
What Do We Really Know About Osama Bin Laden’s Death? - kareemm
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?_r=0
======
crapshoot101
One big danger is assuming that the Pakistani state is some sort of monolithic
entity - it isn't. The ISI is a state within the state, and there are
significant sectarian movements and tribal loyalties on top of it, and that's
without even getting into the nature of the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the
governing apparatus across the country (ie, one big movement calls for working
with the TTP, or the Pakistani Taliban).

In other words, is it possible that elements in the Pakistani state (read: ISI
cells / divisions) and some personnel knew that Bin Laden was in Pakistan?
Almost certainly yes.

Is it probable that it was known widely by the governing apparatus as a sort
of defacto knowledge discussed at say, the cabinel level? I'd say that's
unlikely.

~~~
crapshoot101
Btw, Mark Bowden, the author of the story that's cited as the "official"
version, makes his case here.

[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-
laden...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden-
capture-conspiracy)

------
suprgeek
So we are supposed to believe that:

1) There are super secret helicopters that allowed the US Seals to fly over
Pakistan to Abbotabad (which is nearer to India than to Afghanistan) without
the Pakistani military which is always paranoid about Indian aircraft/drones
knowing about it.

2) Despite one of the Helicopters CRASHING & BURNING and some guy Tweeting
about it, there was no police, no military response in Abbotabad, a Garrison
City where you literally cannot throw a rock and not hit a Military person

3) The US Seals faced no resistance while entering the compound, and OBL had
no guards on the perimeter

4) No single image of OBL's body is in the public domain

5) the Seals flew out to Abbotabad, were on the scene for an hour, flew back
(about ~3 hours) of elapsed time - never once were the Pakistani's any wiser?
No military, no police no official response?

These are only some of the major flaws but if you think about this for
sometime the whole thing totally strains belief.

Maybe Seymor Hersh's tale is not the truth but the official version is
certainly pure fantasy.

~~~
cmdkeen
1\. If Pakistan is paranoid about India then it will have concentrated its air
defences facing India, not Afghanistan. The USA also has the resources to know
the location of Pakistani radar sites and thus plan routes to avoid them.
1&2\. Just because it is a garrison city, and if the Pakistani air defence
noticed, this is not going to be a situation in the playbook. The local watch
officer doesn't have a set of standing orders to deal with this, which means
people need waking up. A full on invasion has plans and procedures, two
helicopters don't constitute that and there will be rules of engagement etc.
Especially in a country with a history of military coups you don't delegate to
local forces the sort of decision making process to go and deal with a
situation like this. Plus the state within a state aspect of ISI cuts both
ways, the local army's reaction can also be explained as "I want nothing to do
with whatever secret stuff is happening over there".

3\. I can absolutely believe that. Guards attract attention and are a massive
risk in terms of extra low level people having information that they may
accidentally leak. He was the most wanted man in the world, how would guards
have helped? He was facing nation states not gangs. He survived all those
years because he kept a low profile with a tiny number of people knowing his
location.

4\. Why would it be released? It isn't like anyone is claiming he is still
alive.

5\. See 1. But also bear in mind that many of the options available to
Pakistan would have had severe repercussions. If they knew (or heavily
suspected) it was a US raid then they were hardly going to shoot it down. It
could have taken a decent amount of time just to run down the "are you sure
this isn't us?" line, proving a negative takes time. Once the information
necessary to make a decision was received it is entirely possible someone
senior made the deliberate call to be deescalatory and deal with the situation
diplomatically - which is arguably the right call. As for the police why would
they interfere in what is clearly (someone's) military operation, something
which is likely to be a career or life ending move.

You need to account for human nature, military bureaucracy and never
attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

~~~
Tloewald
I see you conspicuously do not address point 2 (which, by the way, is also
buttressed by eyewitness testimony that Pakistani plain-clothes security
showed up before the raid and told people to keep clear, etc.)

Your suggestion that all the radar was merely pointed in the wrong direction
is _ridiculous_.

"You need to account for human nature, military bureaucracy and never
attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence"

But this is specifically addressed in the article. The Pakistanis frequently
explain inconvenient facts as incompetence.

~~~
cmdkeen
Nice to see you read my entire post which does very much reference point 2.
The whole "they knew in advance" thing is getting into massive conspiracy
theory territory where a shedload of relatively junior people know a massive
secret and have all managed to keep it. Whilst also of course going and
telling a load of civilians about said secret.

