Osama bin Laden : The real story? - FB Ali

The killing of bin Laden in a US Special Forces raid on a house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad unleashed a torrent of stories about the event. The accounts by various US officials (given in bits and pieces immediately after the raid) gave little information on the details of the operation, and none on the ‘back story’. This left the field open to a lot of speculative accounts about how the raid took place and the events leading up to it. A rash of conspiracy theories also sprang up, many of which flatly denied bin Laden was even present in the house, while others put forward various versions of the Pakistani role in these events.

Recently, two accounts have been published that claim to be based on information from sources ‘in the know’ or ones who actually participated in the planning (though perhaps not the execution) of the raid. The first was a detailed account by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker, based on interviews with and information provided by senior White House staff and some of the planners of the raid. This was obviously the “official” version, what the US administration would like people to believe. The second is a post on her blog by RJ Hillhouse, in which she quotes her intelligence sources on certain aspects of the raid, especially the events leading up to it.

By studying these two accounts, separating the grain from the chaff, and judiciously filling in some of the blanks, it is possible to come up with what is likely to be fairly close to the real story.

 

It begins with the CIA station chief in one of the Gulf states receiving an unexpected visitor with a fascinating tale. He was a recently retired senior officer of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, and he wanted to talk about Osama bin Laden. Some years ago, he said, the Saudi intelligence chief approached the ISI with the request to provide sanctuary to bin Laden within Pakistan. The Saudis said that bin Laden was prepared to come down from the hills where he was hiding, provided sufficient assurances were available about his security. In return, he would ensure that al Qaeda would not target Pakistan, and he would also limit his own involvement in its operations.

The Saudi motive behind this request presumably had to do with their internal imperatives. The bin Ladens are a very rich and influential family in Saudi Arabia. Osama and al Qaeda, and their goals, are supported by a large number of religious Saudis (even though the royal family considers them enemies). If bin Laden were to be hunted down and killed by the Americans in the tribal badlands of Pakistan, it would give the regime a black eye in the view of many of its people as well as being a serious blow to the bin Laden clan. It made sense to the Saudis to get Osama bin Laden into a safe hideout while at the same time neutralizing him as a functioning jihadi.

Whatever the Saudi motivation, their request placed the Pakistanis in a severe dilemma. The Saudis were their helpers and supporters, in fact the kingdom was their backer of last resort; they could not afford to alienate them. On the other side, bin Laden was the principal enemy and target of their current backer and ally, the United States; they could not take the risk of being caught harbouring him. The matter went right up to President Musharraf, and was the subject of much anxious debate. Finally, it was decided that the affair would be handled through one of the client jihadi outfits of the ISI, with no official involvement, thus ensuring plausible deniability in case something went wrong.

This, said the former ISI official, was how bin Laden was moved into Pakistan some years ago, and was safely harboured there. He was prepared to divulge his current location to the CIA provided he was given the reward on offer, and he and his family (accompanying him on this holiday) were securely relocated to the USA. The CIA station chief set up another meeting with the informant, and promptly relayed the information to Washington. The background check on the ISI officer having proved satisfactory, at this second meeting the station chief accepted his offer on the condition that the reward would only be paid if his information proved accurate.

When the location of bin Laden reached Langley, the CIA commenced a sophisticated, but secret, operation to verify that bin Laden did indeed live in the house in Abbottabad that their ISI informant had betrayed to them. Even before the results of this activity became available, the top security officials in the US administration began to consider actions that could be taken if his presence there was confirmed. This process quickly narrowed down the options to essentially two: a drone strike on the house, or a Special Forces raid (of the type being regularly carried out in Afghanistan against suspected insurgent leaders). When the CIA established that there was a high probability that Osama bin Laden did indeed live in the Abbottabad house, detailed planning began for both options. Their pros and cons differed so radically, however, that choosing between them was not easy.

A drone strike would involve no risk to US personnel while also reducing the loss of face for the Pakistanis and, hence, their reaction after the event. An SF raid, on the other hand, would be a risky affair. Apart from the danger of various mishaps there was a possibility of Pakistani interference, both in the air and on the ground, which would endanger not only the success of the operation but also the US personnel involved. Such an intrusion of American ‘boots on the ground’ would likely cause serious problems in relations between the two countries. The biggest difference, however, lay in the degree to which the success of the operation could be established by the administration, and generally accepted by the world when announced. A successful drone strike would show that the house was destroyed, but not whether bin Laden had been killed (the Pakistanis would never admit that he had even been there). A successful SF raid, on the other hand, would provide definitive proof.

