Everything You Think You Know About Osama Bin Laden's Killing Is a Lie

So says one journalist.

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If you’re a firm believer in the illuminati and believe that 9/11 “was an inside job” then you better listen up as journalist Seymour Hersh is claiming everything we know about Osama Bin Laden’s 2011 death, including Operation Geronimo carried out by special U.S. Navy SEALs which led to Bin Laden's arrest, and the media's reporting of the event, is a lie. In the London Review of Books Hersh debunked Bin Laden’s death saying that:


  • Bin Laden was not buried at sea.

  • There wasn’t a firefight when Bin Laden was captured.

  • Pakistan knew about the mission, and assisted with it.

  • Bin Laden was not gunned down.

  • Bin Laden was found after someone snitched on him.

  • There was no evidence of al-Qaeda intelligence found at Bin Laden’s compound at the time of his capture.

Hersh, who cites anonymous sources, isn’t the first to make claims like these—in 2011 national security writer R.J. Hillhouse wrote about them. 

The White House has since responded to Hersh’s report saying via a statement delivered by National Security spokesman Ned Price:

1.

"There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact check each one," said Price. "As we said at the time, knowledge of this operation was confined to a very small circle of senior U.S. officials. The President decided early on not to inform any other government, including the Pakistani Government, which was not notified until after the raid had occurred.We had been and continue to be partners with Pakistan in our joint effort to destroy al-Qa'ida, but this was a U.S. operation through and through."

Here's what Hersh said specifically of each claim: 

Bin Laden was not buried at sea.

2.

“Some members of the Seal team had bragged to colleagues and others that they had torn bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire. The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains – or so the Seals claimed.”

There wasn’t a firefight when Bin Laden was captured.

As the SEALs entered Bin Laden's compound, a fire fight reportedly broke out. This from the New York Times, May 2011:

"Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Osama bin Laden’s courier, opens fire from behind a door of the guesthouse. Commandos kill the courier. His wife is caught in the cross-fire and killed."

Hersh wrote:

3.

“Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired.”

Pakistan knew about the mission, and assisted with it.

From a New Yorker story:

4.

“Obama decided against informing or working with Pakistan. ‘There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond,’ a senior adviser to the President told me.”

Hersh wrote:

5.

“The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission...Obama was anxious for reassurance that the US was going to get the right man. The proof was to come in the form of bin Laden’s DNA. The planners turned for help to Kayani and Pasha, who asked [Maj. Amir] Aziz to obtain the specimens.”

Bin Laden was not gunned down.

From a NYT article, May 2011:

6.

"When the commandos reach Bin Laden’s room on the third floor, an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol are seen in arm’s reach of Bin Laden. A commando shoots Bin Laden in the left eye and chest, killing him."

Hersh wrote:

7.

“The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”

Bin Laden was found after someone snitched on him.

From a May 2011 NYT article:

8.

"After nearly a decade of hunting Osama bin Laden, a breakthrough came in August of 2010 when Bin Laden’s most trusted courier was located and identified. What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work."

Hersh wrote:

9.

“The CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US.”

There was no evidence of al-Qaeda intelligence found at Bin Laden’s compound at the time of his capture.

According to CNN in May 2012:

10.

"U.S. officials say that the documents found in the compound — about 6,000 worth — were written between September 2006 and April 2011 and were recovered from five computers, dozens of hard drives and more than 100 storage devices. The cache has been described as the single largest batch of senior terrorist material ever obtained."

Hersh wrote:

11.

“These claims were fabrications: there wasn’t much activity for bin Laden to exercise command and control over. The retired intelligence official said that the CIA’s internal reporting shows that since bin Laden moved to Abbottabad in 2006 only a handful of terrorist attacks could be linked to the remnants of bin Laden’s al-Qaida….”

“Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks. The Seals weren’t there because they thought bin Laden was running a command centre for al-Qaida operations, as the White House would later tell the media. And they were not intelligence experts gathering information inside that house.’”

[via Gawker/CNN]

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