On the radar point I've love you to explain why it is ridiculous. Ground based
radar is sited in a way to reduce the blindspots created by terrain features.
Given Pakistan has viewed Afghanistan as a client state essentially since the
Soviet pullout, yet is terrified of India it is surely credible that detecting
low flying aircraft coming from Afghanistan is not top of the priority list
when it comes to siting their radar?

I like that your conspiracy theory involves a government secretly being much
more competent than it claims to be.

~~~
Tloewald
You don't keep conspiracies secret by keeping quiet, you keep them secret by
burying them in confusing noise -- plausible deniability. This is why we have
crazy stories about flying saucers and people still believe carrots improve
your eyesight. The truth is out there mixed up with all kinds of half truth
and bullshit.

Radar is arranged to create overlapping coverage and handle planes flying
weird courses (and switching to secondary targets and flying home). It's
possible the US knows Pakistans air defence grid so well that it could pull
this off but it wouldn't be because their radar is pointed at India.

Governments claim incompetence to cover up stuff all the time. "We lost those
records." Suggesting that the Pakistani government is incapable of doing this
is silly.

------
n0us
Sounds more likely to me that some people within the Pakistani intelligence
knew Bin Laden was in the country, similarly individuals within the US
intelligence community knew and had known for a while that he was in Pakistan
if not specifically where/how to get him out. The idea that someone sold him
out is certainly plausible.

The idea that there has to be some black and white distinction between the US
cooperating with Pakistani authorities to enter the country and kill him vs
the idea that they had no knowledge at all I think is probably not accurate.
It sounds possible that US authorities alerted Pakistani authorities that they
were going to be conducting a raid and Pakistan could comply or face much
bigger problems. Since they didn't want to be portrayed internationally as
being complicit in housing a well known terrorist, they ignored the radar
signatures of the helicopters just long enough for the raid to happen.

It's too bad they didn't bring the body back to the US. I wouldn't consider
Bin Laden to be a Muslim and therefore not deserving of a proper Muslim
burial. I see no reason they should have disposed of him and prevented some
sort of public verification.

~~~
spacehome
> I wouldn't consider Bin Laden to be a Muslim

He wasn't a Scotsman, either.

~~~
daenz
Just spelling it out for people who might not get it: parent post is referring
to the "No true Scotsman" fallacy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

------
snissn
This is Hersh's publication: [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-
hersh/the-killing-of-...](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-
killing-of-osama-bin-laden)

------
bahmboo
We actually know quite a bit, author of book on the subject defending his
account against Hersh's:

[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-
laden...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden-
capture-conspiracy)

------
vidoc
The official accounts of its killing strongly reminded me of the way the
'link' between 9/11 and Al Qaeda was made.

The passport found by a cop, a few days later near ground zero :P

~~~
pvg
The link between Al Qaeda and 9/11 is an actual link, not a 'link' nor was it
made solely or even primarily on the basis of the passport. If the passport
hadn't been found, we'd still know who was responsible for the attack.

~~~
vidoc
That's right, the actual link - Understand proof, evidence: was the Jalalabad
tape.

Hint: if you do understand arabic, just compare what you hear to the
translation spread in the western medias ;)

------
ryanx435
reading all of these comments reminds me, welcomingly, that most commentators
on HN don't know shit: they are just really good at sounding like they know
what they are talking about.

interestingly this is only ever apparent when a topic comes up that I am an
expert in.

~~~
derefr
I think this sort of topic seems more-inviting-than-usual to those without
expert knowledge. An average thread here about e.g. the BEAM VM (something I
have expertise on) is usually very well-thought-out and fact-based, because
enthusiasm to talk about it usually goes _up_ with experience.

In politics, meanwhile, the true experts are more-often-than-not the people
who left the room early before the shouting began. ;)

~~~
TeMPOraL
pg has a good essay on it, "Keep Your Identity Small" [0].

[0] -
[http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html)

------
DGAP
>Tell the story you want them to believe.

I can speak from first-hand experience that this is exactly how matters of
this nature are handled. The general account of Bin Laden's death may be true,
but the government chose which details they wanted to drive the narrative and
selectively released those. i.e. the heroism of the SEALS vs that our "ally"
was hiding a terrorist.

~~~
bardworx
> I can speak from first-hand experience that this is exactly how matters of
> this nature are handled.

> i.e. the heroism of the SEALS vs that our "ally" was hiding a terrorist.

Perhaps I'm a jaded New Yorker with a family member having, at one time, a
"high title" in an international news corporation. They worked for many
companies, this isn't a liberal/conservative or democrat/republican comment.

