Bin Laden’s Death: Discrediting the Secret Conspiracy Theory

A week after a lengthy article by American journalist Seymour Hersh was published in the London Review of Books challenging the official version of the pursuit and death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, many famous media outlets and concerned authorities considered it necessary to express their views on the accusations made by the author. His past reputation, built on investigations into the Vietnam War and American abuses in the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison, has indeed made him a key, albeit increasingly controversial, figure. His latest controversial investigations included Turkey’s involvement in the 2013 chemical bombings in Syria, and Opus Dei’s affiliation with the U.S. Army Special Forces.

This time, Hersh assures us that the assault on the al-Qaida leader’s bunker home in the garrison town of Abbottabad, located 100 kilometers (approximately 62 miles) from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, was pure deception. The entire world would thus have been misled by a secret high-level understanding between the United States and Pakistan, with the support of Saudi Arabia, in order to cover up the truth. A certain discretion can be observed in the general tone of the commentaries and analyses raised by Hersh’s text.

Basic Evidence

Of course, his remarks recall (as had already been done) that the official version eliminated or modified details deemed to be prejudicial by the U.S. authorities in terms of images, particularly with regard to the pseudo-resistance of an armed Osama bin Laden. Yet the willingness to show, at all costs, that this was a huge conspiracy led Hersh to put together an intellectual premise based on pieces of evidence which are quite basic. Two indirect sources, one of whom is anonymous, are used to support the crux of his accusations.

The majority of his argument is based on statements made by Asad Durrani, head of Pakistan’s military secret services (ISI) from 1990 to 1992; that is, 19 years prior to Osama bin Laden’s death. Hersh himself said that this source provided second- or even third-hand evidence. The other main source is anonymous and American: a retired intelligence official who is “well-informed” about matters concerning bin Laden, with no further clarification. At other times, he mentions two additional anonymous U.S. sources who had been consultants for the special operations command, as well as one-time corroborations from contacts in Pakistan, also anonymous.

Bin Laden: ISI Prisoner

It is on the basis of these testimonies that Hersh assures us that the CIA did not track down bin Laden by itself by monitoring his mail in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. According to Hersh, an ISI member would have disclosed the al-Qaida leader’s presence in Abbottabad to the CIA, since the Pakistanis would have been hiding him there since 2006 to use him as leverage. He says that bin Laden would have just been an ISI prisoner and would no longer have had links with al-Qaida.

The U.S. raid would have also been a farce that was jointly organized with the Pakistanis, who would have neutralized air space, prevented local police from intervening, and even led special forces to the interior of the house, right to bin Laden’s bed. Moreover, the jihadi leader’s corpse would never have been thrown into the sea after a religious ceremony on board a U.S. warship, but dumped in the Hindu Kush mountains after having been dismembered by bursts of machine gun fire.

Lastly, the head of the Pakistani army in 2011, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and ISI director, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, would have agreed to and supervised this operation in exchange for U.S. financial aid. The only departure from the initial plan was that Obama would normally have made it known to the entire world, seven days later, that Osama bin Laden died in a drone attack in the Pakistani tribal zone. Yet the crash of two helicopters into the house in Abbottabad would have obliged the White House to come out into the open earlier than expected, putting Mr. Kayani and Mr. Pasha in an awkward position.

Strong Tensions Between Washington and Islamabad

What strikes observers of U.S.-Pakistan matters the most after reading the article is the gap between the description of relations between these two countries and the picture portrayed by Hersh following the raid. While the subsequent years have been the setting for very strong tensions between Washington and Islamabad against a backdrop of humiliation in breach of national sovereignty, Hersh states that all of this was only an illusion aimed at covering up the secret conspiracy.

However, one year after the raid, the already turbulent relations between Pakistan and the United States, against a backdrop of disagreement regarding the anti-terrorism fight, continued to worsen following the May 2012 conviction of Shakeel Afridi, a doctor who was accused of aiding the CIA in locating Osama bin Laden through a fake vaccination campaign. Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton considered the decision to be “unjust and unwarranted […] the doctor’s work was in Pakistan’s interests as well as ours and the rest of the world.” Afridi, together with some nurses, wandered through the surrounding areas of the al-Qaida founder’s residence, hoping to provide evidence of its occupants’ identities. In the end, he was denied access to the house. Several U.S. officials then stated that the doctor did not even know that he was working for the CIA and even less so that the target was the world’s most wanted man.

