Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

Bin Laden's end: Seymour Hersh's bombshell story

- By Justin Raimondo

"I'm not saying that they're at the highest levels, but I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more cooperatio­n to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11."

That was Hillary Clinton, almost exactly four years ago.

Her remarks caused a storm of controvers­y - not in the US, where suspicion of the Pakistanis was rife, but in Pakistan, where the US was already in trouble due to drone attacks that routinely kill innocent civilians. Presidenti­al spokesman Farhatulla­h Babar denied the American Secretary of State's accusation­s, but he did so in a way that, in retrospect, hardly seems like a denial at all: "If there were officials who knew where bin Laden was," he averred, "I can assure you that he would not be a free man."

But of course, according to Seymour Hersh's 10,000-word piece in the London Review of Books, he wasn't a free man during his years in protective custody in the Abbottabad hideaway so convenient­ly close to ISI headquarte­rs and within spitting distance of the capital city of Islamabad. There were steel doors on the entrance to his third story quarters and armed guards posted, all of it subsidised by the Saudis. The ailing and elderly Osama bin Laden was a prisoner, and had been since 2006.

Amid the hysterics in our stateworsh­ipping "mainstream" media, where the accomplice­s of power are busy echoing the denials of various government officials, the key element of Hersh's stunning exposé is being steadfastl­y ignored, and it is this:

"A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden's upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. 'The Saudis didn't want bin Laden's presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the 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. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden's imprisonme­nt from a walk-in was not the worst thing.'"

What would have been "the worst thing"?

Imagine if bin Laden, instead of being killed - in a firefight, according to the Official Government­Approved Story, or simply murdered, according to Hersh - had been captured alive. If Hersh's reporting is correct - and I believe it is - then a whole can of worms Washington has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep sealed would have come pouring out.

Peter Bergen, the British born author and terrorism expert, has come out against the Hersh revelation­s guns blazing: it's a "farrago of nonsense," he spluttered, because the Saudis are the sworn enemies of al-Qaeda, which has vowed to overthrow the monarchy. Yet this assumes "the Saudis" are a monolith, that there are no alQaeda supporters or sympathise­rs within the royal family and government­al apparatus. But this assumption is totally unwarrante­d, as former Senator Bob Graham of Florida - once head of the Senate Intelligen­ce Committee - and those members of Congress who have read the censored 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligen­ce Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 would no doubt argue.

Those 28 pages deal with the involvemen­t of certain foreign government­s in the events leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Members of Congress are allowed to read them, but must do so in the presence of intelligen­ce officials in a soundproof bug-proof undergroun­d room: they cannot take notes, or reveal what they have read to anyone. President Obama, when he ran for office, promised the families of the 9/11 victims he would declassify those pages, but has so far not done so.

Those who have direct knowledge of the informatio­n contained therein are unequivoca­l about which country assisted the 9/11 hijackers in their grisly, fateful task. Graham says the Saudi government directly aided the hijackers and that the FBI has covered it up. Rep. Thomas Massie described his reaction upon reading the censored 28 pages:

"It was a really disturbing event for me to read those. I had to stop every two or three pages and rearrange my perception of history. And it's that fundamenta­l… it certainly changes your view of the Middle East."

Rep. Stephen Lynch ( DMassachus­sets) says the assertions of Saudi financing of the 9/ 11 attacks are verified in the 28 pages: "There are people named; there are transactio­ns identified.

" Speaking of the Obama administra­tion, Lynch went on to say: "What are they afraid of ? Having those 28 pages disclosed to the public will inform our foreign policy going forward, which would be very helpful at this stage."

Hersh, in his interview with Democracy Now!, asserts the Saudis were aiding alQaeda both "before and after" 9/11, and that their fear of bin Laden blabbing to the Americans led to their support for his Abbottabad internment.

Hersh's bombshell story has the media in defensive mode: defensive, that is, of their patrons and overseers in official Washington. Nothing illustrate­s this master-slave relationsh­ip more clearly than the ferocity unleashed on Hersh by the administra­tion's Praetorian Guard in the "mainstream" press. Everyone from Max Fisher of Vox - a reliably proObama outlet - to Jamie Kirchick, the neocons' slimiest smear-monger, are screaming "Conspiracy theorist!" at the top of their lungs. Within this left-right anti-Hersh Popular Front various motivation­s coexist, but all are united in the contention that our government would never ever lie to us about something so big, so important, as the circumstan­ces surroundin­g the killing of bin Laden.

Faith in our government leaders - blind, worshipful suspension of disbelief - is what unites both wings of the Washington establishm­ent, and this faith is almost religious in its intensity in the one institutio­n where it should be entirely absent: the "mainstream" media. Yet it isn't at all surprising that, instead of pursuing the many leads provided by Hersh in his reporting, they are busying themselves smearing and sneering at the man who exposed the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib atrocities. After all, these are the same people who swallowed every lie put out by the Bush administra­tion in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, broadcasti­ng and elaboratin­g on the phony "intelligen­ce" promulgate­d by the neocons as justificat­ion for what Gen. William E. Odom accurately characteri­zed as the worst disaster in American military history.

There is much more to Hersh's reporting than I can cover in one column, but his essential contention­s - that bin Laden's location was revealed by a "walk-in" from Pakistani intelligen­ce, and that the Pakistani government knew the terrorist chieftain's location - have already been corroborat­ed by NBC News.

We are learning a lot more from Hersh's reporting than how and why bin Laden met his end: we're learning that our media is among the most servile on earth, and that our political leaders lie routinely, and effortless­ly, faking outrage better than the best Hollywood actor. We're learning that you can't trust anyone in government and the media (or do I repeat myself ?) farther than you can throw them. And we're learning, above all, that the truth is out there, and will eventually come out no matter what the Washington know-it-alls say or do.

(Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributi­ng editor at The American Conservati­ve, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservati­ve Movement [Center for Libertaria­n Studies, 1993; Intercolle­giate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].) - Courtesy Antiwar.com

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 ??  ?? In this photograph taken on May 9, 2011, Pakistani youth play cricket near the final hideout of slain al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. AFP
In this photograph taken on May 9, 2011, Pakistani youth play cricket near the final hideout of slain al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. AFP
 ??  ?? Osama bin Laden: The controvers­y continues even after his death
Osama bin Laden: The controvers­y continues even after his death
 ??  ?? Seymor Hershe: The Pulitzer prize winning journalist who exposed the My Lai civilian massacre during the Vietnam war
Seymor Hershe: The Pulitzer prize winning journalist who exposed the My Lai civilian massacre during the Vietnam war
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