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Comment by nyolfen | Hacker News Reader

the intercept has reported[0] that all of the major points reported by hersh were first reported in 2011 by rj hillhouse, and the two stories seem to have different sources. hillhouse seems upset about not being given credit and accuses hersh of 'plagiarism', though that doesn't have any bearing on the truth of the matter. the fact that hersh reported details which hillhouse has stated she was aware of but explicitly chose not to disclose (that the seals dumped parts of bin laden's body out over the hindu kush on the chopper ride home) seems to prove that he was doing original reporting to me. the real tragedy is that we've already cemented the national mythology of torture producing the intelligence necessary to locate bin laden, thanks to zero dark thirty and the cia lying to cover its ass.

[0] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/11/former-profess...

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Slight addition/correction from Hillhouse: "I did not accuse Hersh of plagiarism." http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/the_spy_who_billed_me/2015/...

A few parts of the story seem to be reasonable. There was widespread speculation that the ISI knew Bin Laden's location, even right after Bin Laden was killed. The story about the Pakistani general defecting seems to have been reported by others and seems reasonably plausible.

Some other portions of Hersh's story just don't seem plausible to me (the Vox piece made a number of these points and more, but personally I think these are the strongest). If Bin Laden was under ISI control, I don't understand why the Pakistanis would have wanted the US to send in SEALs to kill him in Abottabad when they could have just put him on a helicopter and had the SEALs kill him in Afghanistan. That would have avoided all sorts of embarrassment to the Pakistani military and intelligence services. The fact that the US penetrated Pakistani air defenses was very embarrassing to the Pakistani military, as was the fact that Bin Laden was living practically down the street from a Pakistani military academy - not to mention that it seems strange that the Pakistanis and Americans would have chosen to undertake all the risks of discovery of sending helicopters in to a peaceful town when the ISI, which was supposedly guarding Bin Laden, could have just quietly taken him to a remote area.

The business about SEALs dumping parts of his body out of a helicopter also seems strange - given how politically charged the mission was I would imagine that they would have been incredibly disciplined and professional. And Hersh's explanation for the breach in US/Pakistani relations following the mission just seems convoluted and implausible. It seems very plausible to me that the US went in and killed Bin Laden without Pakistani knowledge, and that the mission caused the breach. Hersh's explanation just seems like he's building up a whole convoluted series of explanations to justify his theory.

as far as why the pakistanis didn't just hand him over: hersh reports that they were receiving a great deal of saudi money to keep them from letting the americans know about him, presumably because they didn't want them to get him to talk about his ties to high-ranking saudis. the pakistanis conditionally permitted the raid, as long as it was explicitly a kill mission, which would stay in line with the saudi terms. again, the original plan was to kill him and take the body and announce a week later that he was killed in a drone strike on the afpak border, but that was scuttled when the helicopter crashed.

as for the unprofessionalism of dumping parts of the corpse of the most hated man in american history, perhaps you hold higher estimation of the moral restraint of a team of men who kill for a living than i do

He may be the most hated man in America History but I think the moral thing to do would have been to capture him and bring him to trial, but that apparently didn't enter into consideration.

They don't even give trials for American citizens abroad. Seems unlikely they'd do it for terrorist #1.

They're trying KSH - why not?

I'm assuming you mean KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). I think it could be strategically valuable to be able to parade pictures of your former enemy looking like this: http://usofarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Khalid-Sheikh-... . It would have been awesome if we could have done the same with Bin Laden.

I don't know how my fingers wrote "H" for Mohammed, but yes, of course. :-)

I'm not sure I agree that it's strategically valuable - in an asymmetrical engagement, it seems like this just provokes sympathy and stokes recruitment.

Treating him (both of them, in fact) with dignity, respect, and an honest public trial including an accounting of their crimes might help, though.

Bringing Osama to trial might have been embarassing.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.ter...

And then there's the possibility that Osama was long dead before the raid (which former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto stated a month before she was killed).

I wondered if it was originally a capture-and-return mission but had to revert to locate-and-kill once the helicopter was lost.

With less airlift, and presumably an emphasis on extracting documents and computers, there may not have been capacity to bring captives.

Maybe the SEALs wouldn't have been able to restrain themselves, but in my experience, when people know that very high-up people in their chain of command are watching their actions carefully, they generally make sure that it looks like everything they're doing is by the book. These guys knew that everyone up to the President was watching, and that what they did would be not just reported, but studied.