The two options were presented to President Obama for a decision. His military advisers generally favoured the drone option, though the JSOC command was quite happy to do the raid. The ‘political’ advisers did not want to pass up this great opportunity to claim a notable success for the administration, but that would only be possible with an SF raid. Obama mulled over the choice for a few days and decided to carry out the raid ─ but with its risks minimized by getting the Pakistan military to cooperate. This set off another hectic debate among the advisers; it was finally decided that a very hard line be taken with the Pakistanis, giving them, in effect, neither the option to refuse nor any wiggle room in compliance. Leon Panetta was chosen to deliver the ultimatum: in essence, to do another ‘Armitage’ on them.

Panetta enjoyed playing the heavy with the Pakistanis (especially after their successful false emissary caper and their exploitation of the Raymond Davis affair). He told the ISI chief how the US had found out, and then confirmed, that bin Laden was being sheltered by them. The US was going to take him out; Pakistan could either help, or it would be considered an enemy of the US and treated accordingly. Backed into a corner, with their ‘plausible deniability’ in shreds, the Pakistani generals folded: they were prepared to help, but they needed a good cover story, especially for the Saudis. The US agreed to work with them on this, but demanded that knowledge of the raid be confined to a very few people at the top of the command chain, no more than necessary to ensure that any attempt by someone in the security forces to interfere with the operation would be immediately detected and quashed.

The cover story finally agreed upon was that the US had carried out a drone strike on the house (though none would in fact take place). This would account for the night-time explosions at the house, and, more importantly, provide an explanation to give to the Saudis for bin Laden’s sudden and unfortunate demise (his body having been almost obliterated by the bombs!). The US’s agreement was simply a ruse, however, in order to keep the Pakistanis cooperating; having rejected the drone option because it did not allow a definitive claim of the operation’s success, the US administration had no intention of going through with this cover story. Instead, it intended to announce the carrying out of the raid, and its momentous result, as soon as it was completed, though it is likely they planned to shift its venue to some undefined place under insurgent control so as to allow the Pakistani military some face-saving, and thus limit their adverse reaction. In the event, the helicopter crash put paid to this.

With the Pakistani military on board, the raid was launched on May 1^st. Two Black Hawk helicopters with the Navy SEALs team on board took off from Jalalabad late evening and landed at the Ghazi airbase, Tarbela. This base is used by Pakistani SF (the Special Services Group), and has a US SF helicopter-training contingent stationed there. Helicopter flights into the US base area from Afghanistan are routine, and the flight of these two helicopters was cleared on the same basis. The attack on the Abbottabad target was launched from here later that night. The flying distance from Ghazi to the target is approximately 60 km (40 miles).

Even though the Pakistan army chief had agreed to allow the raid to go through without any interference, the US was not taking any chances. Schmidle describes a backup force of four Chinook helicopters, two with a backup SEALs team (which remained on the Afghan side of the border), and two as helicopter backups for the assault Black Hawks. He says that these latter two “landed at a predetermined point on a dry riverbed in a wide, unpopulated valley”. This is probably correct since, in case of a Pakistani double-cross, they would be grounded if they were to wait at the Ghazi airbase instead. One of these Chinooks was later used as the replacement for the Black Hawk that crashed at the Abbottabad house.

Schmidle’s account (and critiques of it published afterwards) dwell mostly on the details of the action inside the bin Laden compound. It doesn’t really matter how that action unfolded, though controversy over it does shift attention away from those aspects of the operation that are being kept concealed by both the US and Pakistan. The important point of these actions is that they resulted in Osama bin Laden being killed. Many conspiracy theorists refuse to accept this, but al Qaeda does, and so do the Pakistanis, who have in their custody bin Laden’s wives who witnessed the event. It may be worth commenting on a couple of the items of controversy. It doesn’t matter whether bin Laden had a weapon or not; the orders were for him to be killed. The reason why Amal al-Fatah, bin Laden’s wife who tried to protect him, was shot in the leg (DEVGRU normally just kills) was probably because the plan was to bring the wives and surviving sons back as prisoners (the loss of one of the Black Hawks forced a change there).

