IT’S the question that won’t go away, the one that’s casting a shadow over the US government and creating a bitter war of words between the world’s top security experts.
How did Osama bin Laden really die?
Senior intelligence agents and researchers who have chronicled the al-Qaeda leader’s demise in bloodcurdling books and movies say the story has been told. But others see holes in the Hollywood-style narrative, and believe America is concealing a less auspicious reality.
The seed of doubt was sown in May, when investigative journalist Seymour Hershpresented a shocking alternative version of events in the London Review of Books, which he had been working on for the four years since bin Laden was killed at a compound in Abbottabad, north-eastern Pakistan.
Hersh, who is well-known for exposing appalling government cover-ups including the My Lai massacre and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, cited an unnamed retired US senior intelligence official as his key source, along with two Special Operations Command consultants.
He was dismissed as a past-it conspiracy theorist, but this week, the 78-year-old’s allegations resurfaced in a New York Times Magazine cover story, which outlined the evidence supporting his account. It has again drawn furious criticism, but as the tales mount up, so does the uncertainty about what happened on May 1, 2011.
THE WALK-IN
The CIA claimed it spent years on surveillance, gathering intelligence before tracking a courier to what was thought to be bin Laden’s hide-out. When the moment was right, President Obama sent in a team of 23 Navy SEALs in two Black Hawk helicopters, one of which was forced to crash land in the compound, almost derailing the mission. But after the SEALs blew their way through doors and exchanged gunfire with the enemy, bin Laden was killed, in a huge ideological triumph for the United States. They left the compound in a blaze of fire and glory, blowing up the helicopter as they went.
Except, Hersh claimed the US had been led to bin Laden by a “walk-in”, a retired Pakistani intelligence officer who wanted the $US25 million reward America had offered anyone who found the militant leader. It would make sense that the CIA would not reveal a tip-off, for the safety of the person who helped them, and so as not to alienate potential future informants.
It’s not just Hersh who heard this rumour. Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, told the NYT Magazine that the informant ‘‘was described to me as a specific Pakistani officer in the intelligence service”. Coll, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the CIA and Afghanistan, said he “even had a name” he had been looking into for four years. Coll was never able to confirm the story, but an American intelligence officer who knew the informant told him “that’s the sort of thing he would do”.
But Mark Bowden, author of the book The Finish, a “definitive” 2012 account of the Abbottabad siege, said this week in Vanity Fair that agents had spent months trying to confirm bin Laden was hiding in the compound before Obama launched the “very risky secret raid”.
Bowden, who has interviewed senior government sources including Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defence Bob Gates and former CIA director Leon Panetta, argued that for Hersh’s account to be true, every one of them would have to be involved in “a coordinated lie”.
PAKISTAN’S COMPLICITY
Perhaps most important is the claim that Pakistan knew exactly where bin Laden was, because they had him locked up in the compound, and had passed on the information and a DNA sample to the US, making him a sitting duck rather than a dangerous enemy.
Several US officials said immediately after the raid that it was hard to believe Pakistan knew nothing about the siege until it was over, as the two governments claimed.
In March 2014, Times correspondent Carlotta Gall gave credence to this by reporting that an ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) source had told her that Pakistan’s intelligence service ran a special desk to handle bin Laden, a “super-secret intelligence unit” only top military bosses knew about.
Eleven days after the raid, a story on world news website GlobalPost entitled “Neighbours Say Pakistan Knew” said locals had revealed that intelligence or military personnel had knocked on their doors, telling them to turn off the lights, stay indoors and not speak to the media. The Pakistani reporter, Aamir Latif, has come forward in the NYT Magazine to repeat the claims, insisting there was not only awareness from the Pakistani government, but “coordination and cooperation.”
Gall said bin Laden’s neighbours had called the police after hearing explosions, but that army commanders told the cops to leave the response to the military, who didn’t arrive until the SEALs had left, 40 minutes later.
Why would Pakistan lie about knowing of and assisting with the raid, even displaying shame at being left in the dark? The theory is that claiming ignorance was preferable to sparking a possible violent coup by being seen assisting the US. And Gall believes the US wouldn’t have told Pakistan until the very last minute, leaving them little time for changing the plan.
CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen has dismissed the idea, insisting that if Pakistan really had the terrorist leader “the easiest path for both countries ... would have been to hand bin Laden over quietly” — as the nation did with 9/11 commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Qaeda leader Abu Faraj al-Libi. Bergen explains away Latif’s story by saying a SEALs translator told neighbours to go inside during the raid because of a “security operation.”
He added: “US officials were monitoring the communications of Pakistan’s top military officials such as Kayani and Pasha, and their bewildered reactions confirmed that the Pakistanis had not had a clue about bin Laden’s presence there, according to a number of US officials.” So we know what US officials are saying, at least.
EASY TARGET
The most compelling part of the official story is the terrifying stand-off between US troops and bin Laden and his men. But Hersh says bin Laden was frail and ill and that the confrontation was anything but a fair fight.
The Americans knew exactly where the al-Qaeda leader was, cowering in a bedroom on the third floor of the shabby dwelling, according to his source. “The squad came through the door and obliterated him,” the official said.
Hersh says that SEALs hearing about the siege were appalled at the claim these elite officers had shot bin Laden in self-defence.
Two SEALs who were on the mission, Matt Bissonnette and Robert O’Neill, claim that there were other people killed in the fight that night, including two bodyguards, one of bin Laden’s sons and one of the bodyguard’s wives. Bergen, the “only outsider” to visit the compound before it was demolished, maintains that it was “trashed, littered almost everywhere with broken glass and several areas of it were sprayed with bullet holes”, suggesting a fierce battle.
It certainly boosted Obama’s flagging profile when he announced from the White House that a dramatic shootout had culminated in the demise of “a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands”.
There’s one final oddity. In Bowden’s book, he provides a lyrical description of bin Laden’s Islamic burial at sea, his body disappearing into the water “wrapped in a weighted shroud”. But Bowden admitted to Hersh that he hadn’t seen any photos, they were described to him. Hersh says there are no photos, because bin Laden’s “obliterated” remains were secretly dropped out of a helicopter.
Like his body, the search for the truth of the man’s death may be lost forever, but these strange, differing accounts are likely to keep the questions alive.
Hersh was not even first with many of his allegations. Former professor and writer RJ Hillhouse made several of the same claims in an August 2011 blog post that mentioned an informant and Pakistan’s prior knowledge of the raid.
Bergen says that if the stories were true, Hillary Clinton would have to be an Oscar-worthy actor for her terrified reaction at the White House during the raid. Bowden goes further, saying the official accounts would have to be “the most deliberate, sustained, elaborate lie in American history”.
But isn’t there another possibility? That even without a mass conspiracy, certain stories might fit the American myth-making machine better? And as we’ve seen with the NSA, with Guantanamo and on countless other occasions, the truth isn’t always a priority for everyone in government.
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