Osama Bin Laden’s death
There are some who question that Osama bin Laden was even killed at all. This is despite the fact that al-Qaeda has acknowledged his killing by U.S. Navy Seals at an Abbottabad compound in Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. Others claim that bin Laden’s killing was used for political leverage by Barack Obama to secure his re-election as U.S. president for a second term.
One notable individual who disputes the official White House account of bin Laden’s capture and killing is American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh claims that the official version of bin Laden’s death is a “fairy-tale.” He believes that Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, was holding bin Laden prisoner for nearly six years in Abbottabad before handing him over to the United States. He also claims that the Navy Seal raid was staged. Michael Morrell, the former deputy and acting director of the CIA described Hersh’s theory as “rubbish” and that “almost every sentence” of what Hersh wrote about it is “inaccurate.”
The CIA has always maintained that a phone number that they received from Pakistani intelligence, who was unaware of its significance, belonged to a courier who they tracked for eight years and who eventually led them to the Abbottabad compound which housed bin Laden. This account is rejected by Hersh, who instead believes that an unnamed retired Pakistani military intelligence officer walked into the U.S. embassy in Islamabad and told them that the Pakistani government had been hiding bin Laden at Abbottabad in exchange for much of the $25 million reward.
Hersh also believes that senior figures in the Pakistani Army and Intelligence Services were aware bin Laden was in Abbottabad, which the CIA also contests. Carlotta Gall, who reported from Pakistan for the New York Times for over a decade, supports Hersh’s claims regarding senior officials knowing of bin Laden’s whereabouts. A local source allegedly informed her that the ISI had a bin Laden desk and that he was being held in “some sort of protective custody.”
Hersh’s claims are believed to be derived from one particular source, an unnamed retired American senior intelligence officer. Morrell claims that this individual was never at any meetings he attended. Hersh also alleges, following information gleaned from reading the debriefings of the Navy Seals who conducted the operation, that parts of bin Laden’s dismembered remains were thrown from a helicopter.
Michael Scheuer, who headed the special CIA unit hunting for bin Laden believes it was a mistake not to publish images of bin Laden’s body which would have confirmed his death. Scheuer told BBC reporter Jane Corbin, “I don’t know why they didn’t do that but secrecy breeds conspiracy theories.”