As for the fallout from the operation, it was, as expected, mainly on US-Pakistan relations. If the US had the intention of making it easier for the Pakistanis by fudging the site of the raid, the crashed helicopter’s tail sticking up from bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound ended that option. This stark evidence of the US incursion left the US with no option but to (in Hillhouse’s apt phrase) throw the Pakistanis under the bus. Panetta couldn’t let the opportunity pass without adding an extra kick of his own (“ they were either complicit or incompetent”). The Pakistan military lost a lot of ‘face’ internally, but had a tolerable alibi for the Saudis. Most importantly, the raid and its aftermath ended all chances of them working as allies with the US in the future; the relationship became once again purely transactional, with no trust on either side.

The United States certainly got their man but, in the process, lost Pakistan. Time will tell whether that was a good deal.

Comments

[The Twisted Genius]

The comments section in the Hillhouse blog points out that Larry Johnson (No Quarter) came to the same conclusions.

http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/60685/obama-uses-the-new-yorker-to-bamboozle-america/

It could be true. It could be fiction. It could be deliberate deception... or an enticing mix of all three. This is why we need good intelligence analysts. If this is true, however, we are witnessing a serious breach of security.

[used to post here]

...The United States certainly got their man but, in the process, lost Pakistan. F.B. Ali

In that case, Mr. Ali, I am sure you will understand if the United States suspends any and all aid to Pakistan and uses these funds to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

[Patrick Lang]

TTG

I don't believe that either LJ or Brigadier Ali have it right. I particularly do not believe that the Pakistan Army were "on board." that sounds like the CIA talking and planting stories in an attempt to denigrate tha achievements of the armed forces, as usual. pl

[Arun]

The US told the Pakistani generals that it knew that bin Laden was sheltered by them, and then the Pakistani generals always had the exit option of having its unofficial channels move bin Laden. So I don't believe the above version can be correct.

[Arun]

If bin Laden were to be hunted down and killed by the Americans in the tribal badlands of Pakistan, it would give the regime a black eye in the view of many of its people as well as being a serious blow to the bin Laden clan.

As I remember, two Saudi princes died in "accidents" for some peripheral involvement in all this; yet the Saudis would shield bin Laden?

-----
As to plausible deniability about why bin Laden was moved - very easy - militants were attacking Pakistani military targets left and right; easy enough to stage an attack/attempted attack on the military academy at Abbottabad. Given the increased security scrutiny that would follow, it would be natural for Osama bin Laden to be moved. The allegation of a leak from the top generals having caused the move could never be proved.

As an example of such militant attacks:
--
Feb 10, 2011

MARDAN, Pakistan — A teenage suicide bomber walked onto the parade ground of a major military training school in northwest Pakistan on Thursday and blew himself up, killing 27 cadets, officials said.

The attack at the Punjab Regimental Center in Mardan was the second by militants against the school in the last three years.

[Arun]

If the Saudis approached the Pakistanis to shield OBL around 2006, one must explain why the Saudis didn't try to have him shielded 2001-06, and what happened in 2006 to make the Saudis do so.

[confusedponderer]

utph,
"In that case, Mr. Ali, I am sure you will understand if the United States suspends any and all aid to Pakistan and uses these funds to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal."

... and how do you think that will work?

Suspending any and all aid to Pakistan, and 'using these funds to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal', 'safeguard the nukes' would mean to ... give it to Pakistanis i.e. giving them aid to have them improve their security?

But that's not what you mean I presume. You're talking about the US taking them. The Pakistanis are not going to give them to the US.

Why do you think the US will succeed in doing that, say in a coup de main. Is that even feasible? We're talking about assaulting several well guarded military bases, simultaneously. That would be a very complex operation, with lots of things that can go sour. What will happen if they don't succeed?

[Jake]

"In that case, Mr. Ali, I am sure you will understand if the United States suspends any and all aid to Pakistan and uses these funds to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal."

One question... That is to be done how?

