Tag: Osama bin Laden

Bump: In an interview on "60 Minutes" tonight, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta criticizes Pakistan for arresting Shakil Afridi, the doctor that the CIA asked to run a fake vaccine program in hopes of getting DNA to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence at the Abbottabad compound. An inquiry commission in Pakistan has since recommended that Dr. Afridi be charged with high treason. Panetta says Pakistan should release Afridi:

“For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part.

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Pakistan has completed its interviews of Osama bin Laden's wives and children and declared them free to leave Pakistan and travel freely.

The Pakistani Commission also recommended that a physician who worked with the CIA to conduct a fake vaccination program designed to obtain DNA from the citizens of Abbouttabad be charged with treason.

The vaccination ruse has been widely criticized by aid agencies, which have said it could harm legitimate immunization programs in Pakistan. The vaccination team was reported to have gained access bin Laden's house in Abbottabad, but that it didn't confirm bin Laden's presence there.

The U.S. wants Pakistan to allow the doctor to live in the U.S.

Yesterday, the Australian reported information from Pakistani officials that the three wives of Osama bin Laden had turned on each other, and the older two were accusing the youngest, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah of Yemen, of betraying Osama bin Laden, either by supplying information or by allowing herself to be tracked to the compound. It read like an episode of Desperate Housewives.

Today, via The Sunday Times of London, the Australian reports the Seals left behind a comprehensive pocket guide, that indeed seems there must have been a mole. And that the Obama Administration's insistence that it wasn't sure Osama would be at the compound was disingenuous, at best. [More...]

Glenn Sargent at The Plum Line obtained a copy of the May 9th letter CIA Chief Leon Panetta wrote John McCain. He quotes three paragraphs:

Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that Bin Ladin was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. there was no one “essential and indispensible” key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates was on "60 Minutes" tonight. He said he had doubts about the intelligence information that Osama bin Laden was at the Abbouttabad compound.

While he had confidence in the SEALs before the mission, Gates told us he was very nervous about the intelligence on the mission. "I was very concerned, frankly. I had real reservations about the intelligence. My worry was the level of uncertainty about whether bin Laden was even in the compound. There wasn't any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial. But it was the best information that we had since probably 2001," he explained.

"And did you feel you had to strike while the iron was hot, if you will?" (Katie) Couric asked. "I think everybody agreed that we needed to act and act pretty promptly," he replied.

Gates also had a lot of praise for President Obama: [More...]

Pakistan allowed U.S. officials to interview the three wives of Osama bin Laden who were at the compound in Abbottabad during the raid that killed Osama.

The wives were described as "hostile." Why wouldn't they be? All three lost a husband, one (or two, depending on which inconsistent report you believe) lost a son, and one was shot in the leg.

Reportedly, the eldest of the three wives spoke for the group. That would be Khairia Saaba, otherwise known as Umm Hamzah, who is 7 years older than Osama and the mother of the missing or dead or captured Hamza bin Laden. [More....]

What a faux headline from the AP, "Diary: Bin Laden eyed new targets, big body count." From the body of the article:

Intelligence officials have not identified any new planned targets or plots in their initial analysis of the 100 or so flash drives and five computers that Navy SEALs hauled away after killing bin Laden.

....Officials have not yet seen any indication that bin Laden had the ability to coordinate timing of attacks across the various al-Qaida affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq and Somalia.

They can't even conclude AQAP and the other al Qaida groups paid attention to his musings. AQAP is far more relevant and operational than Osama. [More...]

Pakistan and the U.S. say they are still in dialogues over the U.S. "interviews" of Osama bin Laden's three wives. What's holding it up and why does Pakistan say it has not yet received a formal request for access?

My guess: The U.S. is not just asking for permission to interview the women in Pakistan. It wants to extradite them to the U.S. for interrogation. The State Department is now making statements about the women and the interview requests. Why would they be involved if extradition was not on the horizon? State Department Spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday: [More....]

The Telegraph (UK) is reporting that Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden, may have escaped from the compound during the raid at Abbottabad. ABC News reports Hamza is unaccounted for. (More on the Hamza confusion here and here.)

