A detailed report accusing the White House of fabricating the story surrounding the raid of Osama Bin Laden's compound and his death was published in the London Review of Books on Sunday.
Seymour Hersh, a well-known Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who most recently broke the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse story in 2004, spoke to two unnamed sources, "a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad" and Americans who "had access to corroborating information," for the piece, which ran with the title "The Killing of Osama Bin Laden."
Chief among the multiple claims Hersh details is that the Pakistan intelligence service, ISI, had Bin Laden in custody at the Abbottabad compound where he was eventually killed on May 2, 2011. According to the report, Pakistan planned to use the knowledge of his whereabouts as leverage in negotiations with America, if the opportunity ever presented itself.
The White House's official account of how they discovered Bin Laden's location was by "tracing the moves of his personal courier," according to Politico. Instead, Hersh writes that a former ISI member betrayed the trust of his ex-employer and gave the United States the information of the terrorist's location for a reward of $25 million. The person who received the large sum of money now works as a consultant for the CIA, according to the report.
Another vital part of the American government's story is that Pakistani officials at Bin Laden's compound did not know the Navy SEAL team was on its way to assassinate the terrorist, which made it a difficult mission to pull off. According to Hersh's report, though, as part of the deal he says went down, Pakistani Army Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI, knew what was happening and ordered guards to stand down and let the SEALs complete their mission without firing a single shot.
Sources also told Hersh that Bin Laden was not buried at sea, as was previously reported:
"Within weeks of the raid, I had been told by two longtime consultants to Special Operations Command, who have access to current intelligence, that the funeral aboard the Carl Vinson didn't take place. One consultant told me that bin Laden's remains were photographed and identified after being flown back to Afghanistan. The consultant added: 'At that point, the CIA took control of the body. The cover story was that it had been flown to the Carl Vinson.' The second consultant agreed that there had been 'no burial at sea'. He added that 'the killing of bin Laden was political theatre designed to burnish Obama's military credentials.'"
Slate points out that Hersh's report may not have been strong enough to run in the New Yorker, where his most explosive pieces have been published in the past, because it is primarily based on one anonymous source's firsthand account.
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell dismissed the piece Monday on CBS, saying "It's all wrong," Politico reported.
"I started reading the article last night. I got a third of the way through and I stopped because every sentence I was reading was wrong. The source that Hersh talked to has no idea what he's talking about," Morell said. "The person obviously was not close to what actually happened... The Pakistanis did not know."