[The Twisted Genius]

PL,

"that sounds like the CIA talking and planting stories in an attempt to denigrate the achievements of the armed forces, as usual"

I can certainly believe that based on personal experience. Actually, I would rather believe that the sources for both RJ and Johnson are part of a deliberate deception. The thought that there would be multiple leaks about a sensitive operation so soon after it took place makes me shudder. It would be horribly damaging to the credibility and trustworthiness of USI. I'd hate to be a C/O on the street trying to make a recruitment now.

[JYD]

Brig. Ali,

Once again, a very timely and useful contribution on this still hazy topic. I do wonder how much of your deductions were perhaps colored by a need to rationalize why the Pak mil chose to take the risk of protecting the World's #1 terror target. I wager that the House of Saud may feel like they were thrown under the bus.

My main reason to disagree with this analysis is that I simply cannot see the US military/intel circles trusting the Pak mil leadership enough to share their discovery of Bin Laden's lair.

I also see increasing evidence that shows that there is a powerful, but short-sighted wing of the Pakistani military/spy establishment that has steered its country into taking mind boggling risks with jihadist elements. Let's call this the Hamid Gul/Aslam Beg wing. And with every inevitable blowback, Kayani and the military leadership seem to be drawn closer into the paranoia filled alternate reality of the Gul/Beg wing, instead of moving the other way.

Ironically, the more paranoid and Pavlovian the Pak military becomes, the more likely it us that their worst fears come true.

[bth]

If the raid had failed, I wonder how the story would have been told?

[crf]

There's one way to partly verify this story: to get the supposed Pakistani ISI source to give a public account. I know that this might be difficult, since details might expose him, his friends, etc. And it goes against the current "trust and worship" imperial zeitgeist rather than the democratic "trust and verify".

I'm a bit skeptical of is that the ISI and Pakistan government was knew where Bin Laden was and was sheltering him, as if it were a managed political policy. It is likely true, in part, but it is just the most plausible theory.

The past has shown that US government often expects, and not just assumes, greater competence of US enemies than turns out to be the case.

[seydlitz89]

FB Ali-

Sir, I'd like to thank you for this post.

What is clear is that the whole concept of al Qaeda as a non-state supported entity needs to be thoroughly rethought.

It is not the "decline of the state" "paradigm" we are dealing with but rather the obscuring of state interests/involvement we should be asking ourselves about.

[jerseycityjoan]

I have to wonder how we can have "lost" Pakistan? Isn't the point of your story that we never had it? I'm not sure they ever had us, either.

Was there ever a meeting of the minds between the two countries? How about a meeting of the minds that included both the civilian and military worlds?

Thanks for the food for thought, though.

[John Waring]

A few conclusions from your post, kind sir. The Saudis are complicit in terrorism, no surprise there. The Pakistanis are playing a hydra-headed game, we Americans not knowing at times what head was up. The resulting confusion on our parts obscured the fact that the interests of the United States and Pakistan seldom converged on a fundamental basis. Our killing of bin Laden in Abbottabad has cleared away the smoke.

[J]

The important point is that the bastard OBL is fish fodder. Instead of worrying about this and that on the raid, we need to worry about successive OBL's we are creating with our UN-natural insertion into matters that if they ran their natural course, would work out to our advantage. We can do minor 'tweaking' here and there, while at the same time keeping our fingerprints out of the pie, instead of jumping in whole-hog like we have a bad habit of doing.

Problem is, that our D.C. civies never have to get their hands dirty, instead they leave all the dirty work for us professional bastards. Now and again, we need to be able to grab our D.C. civies by their short-hairs and stuff their faces to within two-three inches of the things they love to stick us in, and watch them clean our their drawers for a week (at the same time we're laughing our arses off watching their circus cleaning act). Then maybe we can then watch nature takes it course, and only enter into matters when this really matter/life threatening for nation.

Now I'll get off my little 3 inch soapbox.

[Charlie Wilson]

Jeez J, chill out man. I gotta clean out my drawers just reading your post. Whew!!!

[William R. Cumming]

Once again the duplicitous Saudi officialdom complicates the world for others. Their time is coming IMO!

[used to post here]

In that case, Mr. Ali, I am sure you will understand if the United States suspends any and all aid to Pakistan and uses these funds to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Posted by: used to post here | 31 August 2011 at 04:46 AM

...Why do you think the US will succeed in doing that, say in a coup de main. Is that even feasible? We're talking about assaulting several well guarded military bases, simultaneously. That would be a very complex operation, with lots of things that can go sour. What will happen if they don't succeed?