I do not trust what our politicians or news corporations say at face value.
Nor am I naive to believe that US "allies" would tell "the whole truth and
nothing but the truth". Every story is laced with certain amount of spice -
this goes for news, company lines, startup elevator pitches, etc.

I'm not sure how you are framing your initial sentence: are you being
fastidious or attempting to be cordial in calling straight bullshit. However,
why is anyone surprised? Everyone spins the truth to their benefit.

The most eye opening experience I've ever had was being in a news room,
reading a live report from Baghdad reporter while listening to an anchor a few
feet away. The disparity between the two was so staggering that I renounced
all news instantly and felt disgusted. I understand news companies have to
make money but what they say isn't "news". In my opinion, CNN, Fox News, CNBC,
and TMZ are all flavors of the same marketing machine.

News/Politicians = Convenient truth which sells ads.

edit: spelling, clarity.

~~~
parm289
Your comment was enlightening and compels me to ask: where can the public get
access to live field reports such as the one you mention? If news companies
transform these reports into faux-news, I'd like to bypass them directly and
read/watch directly from the source. Are there any publicly-accessible
resources that provide access to field reports or "real" news?

~~~
bardworx
Currently, I believe social media is the best source of news; usually it is a
first person account.

I was referring to a internal system which reporters and producers share which
doesn't have a public feed.

If you watch some news reports, you'll notice a bunch of people at their desks
with a small screen next to their larger monitors. That smaller screen is
something like an IRC chat which is used to coordinate assets between
reporters and producers.

[http://radio.foxnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/FNCNewsr...](http://radio.foxnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/FNCNewsroomphoto.jpg)

This is from fox news - notice those small monitors that look out of place.

[https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8018/7405270916_7cd37ba78f_b.j...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8018/7405270916_7cd37ba78f_b.jpg)

This is from CNN, notice that most monitors have CNN as their screen saver
while some, with no one sitting next to them, have block boxes.

~~~
parm289
Thanks for the insight. Are there any particular social media sources you like
to use? I find that Twitter and reddit are the most real-time, but reddit can
often carry its own biases as well. Twitter seems like it could be the best
social media news source if field reporters released news directly through
their streams (ie not tweeting as a representative of FOX or NBC). Essentially
the IRC chat you mentioned above, but public-facing.

~~~
bardworx
Unfortunately I won't be very helpful here as I really just stopped
listening/readying/watching news actively. I'll browse a news aggregate like
Hacker News and bi-weekly do a Google News browse but that's about it.

I can't find the quote now but it was from an editor of a news magazine who
said something like: If you didn't read the news for a whole year, away from
civilization, you probably wouldn't miss anything very important.

------
AJ007
It is criminal to make unauthorized disclosures of classified material. The
numerous conflicts in the story suddenly make a lot more sense after taking
that in to consideration.

This particular piece gives the Obama administration a tremendous pass by
failing to mention what the made up narrative did to the Pakistani vaccination
program.

------
tylerkahn
Can anyone explain what is meant by this:

> During the Iraq war, reporters informed us that a mob of jubilant Iraqis
> toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. Never mind that there
> were so few local people trying to pull the statue down that they needed the
> help of a U.S. military crane.

Here's an (edited) video of the event:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snyz8sn2-z4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snyz8sn2-z4)

I'm 90% certain I watched this live at home in the morning when I was home
sick from school. There were a smattering of people trying to bring it down
and then the crowd got bigger and then the U.S. crane came in and helped. This
happened over the course of an hour or two. I remember thinking it was cool
that U.S. military helped out.

Where does this claim of the false narrative come in?

~~~
Tloewald
Even the idea that Iraqis tried to topple the statue at all (and then the US
"helped") is highly controversial. (That's how CNN portrayed it at the time.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firdos_Square_statue_destructi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firdos_Square_statue_destruction)

If you look how the image is framed (especially in the Fox coverage) the
framing cuts out or de-emphasizes the vehicle while emphasizing the (quite
small) Iraqi crowd. The accompanying commentary is all about the crowd
throwing stuff (they seem to be standing around, mostly). And the later
coverage definitely emphasized the Iraqis pulling down the status with US
help, not (say) the US pulling down the statue while Iraqi's mostly watched.

~~~
dennisgorelik
\-- it was an unnamed Marine colonel, not Iraqi civilians who had decided to
topple the statue; and that a quick-thinking Army psychological operations
team then used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist and made it
all appear spontaneous and Iraqi-inspired \--

The propaganda machine around this event is disgusting.

