Mr. Prashad further analyses the death of Osama , article by Semour Hersh and asks following questions;  How did the U.S. learn that bin Laden was in Abbottabad? What did the Pakistani military know? Why did Obama betray the Pakistanis? ( f. sheikh)

In early May, THE veteran investigati-ve journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a 10,000-word report in London Review of Books entitled “The Killing of Osama bin Laden”. The essay alleges that the narrative produced by the United States government on the events of May 2, 2011, is flawed. The fact of bin Laden’s death is not in contention. At least that is taken for granted. What is in doubt, Hersh argues in the report, is the manner in which the U.S. government found out about bin Laden’s presence in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, the role of the Pakistani government in the U.S. operation, the way in which the U.S. Navy Seals killed bin Laden, and the manner in which his body was disposed of. The allegations are not all new. Many of them had circulated widely in Pakistan right after the operation. What gives them weight is that they come from a well-respected U.S. journalist and produced a denial from the White House.

What was the U.S. government’s story? The film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) closely reflects the official tale. Under torture, the film suggests, an associate of bin Laden led the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the Al Qaeda courier network that kept bin Laden in operational control. The CIA followed the couriers until they found bin Laden in Abbottabad. A fake polio immunisation drive allowed the CIA to get the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sample of bin Laden to confirm his identity. At this point, the White House authorised the Navy Seals to fly into Pakistan—without permission from the Pakistani military—and seize bin Laden. The raid went as planned although one of the two helicopters crashed in the compound. Bin Laden was killed in a firefight. His body was returned to Afghanistan, from where it was taken to USS Carl Vinson to be buried at sea. A trove of intelligence was found in bin Laden’s compound, which was turned over to the CIA.

Hersh disputes much of this story. He brings a tremendous amount of credibility to his assessment. Hersh as a reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story about the My Lai (Vietnam) massacre by U.S. troops in 1969. Unlike many of his peers, he did not set down his notebook and take up the columnist’s pen; he continued doggedly to pursue the story in the trenches of the U.S. security state. Thirty-five years after My Lai, Hersh brought to light the torture by U.S. prison guards in Abu Ghraib (Iraq). In recent years, as Hersh has shone his torch at the operation of the U.S. security state, establishment media outlets in the U.S. have pilloried him as a “conspiracy theorist”. Rather than carefully go through the evidence that he is able to provide, the press has been overly hostile to his reports—whether on allegations that Turkey is in collusion with Islamist radicals and that these radicals might have used chemical weapons in Syria (“The Red Line and the Rat Line”, London Review of Books, April 17, 2014), or on the death of bin Laden.

One of the most frequent criticisms against Hersh is that he uses anonymous sources. This is certainly the case. Why do journalists like Hersh rely on anonymous sources? One of the reasons is that the U.S. government is ruthless in its treatment of whistle-blowers. The Barack Obama administration, more than any previous one, has used the Espionage Act against any government official who leaks information that is inconvenient to it. Most recently, Jeffrey Sterling, an undercover CIA officer, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for letting The New York Times reporter James Risen know about Operation Merlin—a covert campaign by the U.S. government to sell Iran flawed material for its nuclear programme. That Hersh uses anonymous sources is nothing new. Most articles on national security rely on “senior government officials” or a “senior White House official who is not authorised to speak publicly”. Such formal criticism of Hersh’s reporting is misplaced, or even malicious. What is most striking about the lack of interest in Hersh’s account is that it comes just months after the U.S. Congressional Report on the CIA’s use of torture (“America’s Shame”, Frontline, January 9). That report shows that the CIA tried to hide its operations even when its personnel knew that laws had been violated. Trust in government should have been rattled by the revelations in that report, if nothing else. Hersh’s report takes apart several important pieces of the White House narrative on the death of bin Laden. There are pieces of the story, such as the bits about bin Laden’s body and the intelligence gained from bin Laden’s compound, that are fascinating but perhaps not as explosive as the three questions: How did the U.S. learn that bin Laden was in Abbottabad? What did the Pakistani military know? Why did Obama betray the Pakistanis? Click on the link below to read the full article; 

http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/white-lies/article7239187.ece