned because it had not been kept in the loop. At the United Nations, the Security Council president was busy listing justifications under international law for the violation of Pakistans sovereignty. But none of these responses would have occurred if, as Hersh says, the cover story about the unilateral raid had been manufactured in the White House just two hours after the raid, in a cynical ploy to help Obamas re-election bid.
On the evening of May 2, I was interviewed on CNN. There I made what remains a valid point: I said that it was obvious someone in Pakistan protected Osama bin Laden. The question was to determine whether bin Ladens support system lay within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan. I had asked for a full inquiry into finding out why our intelligence services were not able to track him earlier.
I never got an answer to my question. Pakistan created a commission that conducted its hearings in a non-transparent manner and declined to publish its findings. The Obama administration went back to business-as-usual with Pakistan without insisting or pushing Islamabad for answers on the tough questions about bin Ladens stay in Pakistan from 2006 to 2011. I understand how the failure of both Washington and Islamabad to disclose a more complete understanding of what transpired in the years leading up to the raid feeds conspiracy theories and the presumption that something is fishy.
But it is this failure explaining bin Ladens presence in Pakistan, not the elaborate conspiracies Hersh alleges on the say-so of a single retired U.S. counterterrorism official which has been a major disservice to truth.
Both the people of Pakistan and the people of the United States would benefit from detailed answers to questions about bin Ladens support network in Pakistan. But dont hold your breath. It might not be in either Islamabads or Washingtons interest to wake sleeping dogs.
“My instructions were clear: to ensure that the U.S. government, Congress, and the media did not blame Pakistans government, armed forces, or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Ladens presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1373. My bosses, both civilian and military, were obviously concerned that Pakistan would be taken to task.”
So the U.S. Government ordered him to “run cover” for Pakistan so they wouldn’t get blamed for harboring Bin Laden, the day of the raid, and yet we are supposed to believe he doesn’t have an agenda here? The fact that they gave him that order add fuel to the suspicions in and of itself!
The requirement of a quid pro quo in exchange for Bin Laden has already been aired, long before Hersh's story, and there was one: the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In fact, a former head of the ISI has even hinted at that: http://pr.aljazeera.com/post/110647184925/former-isi-head-tells-al-jazeera-pakistan-probably.
Like our own intelligence and counterintelligence organizations, the ISI are professional liars. [This includes former operatives and administrators.] Whatever Hersh was told sub rosa by current and/or former officials, and whatever hints Lt.General Asad Durrani dropped to Al Jazeera in February, is as likely to a lie as it is the truth [or some linear combination thereof] and to serve an entirely different purpose than the one we are led to believe.
They knew a lot more than they let on.
The author makes the assumption they didn't get one. It may be something we don't discover for years, if ever.
Hillhouse believes that "Everything that [Hersh] has said has been spot on" but "You can't help but notice that everything he is saying in the story, which is true, was first broken by me."Hersh broke his version in 2013:
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