The Real Truth Behind Osama Bin Laden Death

A report by First Post has revealed that Veteran US journalist Seymour M Hersh authored a piece, 'The Killing of Osama bin Laden' in the London Review of Books, claiming that US got information about Laden only after a retired Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officer chose to betray the Al Qaeda head. This, of course, when he was promised a reward of $25 million in return.

"In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA's station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001." - Hersh wrote in his piece The Killing of Osama bin Laden.

According to claims made by the Pulitzer prize winning journalist, who is credited with exposing the My Lai Massacre in 1969 and its cover-up during the Vietnam War and his 2004 reports how detainees were ill-treated at the Abu Ghraib prison, President Obama did order Osama's neutralization but the theory that it was all-American affair was completely cooked up.

"The most blatant lie was that Pakistan's two most senior military leaders – General Ashraf Pervez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission." - Hersh wrote. It was true that initially Pakistanis were unaware that US knew about where Laden was hiding.

"The walk-in had told the US that bin Laden had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains, and that 'the ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him," Hersh wrote.

But certain logistical problems cropped up and it was obvious for the US that they need to take the Pakistanis onboard if the mission was to succeed. The CIA was also informed by the former ISI officer that a Pakistani Army doctor Major Amir Aziz was stationed near Osama's safe haven in Abbottabad so that the Al Qaeda chief's treatment could go on unhindered.

The US went on gradually and finally took the then Pakistan Army chief General Kayani and ISI-head Lt Gen Pasha into confidence. The military doctor who was treating Osama also obtained DNA sample to confirm Osama's identity which in turn convinced President Obama to order the Navy Seals operation.

Pakistan had its own compulsions to agree to the US offer as "the ISI's strategic aim is to balance Indian influence in Kabul; the Taliban is also seen in Pakistan as a source of jihadist shock troops who would back Pakistan against India in a confrontation over Kashmir."

Involving Pasha and Kayani made the task easier for the US Navy Seals team as the duo "were responsible for ensuring that Pakistan's army and air defence command would not track or engage with the US helicopters used on the mission". The US assault team also did not get any resistance at the site where Osama was being kept securely. On the night of 2 May 2011, a six-member US Navy Seals team gunned down Osama in a CIA-led operation in Abbottabad. Soon after the operation a crashed Black Hawk chopper at the site of the operation compelled President Obama to break the story to the world before anyone else did.

"Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body,"

Now whether there was gunfight at all is contested by Hersh who claims that the theory has come up as the highly-trained Navy Seals could not digest the idea that they killed an invalid elderly civilian from point blank range.

Questions are also being raised if Osama actually got a sea burial off the USS Carl Vinson or was hos body simply thrown off the Hindu Kosh Mountains. President Obama probably has a lot to answer.

Meanwhile, the White House has rejected the revelation by Hersh who claimed that an ISI operative revealed the hideout of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden who was later killed in a raid by American commandos. There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact check each one," White House National Security Council spokesman Edward Price said.

"Nevertheless, the notion that the operation that killed Osama bin Laden was anything but a unilateral US mission is patently false," he claimed.” As we said at the time, knowledge of this operation was confined to a very small circle of senior US officials.

"The President decided early on not to inform any other government, including the Pakistani government, which was not notified until after the raid had occurred. We had been and continue to be partners with Pakistan in our joint effort to destroy al-Qaeda, but this was a US operation through and through," the spokesman said.

Hersh also claimed that Dr Shakil Afridi, the physician now jailed in Peshawar for helping the CIA trace bin Laden's hideout, was a CIA asset but did not know about the raid. Afridi was used as a cover to hide the real story, Hersh said.