Seymour Hersh, the famous American investigative journalist, has come up with a sensational account of Osama bin Laden's presence in Pakistan and the circumstances surrounding his killing. Most commentators in the US as well as Pakistan have been quick to reject his story because it makes both sides look bad: The Obama administration for allegedly making the wrong claim that the raid was an all American affair, kept secret from Pakistan's military leadership; and for Pakistan for denying all along any knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts. But there is no reason to doubt the ability or integrity of such a highly celebrated investigative journalist to set the record straight. He tells a plausible story of a major event of our time.
According to Hersh's version a retired ISI officer, lured by the $25 million reward on Osama's head, walked into the office of CIA station chief's office in Islamabad and informed him that in 2006 "the ISI got to Osama by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him" and that he was living in Abbottabad under ISI control. That, in fact, has been a common suspicion, leading to the puzzling question, what could be the possible justification for hiding him? Hersh seems to have a convincing answer: "people have their interests and act to protect them." The interest in this case was the prospect of using him in controlling al Qaeda and the Taliban.
An intriguing part of the story, though, is the claim that Saudi Arabia had been financing the upkeep of Bin Laden since his seizer by Pakistan, and that they "didn't want Bin Laden's presence revealed to us [the Americans] because he was a Saudi, and so they told Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al Qaeda. And they were dropping money - lots of it." A simple solution for the Saudis, one would think, would have been to seek Bin Laden's elimination rather than helping to keep him safe and alive. But then it is possible the Saudis too thought he could be of use in dealing with al Qaeda.
Many commentators in this country taking umbrage to Hersh's report have picked on its assertion that once the Americans knew about bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad it didn't take long for them to get from Pakistan the co-operation they needed to take him out. They point to the then Army chief's angry reaction to the Abbottabad raid to reject both the 'allegations' that OBL lived there under protective custody, and that our military provided any co-operation to the US in its plan to kill him. Things, however, seem to fall in place when Hersh explains that the US' relations with the Pakistani military soured over the 'cover story', which made Pakistan look bad. According to him, Pakistan had provided DNA evidence (Dr Shakil Afridi, he says, was a CIA asset but actual evidence was provided by an Army doctor, Major Amir Aziz, treating the ailing al Qaeda leader) to the US, confirming the identity of the man in the Abbottabad compound, and the two sides agreed on that the US would refrain from announcing Bin Laden's death for a week, and then say he was killed in a drone strike in the tribal areas in the mountainous tribal areas so that Pakistan was not blamed for keeping him. But Obama did not stick to the cover story, and announced that US Special Forces had killed Osama in a daring raid without the knowledge of the Pakistanis, which angered the generals. The US President had to change the cover story probably because one of the helicopters involved in the operation had crashed. The loss of the helicopter had to be explained. Also, it is not something unusual for Washington to disregard the concerns of smaller allies and do whatever suits its own purposes.
Notably, the basic facts of Hersh's story are about the same as we have known from media reports so far. Where there are inconsistencies these relate to the purported 'cover story'. In his address to the nation soon after the event of May 2, 2011, in Abbottabad, Obama claimed that US Navy Special Forces had carried out a heroic attack on Osama hideout after months of surveillance, and without the knowledge of Pakistanis. To Hersh that story "might have been written by Lewis Carrol", the author of 'Alice in Wonderland'. For he says the entire operation was based on a deal with Pakistan that allowed the US to establish detailed surveillance of the area, obtain DNA evidence, and launch the raid on the Bin Laden compound. Not surprising, the White House reacted to the report immediately, saying "there are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions" in it, and that "this was a US operation through and through."
So far there is no response from Islamabad or Rawalpindi, apparently, because of the problem of implausible deniability. It was easy for the White House to reject the report considering that the main issue in its case was whether or not the operation was an all American affair. On that there is no way to establish the truth in precise terms. As regards Pakistan's role, right from the beginning there have been few takers of the line that the world's most wanted terrorist could have remained hidden in plain sight in a place bristling with soldiers and intelligence men. It would be perfectly understandable too if upon having been found out, our people offered co-operation for Bin Laden elimination.
Seymour Hersh is no ordinary muckraker. He has won several prestigious awards for investigative reporting, and is better known and respected for exposing the My Lai massacre and an attempted cover-up by American forces in Vietnam, and also for bringing to light the US occupation forces' brutal treatment of Iraqi civilians at the Abu Ghuraib prison in Baghdad. Which is why the White House could not ignore his report. We too need answers. At least, the Abbottabad Commission report should be made public. If there are any sensitive sections in it, those could be taken out. Let's hear our own side of the story.
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