
The Killing of Osama Bin Laden - clarkm
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden
======
gkoberger
I read this article, and it's a great read. But my reaction was "even if this
is true... so what?"

If they had used the lie to get support for "enhanced interrogations" (like
people quoted in the article recommended), I'd be mad. If the US government
had been holding bin Laden and waiting for the right time, I'd be mad, too. If
Obama blatantly lied about the story for political points, I'd be mad.

But, basically, it seems the story happened mostly like it was told to us, and
the changes were mainly to not implicate Pakistan or the informants. I wish we
had a more transparent government, but hey, we flew into another country and
murdered an elderly man... The story we got could have been worse. The gist
seems to be true.

The claim is that Obama used it for political points, and he certainly did
benefit. However the story he told was _much_ closer to the truth than the
story the CIA/people quoted wanted to tell. They wanted to say it happened via
drone attacks. So, we're mad that Obama didn't lie enough?

The only "lie" from Obama was that it was a courier (rather than a deflector
who probably has family in Pakistan), and that they were met with resistance
(which would have implicated Pakistan and upset the Saudis/etc if the truth
came out).

(Note that similar stories came out after we captured Saddam Hussein, saying
that he wasn't found in a hole:
[http://nation.com.pk/international/14-Apr-2015/saddam-was-
no...](http://nation.com.pk/international/14-Apr-2015/saddam-was-not-found-in-
a-hole-as-claimed-by-us-report))

~~~
angersock
rogerhoward makes some excellent points.

Some other things, assuming for the sake of discussion that this writeup is
accurate:

1\. It damages the relationship of the jackboot community and the
administration: the SEALs were deployed to hit Bin Laden, and were told that
this would be done without fanfare. Instead, within hours, the White House and
company are bragging about the whole operation. This is not how proper
clandestine things are done, one imagines.

2\. It damages the relationship of the jackboots in particular and the
administration: having to suffer the indignity of signing what is a
effectively an NDA for premeditated murder--and then watching two folks get
away with breaching it because it supports the new, official story--cannot
have been easy for the folks involved in the raid.

3\. It damages the State department's credibility (hah) with Pakistan. We
agreed that steps would be taken to reinforce the government's position with
its people, and that we wouldn't implicate them--they would save face.
Instead, we put up a flimsy half-baked cover story, and decide not to go with
one that leads to lots of easy questions, which will never have answers that
are either convenient or satisfying. Look how Gates reacted during the thing--
was not happy.

4\. It damages the relation of the government and its people. As seen through
the FOIA requests, it's pretty obvious that several parts of the story don't
really jive. So, it's obvious that there is either bad record keeping in
place, or a coverup of some sort. Not in the dramatic sense, mind you, but
just minor misalignments of documented reality with official story.

~

The problem isn't that they had the guy whacked--it's that they perhaps did
such a thoroughly and unneeded job of lying about it afterwards.

If you want to see how this sort of thing should be done, look at the
Israelis.

~~~
ajays
> Instead, within hours, the White House and company are bragging about the
> whole operation.

That's because the helicopter crash threw the old plans out the window. Once
there's physical evidence of the Americans' raid, you've got to get ahead of
the story. Obama simply had no choice.

~~~
antimagic
Personally, I feel like this whole question is just one of many instances of
information in the article that I find highly dubious.

This is Osama bin Laden. The US had been hunting him for years. There was _no_
way that the president wasn't going to announce his death from the rooftops,
and I have a hard time believing that any senior member of special ops thought
otherwise. At those levels even the military officers are canny political
operatives, they don't get their stars otherwise, and they would have known
that this raid was going to be publicised.

So yeah, the fact that the White House was talking about this mission mere
hours after its completion is a total non-surprise, and it would have been
obvious to anyone involved that this would be the case, helicopter crash or
not.

------
slr555
Reporting like this is so unconvincing because all the sources are anonymous
and there is no way to corroborate the assertions of the reporter. It's as
though he asking us to accept a story told by the Easter Bunny and confirmed
by the Tooth Fairy. The explanation of why all the subterfuge is necessary is
quite unconvincing. If you consider each of the reasons separately they make
little sense. Given that the US SpecOps community is nearly completely
Republican in its sympathies it makes no sense that this story would go
unleaked by those elements. This version of the events also requires a vast
conspiracy within the journalist community that has widely reported on the
story from the perspective of numerous SEALs. Finally, what of all the injured
SEALs on the crashed helo. No medevac, no casevac, no reportage. The US would
definitely sacrifice a dozen lives to keep advanced stealth technology out of
the hands of other governments. Fails Occam's Razor miserably.

~~~
HillRat
Unfortunately, Sy Hersh has built a reputation for both breaking big stories
but also getting big claims wrong. Personally, I find his description of his
primary source a bit worrying: "(a retired senior intelligence official) ...
(knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in
Abbottabad) ... (privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid),
and (to the various after-action reports)."

That's four assertions about his source, and none of them indicate that the
source had any official role in the lead up to or the execution of the mission
-- or, indeed, that he was even active in the IC at the time. That, plus the
source's use of Vietnam-era terminology, suggests he could have started his
career in the 1960s or very early 1970s, and thus could be at least five and
as much as 10-15 years retired from the IC (assuming he had a full career at
the Agency), and relying on contacts still active in the community for his
information. The only statement that indicates the source had access to
primary-source docs regards the SEALs' AARs, and even then it's impossible to
be certain that Hersh's phrasing actually means that.

In this, Hersh is starting to remind me of many conservative writers who
relied on similar source of often dubious quality -- Michael Ledeen's close
connections with SISMI (now AISE) being one example, or the network of former
CIA officers who whiled away the post-Stansfield Turner years running private
intelligence shops and flowing questionable allegations to the _National
Review_.

If Hersh _is_ right -- and "right" in this case, given the explosive nature of
his allegations, doesn't even mean in the ballpark, just playing the same game
-- then this story is huge, the sort of thing that would forever color Obama's
place in history and would probably bring Hillary's political hopes crashing
to ground. But extraordinary claims require &c., and the fact that Hersh had
to publish this in the _LRB_ rather than The _New Yorker_ or _WaPo_ (both
regular outlets for many of his scoops) indicates that their editors were very
uncomfortable with his sourcing as well.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
I read the article, because it's at such variance with the official version. I
have no idea how close to reality it is. My gut feeling is that your
skepticism is justified.

 _would probably bring Hillary 's political hopes crashing to ground_

Here we disagree. To put it crudely: NOBODY GIVES A FUCK!

Let's look at something IMO much more serious, Hillary's prowess at trading
commodities.[1] She supposedly makes a cash deposit of under $1,000 into a
trading account, and through a series of quite astute trades walks away with
about $100,000 (about $323,000 in today's money) in about ten months, all as
part-time activity.

As someone summarized it:

    
    
       Only four explanations can account for
       these remarkable results.
    
       1) Blair may have been an exceptionally
       good trader.
    
       2) Hillary Clinton may have been
       exceptionally lucky.
    
       3) Blair may have been front-running
       other orders.
    
       4) Or Blair may have arranged to have a
       broker fraudulently assign trades to
       benefit Clinton's account.
    

Unless she was one of the greatest "amateur" commodities traders of all time,
this was nothing more than a bribe to the Governor and First Lady of Arkansas.

But, like I said, NOBODY GIVES A FUCK. As Wikipedia put it: "There were no
official investigations of the trading and Clinton was never charged with any
wrongdoing."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_controversy)

~~~
nl
Nobody gives a fuck because there's no story. It was a long time ago and the
combination of Blair being good and Clinton being lucky. They all made money,
Clinton got out of the market before Blair, and then Blair went on to lose
money.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_the combination of Blair being good and Clinton being lucky_

Did you read the Wiki? Someone did some calculations of the "luck" involved:

    
    
       Using a model that was stated to give the
       hypothetical investor the benefit of the doubt,
       they concluded that the odds of such a return
       happening were at best 1 in 31 trillion
    

For comparison, current Powerball odds are a mere 1 in 175 million.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#Payout_and_odds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#Payout_and_odds)

~~~
nl
Yeah. If you calculate the odds on any given combination of trades they are
frequently vanishingly rare.

Lottery wins are incredibly unlikely too, and yet people win them.

~~~
mercer
Yes, but if the person winning the lottery is part of the lottery company, or
has connections to it, a lot of suspicion seems warranted.

------
mynameishere
_‘We thought the best way to ensure that his body was given an appropriate
Islamic burial,’ Brennan said, ‘was to take those actions that would allow us
to do that burial at sea.’_

Islamic burials don't specify unceremoniously chucking people into the deep
blue sea. Occam's Razor suggests that he was thrown into the ocean to prevent
proper identification. Or, if it was really him, that he was killed and
discarded to prevent interviews/investigations into his past associations.

The fact that the government would pretend to worry about "appropriate Islamic
burials" stinks to high heaven.

~~~
ern
He was probably too badly disfigured by having a few clips unloaded into his
face, and the US didn't want any pictures leaking out.