In Hersh’s opinion, Afridi and the vaccination campaign were a complete fabrication meant to protect the existence of the ISI source. During the proceedings, the Pakistani authorities specified that the doctor managed to get a cell phone into bin Laden’s home for vocal recognition. At the end of September 2012, Islamabad expelled all the international employees from the Save the Children nongovernmental organization, which was accused of lending its name to this fake vaccination campaign.

ISI Front Row Center

Three months earlier, the Pakistani government published a list of designated off-limit zones for foreigners, including those working for NGOs, symbolizing the deterioration of relations between Pakistan and humanitarian organizations following the Abbottabad raid. Even personnel from the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees experienced significant problems visiting the southern part of the country. Well-known organizations that are very particular about independence issues, like Doctors Without Borders, were suspected of “espionage” and subject to various accusations, ranging from “theft” to “rape.”

ISI also arrested five other people who had aided the CIA in hunting down Osama bin Laden, including the owner of a house next to that of the jihadi leader in Abbottabad, where agents stayed during stakeouts prior to the attack. Hersh believes that ISI rented this house out to a U.S. team and surveyed the area. A Pakistani army commander would also be found among ISI prisoners. He would have then revealed, on behalf of the CIA, the license plates of the vehicles frequenting the al-Qaida leader’s home.

In June 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed his “concern” for the non-renewal of visas for 120 U.S. trainers on Pakistani soil and the fear that 50 special forces members were being expelled. For its part, the Pakistani army announced “the drastic reduction of U.S. military officials, and exchanges, strictly limiting itself to intelligence.”

Already Mentioned Pakistani Sources

With regard to financial aid as compensation, as Hersh mentioned, we can see that on the contrary, this aid continues to decrease. In 2012, a U.S. Senate commission even adopted reprisal measures aimed at cutting $33 million from the aid allocated to Pakistan due to Islamabad’s clear mistrust.

As for the existence of Pakistani sources that would have facilitated the CIA in locating the al-Qaida leader, numerous articles and books have already addressed the subject. In an article published about Hersh’s investigation in The New York Times, Carlotta Gall, who has followed Afghanistan-Pakistan matters from 2001 to 2013, says that the fact that U.S. services would have had a key informer within ISI has also been circulating for some time. For her part, she further states that a “direct source from Pakistani intelligence,” whom she does not cite, told her that ISI was indeed hiding Osama bin Laden. She then stated that an ISI superior officer made it known to her “through a friend” that an ISI brigadier general had disclosed bin Laden’s location to the Americans as well as the fact that he was being protected by the ISI. Yet she would not have done anything with this evidence due to a lack of confirmation.

The Pakistani newspaper, The News, revealed the name of a brigadier general that matches this man. According to journalist Amir Mir, who covers military and intelligence matters for the newspaper, Usman Khalid is said to be living in the United States today with his family after having received a part of a $25 million reward that was promised by the U.S. for capturing Osama bin Laden. Hersh did not give the name of the officer, but assures us that the officer received part of the money.

The Crucial Role of a Pakistani Agent

From a very early stage, Pakistani political authorities nevertheless anticipated the issue concerning the involvement of Pakistani intelligence agents in the matter, and acknowledged that while the raid had taken them by surprise, they had helped locate the suspect at varying degrees. On May 5, during a visit to France, the prime minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani, told Le Monde that his country had not been let in on the secret raid, but rejecting what he believes to be “unfounded” reproaches of being in collusion with the terrorist movement, he added that “Pakistan cooperated with the United States for the operation’s success; we provided elements that allowed the Americans to track down Osama bin Laden; without us, nothing would have been possible.”

According to Agence France Presse in Islamabad in response to Hersh’s remarks, a former agent for the Pakistani intelligence services would have definitely aided the United States in tracking Osama bin Laden. The press agency’s comments are based on claims made by two former Pakistani officials who have nevertheless discarded the theory of there being official cooperation between the two countries in this matter. According to AFP, this Pakistani military source “who was a serving senior military official at the time of the raid” asserts that a “resourceful and energetic” member of the Pakistan intelligence services played a crucial role in the U.S.’s pursuit of bin Laden. However, he did not know the identity of the CIA’s target.

