Pakistani Foreign Ministry Says It Told the CIA About Abbottabad Compound in 2009

Pakistan: We Told CIA About Compound in '09

May 5, 2011

The Daily Beast - The Pakistani Foreign Ministry says it told U.S. intelligence two years ago of suspicions about the compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was found.

• Did Pakistan’s spy agency alert the CIA two years ago that there was something suspicious about the compound where Osama bin Laden was tracked down and killed?
  


• Was it intelligence from the Pakistan government that finally led the U.S. to bin Laden?

Those were the claims of the Pakistani government today, fighting back against accusations that it ignored evidence of the presence of bin Laden and his family—apparently for years—in a large home only a stone’s throw from the military academy that is Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point.

Gallery: Osama’s Abbottabad Mansion

In a statement released to The Daily Beast by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, the government said that it had been sharing specific intelligence with the CIA about the compound since 2009 and that Abbottabad, the northern Pakistani city when bin Laden was found, has been “under sharp focus of intelligence agencies since 2003” because of reports of the presence of al Qaeda fighters.

“The fact is that this particular location was pointed out by our intelligence quite some time ago to the U.S. intelligence,” the Pakistani Foreign Secretary said.

“The intelligence flow indicating some foreigners in the surroundings of Abbottabad continued until mid-April 2011,” the statement said. “It is important to highlight that taking advantage of much superior technological assets, CIA exploited the intelligence leads given by us to identify and reach Osama bin Laden.”

A CIA spokeswoman said she was aware of the Pakistani statement but had no immediate comment on it. A White House spokeswoman also had no comment. But U.S. government officials have long expressed skepticism about many of their Pakistani counterparts’ claims of their cooperation in aiding America’s efforts against al Qaeda.

The Foreign Ministry statement was released as the Pakistani Foreign Secretary, Salman Bashir, told the BBC that he was distressed by comments by CIA Director Leon Panetta that Pakistan could not be trusted with advance information about the U.S. attack that resulted in bin Laden’s death.

He said that the Pakistani ISI, the country’s powerful military intelligence agency, had identified the Abbottabad complex as suspicious long ago—and urged the U.S. to use its sophisticated electronic monitoring talents to determine who was inside.

“The fact is that this particular location was pointed out by our intelligence quite some time ago to the U.S. intelligence,” he said, noting that the U.S. had “much more sophisticated equipment to evaluate and to assess” what was going on in the sprawling compound where bin Laden was eventually killed.

He said it was unfair to suggest that Pakistan would look the other way at bin Laden’s presence, given his government’s central role in apprehending so many other senior al Qaeda members within Pakistan’s borders, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

“Most of these things that have happened in terms of combating global terror, Pakistan has played a pivotal role,” he said.

In its statement, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry suggested that it was not surprising that the bin Laden compound drew little attention from others in the neighborhood, noting that in the high-security area around Abbottabad and the Pakistani military academy, many houses have “high boundary walls, in line with their culture of privacy and security—houses with such layout and structural details are not a rarity.”

Despite American suspicions that some leaders of the Pakistani military must have known and approved of granting sanctuary to bin Laden, a former senior U.S. intelligence official tells The Daily Beast that it seems highly unlikely that bin Laden’s presence was known by more than a few people, if only because no one attempted to claim the State Department’s $10 million reward for bin Laden’s head—a reward that had been widely publicized in the Pakistan media.

“You’d have thought that over all these years, someone would drop a dime on him,” the official said. “That’s a lot of money for a single phone call or email. It’s surprising that there wasn’t a money-hungry general somewhere who wanted that money. Actually, it’s amazing.”

Pakistan Warns America Not to Stage Any More Raids

May 5, 2011

AP - ...Pakistani claims that it did not know anything about the raid until it was too late to stop it. He said the army scrambled two F-16 fighter jets when it was aware that foreign helicopters were hovering over the city of Abbottabad, not far from the capital Islamabad, but they apparently did not get to the choppers on time.

American officials have said they didn't inform Pakistan in advance, fearing bin Laden could be tipped off.

