"The President Is the Biggest Son of a B**** Going" - Seymour Hersh on Reagan (1987)

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• published: 28 Aug 2015
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In September 2013, during an interview with The Guardian, Hersh commented that the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden was "one big lie, not one word of it is true". He made the claim that the Obama administration lies systematically, and that American media outlets are reluctant to challenge the administration, saying "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]".[33] Hersh later clarified that the lying began in the aftermath of bin Laden's death.[34] On May 10, 2015, Hersh published the 10,000-word article "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" in the London Review of Books (LRB) on the fourth anniversary of the Abbottabad raid that killed bin Laden (Operation Neptune Spear). It immediately went viral, crashing the LRB website.[35] Hersh outlined with extensive quoting of both named and unnamed sources the background to how bin Laden's presence in Abbotabad came to be known to the US government and how the SEAL raid was in fact known to the Pakistanis and had ISI cooperation. Hersh alleges the US government's narrative was in fact an elaborate cover story meant to conceal Pakistan's relationship with the Al Qaeda leader and to yield maximum political payoff for President Barack Obama in the runup to the 2012 election season: "The killing was the high point of Obama's first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration's account. The United States got to Osama bin Laden with Pakistan's help but disclosed the operation in a manner that made the country look like a villain." Operation Neptune Spear is often contrasted with a low point—Operation Eagle Claw, the botched 1980 attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran ordered by President Jimmy Carter that killed eight troops and freed no captured Americans. The official US version is that bin Laden's location at Abbottabad was identified by the CIA by tracking an al-Qaeda courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Hersh reports that in August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer walked into the office of Jonathan Bank, the CIA station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad and betrayed the secret of bin Laden's whereabouts in return for part of the $25 million reward, and has since been relocated with his family to Washington and is a consultant to the CIA. The ISI had captured bin Laden in 2006; he had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains. The ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him. Bin Laden was very ill and was living as prisoner under ISI control in the garrison town of Abbottabad less than two miles from Pakistan's National Military Academy at Kakul (equivalent of United States Military Academy at West Point). The Saudi government also knew about Osama's presence in Abbottabad and had advised the Pakistanis to keep him as a prisoner and gave financial assistance. Major Amir Aziz, a Pakistani Army doctor, was ordered to move near his compound to provide treatment. Aziz was also given a share of the $25 million reward because he got the DNA sample which conclusively proved that it was bin Laden. A real casualty in the whole affair was the doctor named Shakil Afridi. His perfectly legitimate hepatitis B vaccination programme was claimed to be the way the US obtained bin Laden's DNA. Afridi became the sacrificial lamb because the US wanted to protect its real CIA informant, Amir Aziz, who had been held by the Pakistanis. Afridi was sentenced to 33 years by the Pakistanis. Other vaccination programmes were canceled once this lie was put forth. In taking out one terrorist, long past his prime, the US and Pakistan could have inadvertently endangered the public health of thousands.[36] Hersh claims that Pakistan Army and the intelligence service, knew of the US Navy SEALs' raid and made sure that the two helicopters carrying the SEALs to Abbottabad crossed Pakistani airspace without triggering an alarm: "The most blatant lie was that Pakistan's two most senior military leaders—General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI—were never informed of the US mission."[36] The report also states that Pakistani officials knew about the raid before it happened in May 2011 and instructed those monitoring bin Laden's compound to allow the SEALs to conduct the operation unobstructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh