Did the Obama administration lie about the death of Osama Bin Laden? London Review of Books.

Osama Bin Laden. Wikimedia Commons/canadafreepress.com

Seymour Hersh, the man that broke the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib stories, has accused the Obama administration of lying about the death of Osama Bin Laden. London Review of Books. Hersh claims that Pakistan always knew of Bin Laden's location and essentially traded him for a resumption of military aid. Bin Laden was essentially under house arrest and was being guarded by Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI). Hersh also claims that the story about how Bin Laden was found was a total fabrication as well. Instead of finding his courier, Hersh claims that a Pakistani turncoat walked into the CIA station chief's post in Islamabad and turned over Bin Laden in exchange for  the $25 million dollar reward.

 The raid that killed Bin Laden was done with full knowledge of the Pakistani Military and the ISI. The original plan was to claim that Bin Laden was killed in a drone strike, but that fell apart when one of the helicopters crashed, necessitating a new cover story. Hersh also claims that Bin Laden's body was not buried at sea, but was instead thrown out of the helicopter due to the fact that it was mostly destroyed in the raid. Hersh has received criticism for his use of confidential sources in this and other stories but a high ranking general from the Pakistani Military went on the record to confirm the story.

My Comment:

I've talked about Hersh before. Last year he released devastating report about the U.S. role in the Syrian conflict and what really happened during the terror attack at Benghazi. That report, among other things, claimed that the CIA station in Benghazi was a front for an arms smuggling ring to supply weapons for the rebels in Syria and that Turkey  gave chemical weapons to the Al-Nusra front in Syria for a false flag operation. Hersh got scathing criticism for his use of anonymous sources back then, just like he is getting now. Though in both cases I think Hersh, despite his lack of check-able sources, got closer to the truth then the mainstream media likes to admit. 

The fact of the matter is that you aren't going to find to many people that would go on the record about these kinds of things. Given how the Obama administration treats people who talk to the media about classified secrets, talking about the death of Bin Laden on the record would be at the very least a career killer. More likely it would result in a prosecution and some serious prison time. The mainstream media, which seems incapable of cultivating their own sources, have to rely on the government for comment. And you know they aren't going to fess up to any wrong doing.

So is the story credible? Some parts ring true for me and others do not. I always assumed that the government was lying about not having permission from Pakistan for the raid. It never made any sense to me because of course the Pakistanis would shoot down or at least intercept the helicopters. With the twin threat of terrorism and war with India, they would take any unidentified aircraft entering their airspace would have drawn some kind of response. Sure, the initial helicopters were stealthy, but the Chinooks they sent in as reinforcements would have been picked up on radar. 

I also think that the fact that there wasn't a major firefight from the police and soldiers responding to reports of a helicopter crash and gunfire shows pretty clearly that the Pakistanis knew what was happening. I don't know how competent the Pakistani police but even the most incompetent police force in the world would respond to a helicopter crash and reports of shooting. They might not have gotten into a firefight with the Navy Seals but they would have approached the crash site to see what was going on within minutes. The fact that they didn't tells me that they were told to stand down.  

As for the claims about a walk-in agent at the CIA station in Islamabad, I have no idea. Frankly, the idea that the CIA would use a cover story that involved faking vaccinations and finding couriers through torture seems stupid. I understand the need to protect sources but you would think that they would try to make up a story that made them look good. Still, stupid things happen all the time, so either story is at least plausible. 

One thing I don't believe is the claim that there wasn't enough of Bin Laden left to bury. That just doesn't happen with small arms fire. Even if the Navy Seals unloaded a whole magazine into Bin Laden, his body would be mostly intact. For that kind of destruction, you need either heavy weapons or a bunch of guys shooting at him at the same time. Navy Seals are known for fire discipline, and would not waste ammo wantonly, even on a scumbag like Bin Laden. 

But it also seems clear to me that Bin Laden probably never made it to the USS Carl Vinson. Nobody has leaked any photos of the burial and nobody has really talked about what happened. The amount of censorship and secrecy around the burial tells me that it probably didn't happen like the officials claimed. I do think it is probably completely untrue that they threw pieces of him outside of the helicopter that was carrying him. My guess is that they put him on ice afterwards before they decided what to do with him. 

So will this story have an impact? My guess is that it won't matter all that much. Seymour Hersh is a respected journalist but when he relies so much on unnamed sources it is easy to dismiss what he says, even if he is 100% right. I'm thinking this story will go the way of his Benghazi story. Already some news outlets are trying their best to debunk it, and others are defending but it's all speculation because since they don't have any sources of their own. Even if it is true, it probably won't be believed and it really can't be proven at this point. What we need is another Edward Snowden to release some data but I doubt anyone would do that over the death of Bin Laden... 

I think that much of Hersh's story is probably true, or at least is more true then what we have been told about the death of Bin Laden. But some of it is probably false as well. And there is no way at this point for us to tell what is real and what isn't, short of his sources coming forward and going on the record. That's not going to happen so this will probably just end up as a footnote in history until the files on Bin Laden's death are released, probably long after everyone reading this is dead...