Elements of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency have long been suspected of maintaining links to Islamist militants, mostly for use as proxies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While the country has worked with the United States to arrest many al-Qaida operatives since 2001, suspicion lingers it is playing a double game.

The leaders of Britain and France, as well as U.S. officials, have said Pakistan has questions to answer over bin Laden's location in a large house close to an army academy in a garrison town.

Bashir said it was "absolutely wrong" to blame the ISI.

"After all there was information within the U.S. system about those who were ultimately, eventually responsible for the 9/11 (attacks), so it's not for me to say that the U.S. government or the CIA failed to prevent that," he said.

While some U.S. lawmakers have taken a tough line, President Barack Obama and other American officials have been more cautious, realizing that downgrading or severing ties with the country would be risky.

Bashir said perceptions that Pakistan's ties with Washington were at rock bottom were untrue.

"We acknowledge the United States is an important friend," he said. "Basically Pakistan and U.S. relations are moving in the right direction."

EU spokesman Michael Mann said Thursday "there can be no doubt" Pakistan would remain an important partner in the region even amid the allegations.

Source: Only 1 Killed in bin Laden Raid was Armed

May 5, 2011

AP – Only one of the five people killed in the raid that got Osama bin Laden was armed and fired a shot, a senior defense official said Thursday, acknowledging the new account differs greatly from original administration portrayals of a chaotic, intense and prolonged firefight.

The sole shooter in the al-Qaida leader's Pakistani compound was quickly killed in the early minutes of the commando operation, details that have become clearer now that the Navy SEAL assault team has been debriefed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

He said the raid should be described as a precision, floor-by-floor operation to hunt and find the al-Qaida leader and his protectors, rather than as it has been portrayed by a succession of Obama administration briefers since bin Laden's death was announced Sunday night.

As the Navy SEALs moved into bin Laden's compound, they were fired on by bin Laden's courier, who was in the guesthouse, the official said. The SEALs returned fire, and the courier was killed, along with a woman with him. The official said she was hit in the crossfire.

The Americans were never fired on again as they encountered and killed a man on the first floor and then bin Laden's son on a staircase, before arriving at bin Laden's room. Officials have said bin Laden was killed after he appeared to be lunging for a weapon.

White House and Defense Department and CIA officials through the week have offered varying and foggy versions of the operation, though the dominant focus was on a firefight that officials said consumed most of the 40-minute assault.

"There were many other people who were armed ... in the compound," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday when asked if bin Laden was armed. "There was a firefight."

"We expected a great deal of resistance and were met with a great deal of resistance," he said.

"For most of the period there, there was a firefight," a senior defense official told Pentagon reporters in a briefing Monday.

And though officials later revised these words, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan originally said even bin Laden, too, took part in the shootout. Later the administration said bin Laden wasn't armed.

NBC News, which was first to report that four of the five people killed were unarmed, said the majority of the operation was spent gathering up the compound's computers, hard drives, cell phones and other items that could provide valuable intelligence on al-Qaida and potential operations worldwide.

Those materials have been taken to the FBI lab at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., the defense official said Thursday.

White House Struggles to Get Story Right on Raid

May 3, 2011

AP – Killing Osama bin Laden was a big victory for the U.S., but how exactly the raid went down is another story — and another, and another.

Over two days, the White House has offered contradictory versions of events, including misidentifying which of bin Laden's sons was killed and wrongly saying bin Laden's wife died in gunfire, as it tries to sort through what the president's press secretary called the "fog of combat" and produce an accurate account.

Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that officials were trying to get information out as quickly as possible about the complex event witnessed by just a handful of people, and the story line was being corrected.

"We provided a great deal of information with great haste in order to inform you. ... And obviously some of the information was, came in piece by piece and is being reviewed and updated and elaborated on," Carney said.

The contradictions and misstatements reflect the fact that even in the case of a highly successful and popular mission, the confusion inherent in a fast-paced, unpredictable military raid conducted under intense pressure in a foreign country does not lend itself immediately to a tidy story line, some experts said.