The other justification for his at-sea burial, that I've read-that his grave
would become a place of pilgrimage if his body were returned to Saudi Arabia
is laughable on its face to anyone who knows the least bit about wahabbism.

------
simonh
Even if this article is completely true - so what? Even if he has found a
'smoking gun' to some double-switch operation by the CIA, and the public story
isn't the whole truth, who cares? Job done.

The details simply don't hold any water though.

1) You don't destroy military hardened electronics systems with concussion
grenades. All you'd do is scorch the paintwork.

2) The 'killed by a drone, confirmed by DNA evidence' supposed cover story is
ludicrous. If he was killed by a drone high in the sky over the mountains, how
on earth is the US supposed to have got a sample of his DNA?

3) The Saudi government would never fund Bin laden, as he was utterly opposed
to the ruling family. Yes he was funded by Saudis, but not by the government.
Outsiders frequently make this mistake, assuming that Saudi funding for Bin
laden, and his family connections there, mean Saudi official support. That's a
complete missunderstanding though and implies the author only has a pretty
superficial grasp of the relationship.

4) The story that the SEALS were shooting in self defence is entirely
necessary, otherwise they would be open to accusations of murder. They would
know that and the idea that they would complain about it is ridiculous.

5) If only Bin Laden was killed, who did all the corpses locals found and
photographed in the building belong to? Did the SEALs plant the AK-47s and
Makarov pistol found at the compound? But if the SEALs were against the
administration's re-packaging of the details of the raid and are as above-
board as described in the article, why would they collude by planting fake
evidence?

The whole thing is completely incoherent.

------
mst
> The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair,
> and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services
> Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance

Well, duh. The ISI officers and generals needed to be able to claim that and
if the US people wanted their co-operation they needed to provide plausible
deniability.

I am confused as to why this is presented as remotely surprising.

------
20kleagues
The biggest glaring fallacy with the CIA story I see is that the Pakistani's
did not know about the presence of OBL in the country. The article mentions
that the house was 2 miles from the military academy. Abbotabad is a garrison
city, which means that there is quite literally armed forces present
everywhere. I have been to Abbotabad, and there is no way that the Pakistanis
would not have known about it. It is akin to saying that OBL was found a
couple of miles from West Point and the Americans did not know.

~~~
77ko
I have been to Abbotabad too, and many other places right next to and within
military bases in Pakistan, and it is pretty damn easy to live there
undetected. No one is driving around checking houses. And even those who do,
like meter checkers, are happy enough not to read your meter given say, 10 to
20 dollars worth of incentive.

Also Abbotabad is a real life city, not just some garrison town. And even if
it was just a garrison town, it would still befull of un-armed non-military
people. How do you think military people live in a garrison city? They aren't
faceless storm troopers, many have families living right there. And many, many
civilians providing services, from food to dry cleaning to road maintenance to
flower delivery etc etc.

~~~
20kleagues
It is not about living undetected. Of course it is full of civilians, but the
point being that due to current threats to ALL army bases and centres, there
is always a check in place for security purposes. And with the notorious hand
of the Pakistani intelligence almost everywhere, the narrative in the article
seems highly likely.

------
trop
> By then, the military had constructed a mock-up of the compound in
> Abbottabad at a secret former nuclear test site in Utah, and an elite Seal
> team had begun rehearsing for the attack.

Question: What former nuclear test site in Utah? Am not familiar with tests in
Utah. The model seems to have been in North Carolina? See
[http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/10/satellite-images-
captu...](http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/10/satellite-images-capture-cias-
secret-bin-laden-training-facility/57771/)

------
danieltrembath
'faced with an unarmed elderly civilian'. I know it's only a quote from 'an
offical', but Osama was 54 when he was killed. Ill possible. But hardly
'elderly'.

~~~
staunch
The author selected that quote, like all the rest, to make a point. It's
little slip ups like that that let you judge someone's biases in an objective
way. No fair reporter would imply Osama Bin Laden was ever 1. unarmed 2.
elderly 3. a civilian. It's a deeply wrong and misleading quote, intended to
bias the reader in favor of the author's narrative. If these guys would order
a hit on a a little old innocent grandpa, what wouldn't they do?

The article's theory is built on a house of cards, like a most conspiracy
theories, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

~~~
bcoates
Is 'Osama was an unarmed civilian' even under dispute? I thought that was the
official story.

~~~
Karunamon
Even 'civilian' in that context is misleading. Technically true, but
misleading, as it's trying to play up the innocence of the person.

A drug cartel kingpin is technically a "civilian", as is the head of a global
terrorism network, as is the head of a human trafficking network. None of them
are members of a recognized country's militia, but they still command
significant force.

------
ajays
I'm not buying this story. There is a lot of fudging going on.

Here's a gem, for example: "None of the Seals thought that Obama was going to
get on national TV and announce the raid."

What the hell. How do you explain a downed stealth helicopter in Abbottabad
then? It just happened to come down by itself?

