WASHINGTON: “More than ever,” says legendary US investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh when asked if he still believes Pakistan helped the United States
get Osama bin Laden (OBL).
When the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist first made this claim in an
article published last year, it shook Washington and forced the White House to
reject the story as false. Major US media outlets also rejected his claim as
incorrect.
But Mr Hersh repeated the claim in his new book, “The Killing of Osama
bin Laden,” published this week, insisting that he was right.
In an interview to Dawn on Tuesday, Mr Hersh said that since last year
he had seen new evidence that cemented his belief that the official US account
of how OBL was found in his compound and killed was deceptive.
He reiterated his claim that Pakistan had detained OBL in 2006 and kept
him prisoner with the backing of Saudi Arabia. The United States and Pakistan
then struck a deal: The US would raid bin Laden’s compound but make it look as
if Pakistan was unaware.
“I learned a lot more than I knew in the beginning,” he said.
“Pakistan is in constant alert because of India. Their radars are
watching, their F-16s are up all the time,” said Mr Hersh while arguing that it
was not possible for US helicopters to enter Abbottabad without alerting the
Pakistanis.
He said the then army and ISI chiefs had made this deal with the
Americans, which upset other Pakistani generals.
“The then head of Pakistan’s Air Defence Command was very, very upset.
He was ready to go public,” said Mr Hersh, claiming that the disgruntled
general was made PIA chairman after his retirement to compensate for his
silence.
In an interview to Democracy Now, a network of more than 1,400 radio and
television outlets, Mr Hersh said the US and Pakistan had jointly created the
‘myth’ “we discovered” where he was living.
“What I know is … that in August of 2010, a Pakistani a colonel … came
into our embassy, went to the then CIA Station Chief Jonathan Bank, and said:
‘We’ve had bin Laden for four years’.”
Mr Hersh told Dawn that the colonel was later moved to the US and was
now living somewhere near Washington.
“The Pakistani intelligence picked him (bin Laden) in the Hindu Kush
area, built the compound in Abbottabad and put him there,” he said. “Pakistani
officials did so because the Saudis asked them to. The Saudis did not want
Americans to interrogate OBL.”
According to Mr Hersh, when the CIA asked Pakistani officials to make
the May 2, 2011, operation at OBL’s compound in Abbottabad a surprise raid,
they agreed “because they had kept OBL in custody without telling us”.
The Americans were already very upset and the Pakistanis did not want to
make it worse, he added.
“I wrote the name of the station chief, Jonathan Bank, something you are
not supposed to do, but he did not attack me for doing this. He did not
contradict my story, although if there is one guy who can end my story, it is
him,” Mr Hersh said.
“Of course not, I have a great deal of sources here,” said Mr Hersh when
asked if he based his story entirely on Pakistani intelligence source.
“I was going to take a chance that Bank would not succumb to pressure. I
knew a lot about him. He’s a Harvard grad, very bright guy, very competent. And
I just didn’t think he would be trotted out by the CIA to say, ‘What? What’s
Hersh writing about? I don’t know anything about a walk-in,” Mr Hersh told
Democracy Now.
“I did have more contact with people in the ISI after I wrote. I learned
much more, that gave me much more flesh on the skimpy bones I guess I had,” he
said.
Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2016
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