"People are demanding the equivalent of a movie, they want to know scene by scene the most trivial details. You're in the middle of a combat operation," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"One of the things we all have to be careful about is the idea that you can suddenly rush to transparency and understanding in a matter of minutes or hours on the first day of an event like this."

The circumstances for the Navy SEALs involved hardly lent themselves to careful note-taking. One of their helicopters stalled even before they rushed bin Laden's compound, entering different rooms from different angles, not knowing who they'd find and then, according to the White House, engaging in a firefight. Some of what happened during those 40 minutes in Abbottabad, Pakistan, may never be known.

Nevertheless, the contradictory statements seem certain to raise suspicions about the White House's version of events, given that no independent account from another source is likely to emerge. The only non-U.S. witnesses to survive the raid are in Pakistani custody.

Some of the White House contradictions and corrections that have emerged so far:

• White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan told reporters Monday that bin Laden's son Khalid was killed in the raid. When the White House released a transcript of Brennan's briefing, it substituted the name of a different son, Hamza. The White House said that was a transcription error.

• Brennan said bin Laden's wife died while shielding the terrorist leader from U.S. gunfire. Carney said Tuesday that the wife hadn't died and was merely shot in the leg, although another woman did die. But it wasn't clear that either of them was trying to shield bin Laden.

• Brennan and other officials suggested that bin Laden was holding a gun and even firing at U.S. forces. Carney said Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed.

• Officials have offered varying accounts of how President Barack Obama and his team in the White House Situation Room were able to monitor the raid. Without providing details on the technology involved, Brennan said that "we were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation from its commencement to its time on target to the extraction of the remains and to then the egress off of the target."

CIA Director Leon Panetta told PBS on Tuesday that,

"Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on."

• The night of the raid, administration officials held a telephone briefing for reporters. "During the raid, we lost one helicopter due to mechanical failure," one of the administration officials said. Later in the same call, another official contradicted that: "We didn't say it was mechanical."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, clarified Tuesday that the explanation was more technical:

The air temperature in the compound was hotter than expected and the helicopter was too heavy to stay aloft under that condition.

Bin Laden's Neighbors Noticed Unusual Things

May 3, 2011

AP – When a woman involved in a polio vaccine drive turned up at Osama bin Laden's hideaway, she remarked to the men behind the high walls about the expensive SUVs parked inside. The men took the vaccine, apparently to administer to the 23 children at the compound, and told her to go away.

The terror chief and his family kept well hidden behind thick walls in this northwestern hill town they shared with thousands of Pakistani soldiers. But glimpses of their life are emerging — along with deep skepticism that authorities didn't know they were there.

Although the house is large, it was unclear how three dozen people could have lived there with any degree of comfort.

Neighbors said they knew little about those inside in the compound but bin Laden apparently depended on two men who would routinely emerge to run errands or to a neighborhood gathering, such as a funeral. There were conflicting details about the men's identities. Several people said they were known as Tariq and Arshad Khan and had identified themselves as cousins from elsewhere in northwestern Pakistan. Others gave different names and believed they were brothers.

Arshad was the oldest, and both spoke multiple languages, including Pashto and Urdu, which are common here, residents said.

As Navy SEALs swept through the compound early Monday, they handcuffed those they encountered with plastic zip ties and pressed on in pursuit of bin Laden. After killing the terror leader, his son and two others, they doubled back to move nine women and 23 children away from the compound, according to U.S. officials.

Those survivors of the raid are now "in safe hands and being looked after in accordance to the law," the Pakistani government said in a statement. "As per policy, they will be handed over to their countries of origin." It did not elaborate.

Also unclear was why bin Laden chose Abbottabad, though at least two other top al-Qaida leaders have sheltered in this town. The bustling streets are dotted with buildings left over from British colonial days. These days it attracts some tourists, but is known mostly as a garrison town wealthier than many others in Pakistan.

Bin Laden found it safe enough to stay for up to six years, according to U.S. officials, a stunning length of time to remain in one place right under the noses of a U.S.-funded army that had ostensibly been trying to track him down. Most intelligence assessments believed him to be along the Afghan-Pakistan border, perhaps in a cave.

