War on terror

Killing bin Laden May Have Harmed U.S. National Security

We recently posted about Seymour Hersh’s skepticism that the Pakistani military and the ISI were unaware of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. In his Democracy Nowinterview, he talks about how then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was unenthusiastic about the mission, was especially upset that the Obama administration went public with the story almost immediately.

Initially, says Hersh, we “were going to announce it happened in the Hindu Kush and pretend that we did a strike with a drone.” The reason for that was to avoid exposing Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani Kayani and ISI Director General Ahmad Pasha’s knowledge of the mission and to spare them the embarrassment of the actual raid on their watch. Also, continues Hersh,

“We put so much effort into the two leaders to make them trust us, because of the bomb issue, and also because of what they do for us, constantly do for us, still in Pakistan.”