The Real “Zero Dark Thirty”?

Do remember where you were when you heard the news that bin Laden had been killed?

Since that day there have been numerous documentaries about the event……the Seal Team Six has become a national hero….Hollywood has made a fortune from telling and re-telling the story…..and TV has glorified the work by the CIA and others to locate and kill the world’s number one terrorist…….the long arduous hours of data collection and analysis.

But as with most everything that has been done of late was it mostly propaganda?

A lengthy new report by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh turns the official account of Osama bin Laden’s assassination on its head. In the London Review of Books, Hersh writes that the US didn’t, as it has said, discover bin Laden’s location through couriers. Instead, top Pakistani generals knew where bin Laden was—in fact, as Hersh puts it, “bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006,” and a Pakistani official revealed the information for a large portion of a $25 million reward the US had put forward in 2001. Hersh bases his report largely on an anonymous source he describes as “a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.” Obama did order the Navy SEALs raid on the compound, but it didn’t happen the way the White House has said, Hersh writes.

“There was no firefight as they moved into the compound,” the source says. Bin Laden, who was an “invalid,” was simply shot. Ensuing accounts, including President Obama’s speech, provided inaccurate details. Though Obama acknowledged working with Pakistani intelligence, the account by John Brennan, now the CIA head, rejected the idea that Pakistan had any knowledge of bin Laden’s location. Hersh’s report is an “explosive” one, writes Seth Maxon at Slate, but he notes that its trustworthiness is uncertain, “since it mostly relies on the information of a single anonymous source—and because it doesn’t appear in Hersh’s usual venue for blockbuster investigative pieces, the New Yorker.” Business Insider agrees that it “should be viewed with skepticism.” Read it all here.

In case you are curious about this……here is the review from the UK…….

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

Is this true or is it just another made up story by a nationally known journalist?  Will we ever know the truth about this event?  Are we just celebrating a lie?

What do you think?  Fact or fiction?

8 thoughts on “The Real “Zero Dark Thirty”?”

    1. I wish I trusted CNN more….I am not saying it is a true tale but knowing my government I would not dismiss it outright…..

  1. Hersh is not one for fabricating fairy tells or engaging in excessive hyperbole but the fact that he relies solely on one source raises suspicions. Time will tell if his story is more accurate than false. It does kind of explain though how there seem to be insufficient reaction by the Pakistani army during this raid. Were they that asleep at the wheel or were they merely looking the other was as Hersh’s story suggests.

    1. I agree……I am sure this will stay classified for years and maybe then will never be de-classified….but Hersh is an excellent journalist and I tend to believe him….my only problem is the sourcing……

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