Hamza, who reportedly was living at the compound, along with his mother who is in Pakistani custody, has not been accounted for. Some say he was removed by the commandos along with Osama bin Laden -- with conflicting reports on whether he was dead or alive when captured. [More...]

Bump and Update: CNN reports a U.S. official has confirmed that the other two wives in the Osama bin Laden compound are, as I have been speculating for a few days, Khairia Saaba otherwise known as Umm Hamzah and Siham Sabar, also known as Umm Khalid. CNN reports a Pakistani intelligence source has told them today that Pakistan will allow the U.S. to interview (interrogate) the wives only if their home countries approve. (Yemen and Saudi Arabia are the home countries.) The AP reports differently, and says Pakistan will allow the U.S. to question the wives.

Original Post: Pakistan to Send Bin Laden's Widow Back to Yemen

The U.S. may not get its wish to interrogate the 29 year old widow of Osama bin Laden, Aml Ahmed Abdul Al-Fatah Al-Sada of Yemen. Pakistan officials say she will be returned to Yemen after they complete their questioning of her.[More...]

Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani addressed the country's Parliament today. He said the unilateral raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was regrettable. Pakistan will conduct an investigation into how Osama hid in Abbottabad for so long. He also said in the future, "any attack on strategic assets would be retaliated with full force."

Gilani said "the US used its technological ability to evade Pakistan’s radar system." He also called for more information sharing, and "an end to the blame game."

He also denied Pakistani ISI was in cahoots with Osama or al Qaeda: [More...]

President Obama is still walking a tight line when it comes to Pakistan's possible role in sheltering Osama bin Laden. On "60 Minutes", taped a few days ago but airing tonight:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate. And we've already communicated to them, and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these are questions that we're not going to be able to answer three or four days after the event. It's going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.

The full interview, transcript and video, is here.

"When I look at the television,
I want to see me staring right back at me
We all want to be big stars,
... when everybody loves me,
I'm going to be just about as happy as I can be"

What is the big deal about Osama bin Laden watching videos of himself on TV? Who cares? Why release them now? Is it to deflect attention from the bungled narrative Administration officials presented all week as to what happened during the raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad? Does the Administratin think they show us something negative we didn't know about Osama?

The Administration should count its blessings that everyone is glad Osama is dead, otherwise it could be in deep doo-doo over this raid and have a lot more explaining to do, particularly over its relationship with Pakistan's military and intelligence agency, which is costing us a fortune. There sure doesn't seem to be much bang for the buck. [More...]

Every day brings new details as to who was in the compound at Abbottabad and what happened inside. (Yesterday's is here.) Pakistani officials have now disclosed additional details from their debriefing of Osama bin Laden's wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, who was shot in the leg:

• Prior to moving to the compound in Abbottabad in 2005, Osama and his family lived in a village called Chak Shah Mohammad Khan, in the district of Haripur, for nearly two and a half years.

  
  Chak Shah Mohammad, situated on the highway to Abbottabad, is two kilometres to the southeast of Haripur town. In retrospect that meant, one of the officials observed, Osama had left the country’s tribal region sometime in 2003 to live in a settled area.

  ...“Imagine, this guy was living in our midst in Haripur and Abbottabad for seven and a half years and we all, both Pakistanis and Americans, had been looking for him in the wrong direction,” one official remarked.

• Osama was hale and hearty. He had recovered from his kidney issues years ago after having two surgeries in Kandahar. He relied on homemade remedies that included a lot of watermelon.

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Finally, Pakistani officials disclose which son of Osama bin Laden was killed by commandos in the raid on the compound in Abbottabad. They say it was Khalid bin Laden.

[W]ell-informed sources in the Pakistani security establishment claim that Osama’s dead son was not Hamza bin Laden but Khalid bin Laden. Besides Osama, Hamza bin Laden is also wanted by the United States for his involvement in terrorist activities directed against the US-led Allied Forces in Afghanistan.

This matches information first released by the U.S., but curiously changed in the transcript of the briefing and then changed back again. [More...]