Take down Saddam's stature by all means, but do not fake it, especially to
your own electorate.

------
squozzer
The logic behind keeping OBL's death a secret has some facets worth examining.

Most reasons given mention OBL's propaganda value - but was he really that
popular? Did he have t-shirts or something similar a la Che Guevara? Would
stronger proof of his death have attracted more people to his cause?

Could not mystique in the end prove stronger than martyrdom? At least a couple
of religions describe the return of a prophet.

Isn't it also possible to have very good reasons for either releasing photos
of his death or not killing him? The kind of terrorist who might emulate OBL
would probably prefer death on the battlefield to capture or execution. So
it's not clear what kind of deterrent effect all the secrecy has delivered.

I can however think of a few reasons to kill him quickly and release as few
details as possible. Independent verification of anything might produce
inconvenient facts, that would cast doubt on all other claims. A commenter
said Pakistan does not act as a single entity, which is true, but neither does
the US. So who knows what a debriefing might have revealed?

------
littletimmy
I trust Seymour Hersh on this.

If my only choices are either believing what the government says, or believing
what a decorated investigative journalist says, I'm going with the
investigative journalist. The government simply has too much of an incentive
to lie about something like this.

~~~
tacos
Hersh is a hero of mine but -- and I hate to play the age card -- he is
getting a little wackier as he ages. I'm not sure why he rushed to print this
story. There's nothing time-critical here.

Also it's not a question of accepting Hersh vs the government. It's a matter
of balancing Hersh's investigative reporting with the details provided by
other investigative reporters.

Seems like he's onto something but, like he was told when his story was
rejected, I don't think he has it all figured out yet.

EDIT: These two sentences in particular are very un-Hirsch: "(The informant
and his family were smuggled out of Pakistan and _relocated in the Washington
area_. He is now a consultant for the CIA.)" Doesn't name the informant (who
would obviously be in a protection program) but gives the city and employer?
Why? It's unrelated to the story. If it's only important enough to be in
parenthesis, probably shouldn't risk putting a man and his family's life at
risk over the disclosure.

~~~
dennisgorelik
> There's nothing time-critical here.

The sooner truth comes out - the faster we learn from our mistakes.

~~~
tacos
The mistake here was not having a tight enough lie as cover for a covert
operation. I assure you the CIA and White House learned from that mistake four
years ago.

Rushing to publish unsubstantiated anonymous information that other
investigators politely but publicly disagree with is hardly the path to Truth.
A better piece published in a more reputable publication, however, might be.

~~~
dennisgorelik
> other investigators politely but publicly disagree

Could you name investigators that disagree with Hersh's version of events
about killing Osama Bin Laden?

~~~
tacos
Did you read the article?

‘‘It’s always possible,’’ Bowden told me. ‘‘But given the sheer number of
people I talked to from different parts of government, for a lie to have been
that carefully orchestrated and sustained to me gets into faked-moon-landing
territory.’’ Other reporters have been less generous still. ‘‘What’s true in
the story isn’t new, and what’s new in the story isn’t true,’’ said Peter
Bergen of CNN, who wrote his own best-selling account of the hunting and
killing of bin Laden, ‘‘Manhunt.’’

... Filkins, who covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for The Times before moving
to The New Yorker, spent about a week running the tip by sources inside the
Pakistani government and military with little success. ‘‘It wasn’t even that I
was getting angry denials,’’ Filkins told me. ‘‘I was getting blank stares.’’

------
tripzilch
Not a word about the vaccination program?

It was reported both in the mainstream media at the time, as well as featuring
in Hersh's version of events. They (of course) don't quite match up, but the
vaccination program definitely played a role in both versions.

It's a bit weird to leave it out. Not like the reporter wouldn't have come
across it, and the repercussions are quite real.

------
Zelphyr
On an unrelated note; what's with the over use of the word "narrative" in this
article? It seems to be a fad lately for people to use it to sound smart (I
guess) but you'd think the editor of the NY Times would've told the guy, "try
picking a different word for once, eh?" It's used so much it's almost
distracting.

