Osama Bin Laden is still very much alive – at least on the internet. Four years after the US administration announced the Al Qaeda founder's death in a midnight raid (and then fast-tracked a Hollywood movie about the operation), a 10,000-word article by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh has published a piece that offers up an entirely different story. And it's not being received all that well.
Hersh's article disputes the basic premise of what ended up as Zero Dark Thirty: American intelligence managed to find a courier who they tracked right to Bin Laden's house, which happened to be a suburban villa in Abbottabad, a stone's throw away from Pakistan's military academy. The US story involved a midnight raid with two helicopters flying across the border from Afghanistan, engaging in a quick firefight after which they killed Bin Laden and dumped his body in the sea. Crucially, in the American version the Pakistanis had no knowledge that Osama lived where he did and were only alerted about the US operation after it was over.
In his piece in the London Review of Books, Hersh says all of this was wrong. Based on a retired Pakistani intelligence officer's word, and several unnamed sources, Hersh claims that Pakistan knew and in fact was keeping Bin Laden in Abbottabad. His piece asserts that the Americans found out about Bin Laden from a walk-in tipster who wanted the $25 million reward, following which Pakistan and the US cooperated in the run-up to the Abbottabad operation. The break down in US-Pakistan relations in the aftermath of the operation was all for show.
There's a reason Hersh's version of events is tempting to follow: the original story put out by the Americans seems too fantastical to believe. Could the most wanted man on earth really be living so close to the Pakistani military establishment without them knowing? Could Pakistani defences be so susceptible as to allow American helicopters to cross the border and fly all the way to Abbottabad, kill Bin Laden and then fly away as well before any response?
Now a serious, renowned journalist has offered an alternative version of history that speaks specifically to those "unanswered questions." But not everyone thinks Hersh, who broke some of the biggest investigative stories of the last few decades but has delivered some more thinly sourced pieces of late, has everything down pat in his new piece.
Here is a sampling of the reactions:
*NBC News, which was also reporting similar leads, echoes the theory that a Pakistani intelligence asset told the Central Intelligence Agency where Bin Laden was hiding and that the Pakistani government knew.
*Max Fisher, of Vox, attempts to debunk Hersh's theory point by point. "Why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this?"
*Dylan Byers of On Media reports that the New Yorker, where Hersh published some of his most important work including the Abu Ghraib investigation, said no to Hersh's story repeatedly.
*Media critic Jack Shafer points out why Hersh might be following the right leads, considering all the various, contradictory stories about the Abbottabad operation. But to conclude that it was a massive conspiracy belies the contradictions, since a conspiracy would have been more likely to result in a straightforward cover story that the government stuck to.
*Phillip Carter of Slate considers the possibility that, since US officials are reluctant to open up about the operation, Hersh might have been swayed by Pakistani intelligence officers seeking to change the image of incompetence they were labelled with after it turned out that Bin Laden was right under their noses.
*RJ Hillhouse, a national security professor, has even argued that Hersh "plagiarised" this version of events from her own blogpost on what really happened, which she put up in August 2011, just a few months after the news was announced.
*Jaime Fuller of the NY magazine looks into how solid Seymour Hersh's recent reporting has been.
*The most authoritative comment however, comes from the astute and beloved Majorly Profound:
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Hersh's article disputes the basic premise of what ended up as Zero Dark Thirty: American intelligence managed to find a courier who they tracked right to Bin Laden's house, which happened to be a suburban villa in Abbottabad, a stone's throw away from Pakistan's military academy. The US story involved a midnight raid with two helicopters flying across the border from Afghanistan, engaging in a quick firefight after which they killed Bin Laden and dumped his body in the sea. Crucially, in the American version the Pakistanis had no knowledge that Osama lived where he did and were only alerted about the US operation after it was over.
In his piece in the London Review of Books, Hersh says all of this was wrong. Based on a retired Pakistani intelligence officer's word, and several unnamed sources, Hersh claims that Pakistan knew and in fact was keeping Bin Laden in Abbottabad. His piece asserts that the Americans found out about Bin Laden from a walk-in tipster who wanted the $25 million reward, following which Pakistan and the US cooperated in the run-up to the Abbottabad operation. The break down in US-Pakistan relations in the aftermath of the operation was all for show.
There's a reason Hersh's version of events is tempting to follow: the original story put out by the Americans seems too fantastical to believe. Could the most wanted man on earth really be living so close to the Pakistani military establishment without them knowing? Could Pakistani defences be so susceptible as to allow American helicopters to cross the border and fly all the way to Abbottabad, kill Bin Laden and then fly away as well before any response?
Now a serious, renowned journalist has offered an alternative version of history that speaks specifically to those "unanswered questions." But not everyone thinks Hersh, who broke some of the biggest investigative stories of the last few decades but has delivered some more thinly sourced pieces of late, has everything down pat in his new piece.
Here is a sampling of the reactions:
*NBC News, which was also reporting similar leads, echoes the theory that a Pakistani intelligence asset told the Central Intelligence Agency where Bin Laden was hiding and that the Pakistani government knew.
*Max Fisher, of Vox, attempts to debunk Hersh's theory point by point. "Why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this?"
Why not just kill bin Laden, drive his body across the border into Afghanistan, and drop him off with the Americans? Or why not put him in a hut somewhere in Waziristan, blow it up with an F-16, pretend it was a US drone strike, and tell the Americans to go collect the body?
*Dylan Byers of On Media reports that the New Yorker, where Hersh published some of his most important work including the Abu Ghraib investigation, said no to Hersh's story repeatedly.
*Media critic Jack Shafer points out why Hersh might be following the right leads, considering all the various, contradictory stories about the Abbottabad operation. But to conclude that it was a massive conspiracy belies the contradictions, since a conspiracy would have been more likely to result in a straightforward cover story that the government stuck to.
These dueling accounts suggest that if U.S. government officials did attempt to orchestrate the hoax Hersh alleges, they were wildly incompetent in those efforts—unable to keep the press chasing a unified narrative, as I demonstrate above. Or, they were brilliant beyond the greatest Hollywood scenarist—spewing warring plotlines that completely fogged the true story from view until Hersh discovered it for the London Review of Books. What’s more likely is that a combination of U.S. spin, secrecy, diplomacy, politics and the usual confusion keep all the joints from dovetailing perfectly.
*Phillip Carter of Slate considers the possibility that, since US officials are reluctant to open up about the operation, Hersh might have been swayed by Pakistani intelligence officers seeking to change the image of incompetence they were labelled with after it turned out that Bin Laden was right under their noses.
*RJ Hillhouse, a national security professor, has even argued that Hersh "plagiarised" this version of events from her own blogpost on what really happened, which she put up in August 2011, just a few months after the news was announced.
*Jaime Fuller of the NY magazine looks into how solid Seymour Hersh's recent reporting has been.
*The most authoritative comment however, comes from the astute and beloved Majorly Profound:
Huge controversy by Hersh on whether ISI was sheltering Bin Laden and gave him up, or if ISI was sheltering Bin Laden and didnt give him up
— DrMajorlyPhD, Expert (@majorlyp) May 11, 2015