Posted by: confusedponderer | 31 August 2011 at 08:31 AM

One question... That is to be done how?

Posted by: Jake | 31 August 2011 at 09:07 AM

If I knew the precise operational details you request, I would not be in a position to reveal them in public, would I. It would be difficult, but not impossible. The easy way would be to cut a deal with the right people at the right time. Let me ask a question. How much money is a nuclear free Pakistan worth to the world? Nuclear proliferation is out of hand, something drastic needs to be done; carefully and quietly.
I have faith in our USA.

[William R. Cumming]

By the way General Ali hoping you have seen the movie "Rashoman"! Seven versions of the truth?

[Arun]

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110901/ENTERTAINMENT18/309019983/-1/ENTERTAINMENT10

Quote:

A new documentary film reveals that a last-minute double-check of intelligence before the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last spring cast fresh doubt on whether the al-Qaida leader was really in the Pakistani compound where he was found.

The History network, in its "Targeting Bin Laden" special that airs next Tuesday at 8 p.m., said President Barack Obama convened a special "red team" of terrorism experts to take a fresh look at the evidence.

That team had greater doubt that bin Laden was in the Abbottobad, Pakistan home primarily because they didn't believe he would take the risk of having as many visitors as he did.

Despite the new assessment, Obama ordered the mission to proceed. Four days later on May 2, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs successfully located and killed the terrorist leader behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

[FB Ali]

TTG and PL,

I had not seen Larry Johnson’s piece earlier. The information provided by his sources includes what RJ Hillhouse reported, but has additional items and is more coherent (or he makes it appear so). RJH’s seems almost to be bits and pieces picked up by someone around a coffee machine. But neither of them “denigrate the achievements of the armed forces”. What they do denigrate are the CIA (instead of their good intelligence work leading to ObL, he was offered to them on a plate by a walk-in) and Obama (LJ’s whole article is quite a hatchet job on him).

To be credible, any hypothetical narrative about an event, much of which is shrouded in secrecy, must account for the known facts. In this affair, one known fact is Obama’s nature. The official narrative (Schmidle’s) makes him out to be a big risk-taker, almost a reckless gambler. By authorizing a raid in which the helicopters could have been shot down, or the SEALs attacked by Pakistani troops, he was risking his presidency (a la Carter). And quite unnecessarily ─ there was a perfectly good alternative available (the drone strike). This is not the Obama we know in real life; he is neither an idiot nor a risk-taker. It is a logical conclusion that the real Obama would never have ordered this raid unless he knew that there was no risk of Pakistani interference. No help was needed from them, just the guarantee that they would not intervene.

Another significant fact that has to be accounted for adequately is ObL’s living in a high-walled secretive compound in a military garrison town for several years, without any guards or other defensive arrangements (i.e, he felt quite secure). With terrorist attacks occurring regularly on military targets, there is no way that the house would not have been checked out, and its occupants identified, unless some powerful entity (such as the ISI) did not want that to happen. Yet, the ISI did not consider ObL a high-value asset (otherwise he would have been kept in a secure place and well-guarded). But ObL certainly was a valuable commodity to trade to the US (as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and several others were) ─ unless he was protected by someone the ISI could not afford to displease (e.g, the Saudis).

I think my reconstruction accounts for these known facts; I have not come across another one that does. These two important facts (and the inferences they lead to) also explain some other issues that arise. When the Pakistani military discovered that the US knew about ObL, why didn’t they insist that they would grab him and hand him over (instead of risking all the internal problems arising from the violation of sovereignty by a US raid or even a drone strike)? Why didn’t they move him? (Because he wasn’t of any value to them, Arun!).

[Fred]

Meanwhile, it is still terrorist condition yellow in every square inch of the USA. We should fire quite a few people for continuing the fear mongering bs.

[JohnH]

A highly credible analysis.

I feel vindicated for casting doubt on the official story at the time, something that got me banned from commenting here.

[Patrick Lang]

JohnH

You were wrong then and you are wrong now. i don't think i banned you. Ah, I see now that I did. You are unbanned, for the moment. pl