Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh calls bullshit on the White House Story about how they found and killed Osama bin Laden. Based on his research, Hersh says that Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence had been holding bin Laden prisoner in his compound, that the CIA didn’t find him by tracking his messengers, and that the Pakistan army cleared the way for the Seal raid.
From the London Review of Books:
This spring I contacted (former ISI head Asad) Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.
“The Killing of Osama bin Laden” (London Review of Books)