AFP’s first witness explained that “this guy was inducted at a much later stage only to carry out the ground confirmation; the U.S. needed a ground confirmation which they couldn’t have done without relying on a responsible person.”

The witness further specified that the defector has since been living in the United States. According to the version that was corroborated and again disclosed to the agency by another ex-Pakistani official, Hamid Gul, ISI leader from 1987 to 1988, nicknamed “the Father of the Taliban” and known for his anti-American stance, “there was too big a reward; he became a mole and agent to put in practice their plan.”

Precious Documents

Wanting to prove that the United States could not boast about anything in its pursuit of bin Laden, Hersh further asserts that the U.S. Army Special Forces would not have found any valuable documentation in the al-Qaida leader’s home. Carlotta Gall refutes this point. In May 2012, the U.S. disclosed 17 documents seized from the Abbottabad residence to the public. These documents showed that the al-Qaida founder had no direct control over the groups affiliated with his organization. With a focus on his jihadi combat, he seems to have tried to influence a reality that often escaped him. Thus in vain, he hoped there would be bombing to celebrate the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

For four years now, there has been constant comment; these 17 documents are but a tiny part of the precious material found in Abbottabad. While the unveiling of these documents opportunely accompanies President Obama’s first steps during his second term, these documents alone, which were produced between 2006 and April 2011 — with the last document being written a week before bin Laden’s death — provide special knowledge on the internal secrets of the international jihadi movement.

These documents were not all written by the former jihadi leader. They often refer to exchanges between subordinates and other people. Nevertheless, the contents allow us to discover his fears and advice in light of the U.S. drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal zones, particularly in Waziristan, where a large number of his troops had visibly taken refuge. The pressure from the drones undoubtedly motivated his willingness to extricate one of his sons, Hamza, from this area, as he wanted to shield him in Peshawar, the tribal zones’ administrative center.

In April 2011, he advised al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb to keep its French hostages until the 2012 presidential elections, and to not kill them as long as Paris received support from the Muslim population for its intervention in Libya. In another missive, he did not follow up on the application from Somalia’s al-Shabab (youth) group for membership under al-Qaida’s banner, and as a result, in a separate letter, he sustained masked criticism from another al-Qaida official, no doubt his right hand man, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who would have taken over the organization after his death.

Boosting Obama’s Popularity

Lastly, in these documents we see that bin Laden constantly made an effort to spare the country that sheltered him: Pakistan. On Dec. 3, 2010, Attiya and another al-Qaida mainstay, Yahya al-Libi, threatened Tehrik-e-Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, with reprisals if he continued with his “mistakes […] which are contrary to the objectives of jihad.” However, at no point can we find signs of collusion with Pakistani intelligence services that were suspected of protecting the al-Qaida leader. In Attiya’s letter, he even speaks about an Abu-Salman al-Baluchi, who he describes as “good Mujahid” but adds that “the Baluchi people that he knows work for the Pakistani intelligence; therefore, I advise you to be careful and not talk to him about your news and secrets.”

Another more political dimension quickly arises behind the often fragile arguments in Hersh’s article. According to Hersh, the matter of a fake clandestine raid being staged by Islamabad and Washington to kill bin Laden had but one aim: to boost President Barack Obama’s popularity, who hoped to be elected for a second term, allowing Pakistan to express with great anti-American opinion that they had nothing to do with this assassination.

This is the conspiracy theory that the U.S. journalist wanted to hold up to the entirety of a very complex puzzle and to a local, regional and international reality that opposes simplistic outlines. It’s a pity, because the regional landscape of insurgents and jihadi groups offers an infinite number of research topics, especially with regard to the history of its links with the Pakistani intelligence services.

The White House has “categorically denie[d]” Mr. Hersh’s accusations, viewing the article as “riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods.” The chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Richard Burr, curtly noted that he “[doesn’t] like fiction.”

In the same way, Islamabad asserted that Pakistan was never let in on the Abbottabad raid. According to a highly criticized second inquiry published by Vox Media in the U.S., Hersh has been trying for years to get this investigation published by his former employer, The New Yorker. Vox stated that “the magazine had rejected it repeatedly, to the point of creating bad blood between Hersh and Editor-in-Chief David Remnick.”