Construction of the three-story house began about seven years ago, locals said. People initially were curious about the heavily fortified compound — which had walls as high as 18 feet topped with barbed wire — but over time they just grew to believe the family inside was deeply religious and conservative.

The Pakistani government also pushed back at suggestions that security forces were sheltering bin Laden or failed to spot suspicious signs.

"It needs to be appreciated that many houses (in the northwest) have high boundary walls, in line with their culture of privacy and security," the government said. "Houses with such layout and structural details are not a rarity."

The house has been described as a mansion, even a luxury one, but from the outside it is nothing special. Bin Laden may have well have been able to take in a view of the hills from secluded spots in the garden, though.

The walls are stained with mold, trees are in the garden and the windows are hidden. U.S. officials said the house had no Internet or phone connection to reduce the risk of electronic surveillance. They also said residents burned their trash to avoid collection.

Those who live nearby said the people in bin Laden's compound rarely strayed outside. Most were unaware that foreigners — bin Laden and his family are Arabs — were living there.

Khurshid Bibi, in her 70s, said one man living in the compound had given her a lift to the market in the rain. She said her grandchildren played with the kids in the house and that the adults there gave them rabbits as a gift.

But the occupants also attracted criticism.

"People were skeptical in this neighborhood about this place and these guys. They used to gossip, say they were smugglers or drug dealers. People would complain that even with such a big house they didn't invite the poor or distribute charity," said Mashood Khan, a 45-year-old farmer.

Questions persisted about how authorities could not have known who was living in the compound, especially since it was close to a prestigious military academy.

As in other Pakistani towns, hotels in Abbottabad are supposed to report the presence of foreigners to the police, as are estate agents. Abbottabad police chief Mohammed Naeem said the police followed the procedures but "human error cannot be avoided."

Reporters were allowed to get as far as the walls of the compound for the first time, but the doors were sealed

By early Wednesday, roads leading to the compound had once again been sealed off, this time with even tighter security.

Neighbors earlier showed off small parts of what appeared to be a U.S. helicopter that malfunctioned and was disabled by the American strike team as it retreated. A small servant's room outside the perimeter showed signs of violent entry and a brisk search. Clothes and bedding had been tossed aside. A wall clock was on the floor, the time stuck at 2:20.

Abbottabad has so far been spared the terrorist bombings that have scarred much of Pakistan over the last four years.

Like many Pakistani towns where the army has a strong presence, Abbottabad is well-manicured, and has solid infrastructure. Street signs tell residents to "Love Pakistan." The city also is known for its good schools, including some that were originally established by Christian missionaries.

Little girls wear veils while carrying Hannah Montana backpacks to school. Many houses in the outlying areas have modern amenities, but lie along streets covered with trash. Shepherds herd their flock of sheep along dusty roads just a few hundred yards from modern banks.

Al-Qaida's No. 3, Abu Faraj al-Libi, lived in the town before his arrest in 2005 elsewhere in northwest Pakistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. Earlier this year, Indonesian terror suspect Umar Patek was nabbed at a house in the town following the arrest of an al-Qaida courier who worked at the post office. It is not clear whether Patek had any links with bin Laden.

Western officials have long regarded Pakistani security forces with suspicion, chiefly over their links to militants fighting in Afghanistan. Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton caused anger in Pakistan when she said she found it "hard to believe" that no one in Islamabad knows where the al-Qaida leaders are hiding and couldn't get them "if they really wanted to."

But al-Qaida has been responsible for scores of bloody attacks inside Pakistan, including on its army and civilian leaders. Critics of Pakistan have speculated that a possible motivation for Pakistan to have kept bin Laden on the run — rather than arresting or killing him — would be to ensure a constant flow of U.S. aid and weapons into the country.

Suspicions were also aired in Pakistani media and on the street Tuesday.

"That house was obviously a suspicious one," said Jahangir Khan, who was buying a newspaper in Abbottabad. "Either it was a complete failure of our intelligence agencies or they were involved in this affair."