~~~
paradox242
Because the agreed-upon cover story was that OBL was killed in a drone strike,
not by a Navy Seals team.

------
kens
I don't want to be nitpicking conspiracy dude, but one thing seems wrong. The
article mentions several times that the electricity to the town was cut for
the raid. But it was widely reported that someone live-tweeted the raid as it
was happening (without knowing what was going on), which shows the power must
have been on. [http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/live-tweet-bin-laden-
raid/](http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/live-tweet-bin-laden-raid/)

~~~
asadlionpk
Umm people use GPRS/3G/4G all the time here. And we have power backups in most
homes since grid is not so reliable here.

Source: I am writing this on a highway in a rural part of Pakistan. Abbottabad
is very urban.

~~~
selimthegrim
Wait I thought Pakistan just got 4G licenses late last year? When I went a
year ago even Mobilink didn't have 4G?

~~~
asadlionpk
Yes, you are right. Even then, GPRS still works better here than some areas of
SF. Also, since each home has their own UPS backup. WIfi would still be
working since phone lines were working (DSL via phone line is common here).

In short: tweeting would definitely not have been that trivial.

------
IBM
I desperately want this to be true just because I'm a political junkie and a
student of history and it'd be a great start to the week to see the White
House, State department, Pakistan, and everyone else respond to it. Definitely
rooting for a Charlie Rose interview of Hersh. But there does seem to be only
one main source he relies on and the whole story and its details just seem so
perfect.

It will be interesting to see if his story is corroborated in the weeks and
months to come.

~~~
Estragon
What were his most interesting points?

Trying to decide whether to read it. It's long.

~~~
deepsleep3r
\- ISI bribed tribal folks in Hindu Kush region to turn over Bin Laden
sometime during 2001-2006. \- From 2006 onwards senior elements within the ISI
kept Bin Laden hidden from the world. -ISI was essentially playing a double
game, telling americans they knew nothing about Bin Laden's whereabouts and
receiving boat loads of weapons and cash to deal with terrorism; while telling
the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda they would keep Bin Laden safe from the
Americans as long as they didn't cross any boundaries set by the ISI. Saudi's
helped the ISI with Bin Laden's welfare and well being apparently. -Americans
didn't sherlock holmes Bin Laden's hideout but a leaker from the ISI had come
to the American's and asked for the 25 million dollar reward and safety of his
family in exchange for Bin Laden. -Bin Laden living in Abbottabad was under
constant monitoring by ISI living in a de facto prison. He was not running any
command center but living out his last few years while health deteriorating.
\- Obama wanted proof before sending Seals a senior ISI medical officer was
living in Abbottabad and got that proof.He was given a portion of the reward.
\- White House tells Pasha and Kayani( heads of Army and ISI) they are
monitoring a high value target in Abbotabad. Pasha and Kayani freak out and
cooperate because if Pakistani Public, Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda find that
ISI and Pak Army gave Bin Laden away to the Americans all hell would break
loose. So the narrative of the "All American" no help from anyone had to be
constructed, because how would it look if the American people found out the
Pakistan Army and ISI was hiding Bin Laden 2 miles from a major Pak Army
training facility. \- Pasha and Kayani make sure the two BlackHawks are not
intercepted by Pakistani Airforce no radar goes off, and the ISI agents
guarding the house are not present when the Seal team comes in. -Unarmed Bin
Laden is executed, no firefight ensued as the compound was empty( only Bin
Laden and his family) the Seals chill for 20 minutes waiting for some other
helicopter to come because one of the helicopters really did crash . If this
where real the Seals would have all gotten in 1 helicopter and gotten the hell
out, but there was no threat. -Obama really wanted to brag so instead of
planning a story, he immediately got a speech prepared(lots of discrepancies
in his speech that night he thanks the pakistani's in their continued support
to fighting terrorism). CIA and senior Army people freak out he wasn't even
supposed to mention the pakistanis, lots of backtracking and revisions of the
story come in the days that follow.

~~~
kartman
Thanks for summary, I dint read the article.