I don't really buy the idea that they would have used a drone strike as a cover story. Surely they would have realized that sending helicopters into a populated town would attract local attention - and that's exactly what happened - a guy saw the helicopters and reported it on Twitter. Even if they wanted the Americans to kill him in Pakistan, if they had Bin Laden under guard and were cooperating with the Americans they could have just driven the SEALs to the house, had them kill bin Laden quietly, and then driven away without attracting attention. Or they could have moved Bin Laden to someplace remote and had the Americans do it there.

And the business with the Saudis knowing about Bin Laden also seems strange. Essentially what Hersh is saying is that two American allies would have had to have known Bin Laden's location for years without the US discovering it. I can imagine the Pakistanis keeping it a secret (at least for as long as they did) but the Pakistanis coordinating with another government and receiving payments from that government without the US finding out? Not to mention the fact that there wasn't a disruption in the relationship with Saudi Arabia comparable to the disruption in the relationship with Pakistan.

The official story (at least with the modifications I described above) just seems a lot simpler and more plausible.

> Not to mention the fact that there wasn't a disruption in the relationship with Saudi Arabia comparable to the disruption in the relationship with Pakistan.

That's simple: US needs Saudi cooperation wrt oil prices. Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC states always can either dump a shitload of oil on the market to crash prices at no real cost for them (but huge cost losses for Western oil companies, esp. fracking - we're seeing this right now) or decide to artificially limit or stop their oil production, again at no cost for them but another oil crisis in the Western societies.

Western oil companies produce all the oil worldwide.

The fracking guys are minor players.

>I can imagine the Pakistanis keeping it a secret (at least for as long as they did) but the Pakistanis coordinating with another government and receiving payments from that government without the US finding out?

I'd suspect the US probably knew the compound location for awhile as the US/Sauds/ISI have been pretty cozy over the years. One funny bit of trivia is that the long-time CIA operative that headed the first investigation into 9/11 had been to Pakistan a couple months before 9/11 and had breakfast with the head of the ISI in Washington on the day of 9/11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss#Intelligence_inquir...

UBL's connections to the house of saud are a matter of public record. And I don't know why people are assuming that dropping the body in the ocean wouldn't be part of the original plan.

> UBL's connections to the house of saud are a matter of public record.

But not a matter of judicial(judiciary?) record. That's what matters here, not what the public says or think, but hard evidences and testimonies directly exploitable by a judge in order to indict whoever was giving money or supporting AlQaida.

A majority of the terrorists during the 9/11 attacks WERE saudis.

Imagine 20 Spaniards launch an attack in US killing 3000 people yet because the (Spanish)guy that allegedly financed the attack lives in Austria USA doesn't bother investigating in Spain but launches an attack on Austria... Even worse, a few members of this guys family were in US for a business meeting but were allowed to fly back to Spain the day of the attack while every other civil plain was grounded... That's basically what happened with the BinLaden family on 9/11...

What judge is going to preside over a trial indicting a bunch of non-citizen nonresidents?

so there are lots of family links in Saudi - hell I used to work for an Arab engineering company who did a lot of work in The Middle east. I bet the head of my department or many of the other partners have met members of Bin Laden's Family

the Bi Laden family have many connections with the Sauidi royal family, but Ossama Bin Laden was completely ideologically opposed to the current Saudi government and Al Qaeda advocates overthrowing it. The relationship is not simple. There are some powerful Saudis who covertly support Al Qaeda and some of them have government connections, but to say that Ossama Bin Kaden had connections to the Saudi Royal Family is so vague and missleading that it just obscures the whole situation.

I would think the reason for doing it in Abottabad would be the plausibility of the whole scenario. ANything else, the contracdictions would have been enormous.

Lets imagine OBL was eliminated in Afghanistan, how do you explain his presence there, where did he get his food, medical supplies for all those years.

With the US presence in Afghanistan you can at best argue for a few sneakthroughs that supported OBL.

So I would say US picked the best case scenario based on circumstance.

There are lots of people who have survived for decades in afghanistan. UBL could have hidden with any of them.

Yeah ordinary people can survive but OBL is no oridinary person plus he had medical needs..

not possible to hide those trails in Afghanistan but quite easy in a garrison town like Abbottabad..

The ISI is probably not all monolithic, many probably knew over the years, some wanted him protected and someone probably sold him out. A raid gives everyone plausible deniability.

I would bet the raid force wasn't on a helicopter, that was just for evac.

fully agree here.. and yes, why would you land a black hawk for a raid? that gives the target far too much ready time. you come in silent, you evac on the bird.

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