Pakistani leaders knew Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan, says former defense minister

WaPo ^ | 10/14/2015 | Ishaan Tharoor

[mojito]

A former Pakistani defense minister appeared to confirm on Indian television on Tuesday that both his country's senior military and civilian leadership knew of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's presence in their country at the time of his death in 2011. Bin Laden was killed after his compound in the environs of Islamabad was raided by U.S. Navy SEALs.

[....]

[T]his week, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, Pakistan's defense minister between 2008 and 2012, told Indian TV station CNN-IBN that they knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan. Here's an excerpt of CNN-IBN's journalist posing questions to Mukhtar:

Question: Did this word spread above in the chain of command, did the President know about it, did the Prime Minister know about it? At what level was this information shared?

Answer: The people who were part and parcel of the whole action like the President of Pakistan, the Armed Forces Chief, the Joint Chief of Staff and the agency people, they were all activated and they were all waiting for orders for them to come out with their teams and provide all the information which they should have done earlier.

Question: So President [Asif Ali] Zardari, you are saying knew about it, General [Ashfaq] Kayani, the then Army Chief had information about it and there were people both in the civilian and military chain of command who had prior information about Osama?

Answer: Yeah.

[mojito]

The open secret confirmed.

[Capt. Tom]

I would think that as fellow Muslims, the Pakistanis would have respect for Osama bin Laden.
Muslims would not want to rat Osama out to us Infidels. -Tom

[Republic_Venom]

The Paki’s sold out Osama to the Obama administration. The question is at what price? I also don’t think Osama was killed. It’s much to convenient. My brother-in-law is a Seal...there is no way a Seal would take a head shot for such a high level target.

[hoosiermama]

And so did we
Remember the code broken in WWII
We had voice recognition from the sky

[Boogieman]

I’ll take “Things Everybody Already Knew” for $1000, Alex.

[Alfred O. Bama]

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

[Boogieman]

Yeah, I don’t buy the story that he was killed, then the body dumped at sea, before anyone even snapped a cell phone pic. Preposterous.

I suspect he’s in a deep, dark hole somewhere in the world where he’ll never be afforded any “constitutional rights” and the CIA can interrogate him to their hearts’ content.

[Republic_Venom]

What’s even more disheartening is that the public bought hook-line-and-sinker this crazy story.