Looks like they say there was no firefight, but I remember there was a guy
from Bay area, Pakistani techie in Abottabad that night and he live tweeted
the gun fight and explosions before any news came out. Wonder how that would
fit this new narrative?

~~~
ern
Gunshots are gunshots. It would be hard for someone listening from a distance
to tell who was doing the firing, or if there was two-way fire.

------
DonGateley
"High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy"

Is there a person alive that doesn't know this? The same can be said of any
powerful nation's policy throughout most if not all of history. Ending the
story on such a truism as if it's an exposure is lame.

------
bjornsteffanson
I spent an embarrassing amount of time scratching that asterisk wondering how
my screen got so dirty.

------
selimthegrim
This is the interview he refers to with Durrani in February
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeWkBYfJBM);](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeWkBYfJBM\);)
I remain as unconvinced now as I was by Carlotta Gall's clearly one-source
one-note story or the unconvincing psychological analysis of the Pakistan army
from this 'retired source', (why couldn't he just go try to wangle an
interview with the informant?) His contention that the Americans were running
Jundullah in Balochistan was eventually made out to be unfounded. This is
plausible but unfounded, it doesn't ring fully true just yet.

------
tangled
I am reminded that (i) there is, as far as I know, no independent
corroboration of the purported killing of Osama Bin Laden, and (ii) it was
politically a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.

~~~
mikeash
If he was still alive then he or his allies wasted a wonderful opportunity to
discredit the US. I don't think they're that dumb.

It's like one of the arguments against faked moon landings. The Soviets would
have been highly motivated to disprove the events, and had the skills and
resources to do so if they had been fake, yet they didn't.

~~~
tangled
I think it's unlikely that he's still walking around :) However, it is
possible that he died or was captured some time before he was allegedly
killed. I think that we are unlikely to see any independent evidence either
way.

Again, this was a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.

~~~
Permit
>Again, this was a very convenient outcome for the Obama Administration.

So was the unemployment rate falling. What's your point?

Something "good" happening during an administration is not evidence of
conspiracy.

~~~
tangled
"Trust me, this great thing happened which is going to increase my popularity.
There's no to verify that this great thing actually happened, but you know
that I wouldn't lie to you."

~~~
mikeash
Given how embarrassing it was to the Pakistani government, wouldn't the fact
that they never disputed its occurrence lend great weight to the official
story? Unless the theory is that the raid happened but just didn't result in
killing the guy, which seems pretty weird.

~~~
tangled
At its peak in 2010, the US gave Pakistan 4.5 billion dollars in aid [1]
(although in more recent years this value has decreased). That sort of money
can buy a lot of cooperation.

[1] [http://www.cgdev.org/page/aid-pakistan-
numbers](http://www.cgdev.org/page/aid-pakistan-numbers)

~~~
arethuza
Isn't it pretty likely that Pakistan, or more specifically the ISI, used some
of that money to fund the Taliban? Sandy Gall mention this in his book "War
Against the Taliban" \- here is a review:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9042196...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9042196/War-
Against-theTaliban-by-Sandy-Gall-review.html)

------
jonathanehrlich
Mr Hersh is still stuck in Vietnam. This is foxnews quality reporting. Brutal.

------
comrade1
I remember where I was when the towers fell (working at home that day in
s.f.). I remember where I was when Reagan was shot (playing mini golf in
junior high).

I don't remember where I was when Osama bin laden was killed. It just felt
like such an inevitability and correction to history that it should have
happened already. Remembering what I was doing was pointless.

Also, everything before was such a waste. We wasted so many lives in Iraq when
the real enemies were the Pakistani intelligence service and Saudi Arabia. I
just wanted to forget it all.

~~~
angersock
There arguably weren't any real enemies to the Republic, other than the folks
who saw an opportunity to use fear to repeal our rights.

~~~
afarrell
Defining an "enemy of the Republic" really is just a rhetorical technique to
assert what the goals and values of the Republic are. Sometimes it is one that
the residents of the republic broadly agree with because they share those
values and goals either explicitly ("I want myself and my kin to avoid getting
killed in a building collapse") or implicitly ("I'm totally fine with a
credit-based economy, though I wish it worked out better for my group.")

Occasionally it is a rhetorical technique with powder and steel behind it.

~~~
angersock
Perhaps I was a little too flowery. :)

Anyways, the point intended was that, while there are transient enemies of The
American Dream (however one may wish to define it within reason, but including
the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and general zeitgeist of 20th century
America), they tend to go up in flames with their victims.

The true enemies, though, see that by either exploiting or altering the
processes of government and manipulating popular opinion, and they tend to
integrate themselves with the host and extract as much value as they can. They
are also more likely to stay around, having become part of the system. It's
unfortunate.

------
a8da6b0c91d
OBL's not dead. He mostly hangs out in the break room at Langley. HW Bush,
prince Bandar, and some other guys from congress stop by and they all
reminisce about the good old days.