~~~
burnte
It's a fancier way to say "story" and it's really grating. It's similar to how
"looks" and "appearance" became "optics" ("this looks bad/this has a bad
appearance" is now "these are bad optics") and "math" or "algebra" became
"calculus" (what's the political math/algebra here?" is "what's the political
calculus?"). It's the dumbing down of content disguised by fancier words.

~~~
gozo
Narrative can mean story as in "a spoken or written account of connected
events", but in can also have further meaning as in "a representation of a
particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an
overarching set of aims or values". So the governments recollection of how
they killed Osama bin Laden is to some extent a story, but it's also part of
the narrative of e.g. the "war on terror".

I'm not sure it's so much dumbing down as careless use of word. Before you
teach something you often have to unlearn the things you learned as part of
learning. Overuse of certain words or concepts are quite common in technology
too. Though we also often make the somewhat different mistake of being too
specific.

------
peter303
The main whitewashing Ive heard was he and some of his family were shot in
cold blood, i.e. Weaponless and without provocation. I am guessing due to the
tight constraints of the operation and the difficultly of a high profile
prisoner. I dont know why some thought they had to whitewash the story,
because most people would understand the necesity.

------
jokoon
So if he is not dead, it was either:

* A move to push OBL to come out of the bushes to denounce its fake death, and get an opportunity to catch him this way ?

* A move to get Obama reelected ?

What else could be seen as foul ? I mean it's a war against Islamic terrorism,
I'd understand if some plays were little lies. Manipulating the public can be
okay if it's not for risky purposes.

------
dennisgorelik
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520984)

------
transfire
I go by the King's rules: No head? Then he ain't dead.

------
api
It sounds like what really happened was that Pakistan (or elements therein)
was protecting him, sold him out (or someone did for money), and the US just
went in and mopped him up... and then sexed up the story to help re-elect
Obama and probably to cover for the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program.

I suppose it's also possible that there is some alternative narrative that's
being covered up, such as the CIA actually keeping him alive (or telling
Pakistan to do so) as "bait" to catch other members of his network or for some
sort of propaganda or psyops purpose. Maybe we'll know in 25 years.

------
danso
Sorry to derail the discussion but a possible word of warning: whatever is
going on in the OP's page and code, it's causing the tab Safari on my iPad
(Air 2) to completely freeze. Not bad enough that I have to do a hard reboot,
but enough that the entire page is completely unresponsive. This is the first
time this is happened to me on a NYT story page.

~~~
jzwinck
Same thing in Google Chrome on Android. I can only scroll until the page
finishes loading (ads?), then the font size gets rather large, a menu bar
appears at the top of the page, and it can no longer scroll. Like you I have
never seen this before on NYT.

~~~
mirceal
by the time you guys figure out what's going on, you're going to be left with
a broken blown-up black hawk in your browser tab

------
Patient0
I don't find his cover up story at all credible - Pakistan knew where Bin
Laden was the whole time and kept it a secret from the U.S.? For what possible
gain?

~~~
CDRdude
There has been a good amount of U.S. aid money going to Pakistan since the war
on terror. Pakistan would have the incentive to prolong the war on terror, may
have reasoned that a living Bin Laden was a cash cow.

~~~
RaleyField
Or could risk total embargo from every NATO country and every country that can
be coerced to enforce embargo. They could find themselves in situation way
worse than that of North Korea.

~~~
littletimmy
This would never happen because nukes. Pakistan has 100+ nuclear warheads -
the day they fall into the hands of terrorists is the day we're all toast. No
one is ever going to embargo Pakistan completely even if their leaders are
openly sponsoring terror - what's going to happen at worst is forced regime
change.

------
Simulacra
...That he's dead? Do we really need to know more than that?

------
unclebucknasty
And, yet, the biggest questionable detail of all goes virtually unchallenged.

~~~
coldcode
I still have my doubts he actually was alive when he was "killed".

------
chejazi
tl;dr:

 _Hersh’s most consequential claim was about how bin Laden was found in the
first place. It was not years of painstaking intelligence-gathering, he wrote,
that led the United States to the courier and, ultimately, to bin Laden.
Instead, the location was revealed by a ‘‘walk-in’’ — a retired Pakistani
intelligence officer who was after the $25 million reward that the United
States had promised anyone who helped locate him. For that matter, bin Laden
was hardly ‘‘in hiding’’ at all; his compound in Abbottabad was actually a
safe house, maintained by the Pakistani intelligence service. When the United
States confronted Pakistani intelligence officials with this information,
Hersh wrote, they eventually acknowledged it was true and even conceded to
provide a DNA sample to prove it._

------
spoiledtechie
While we are on the subject, has anyone else really looked at the image of
Obama in the situation room looking intently at the TV? The picture the
Whitehouse put out looks like they put Obama's head on another persons body.
Seriously, I'm not trying to change subjects, but there is a white collar that
sort of appears behind and over his next, but doesn't actually fit with his
head and body. I would love to know if anyone else bas noticed this?

