We recently posted about Seymour Hersh’s skepticism that the Pakistani military and the ISI were unaware of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. In his Democracy Now interview, he talks about how then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was unenthusiastic about the mission, was especially upset that the Obama administration went public with the story almost immediately.
Initially, says Hersh, we “were going to announce it happened in the Hindu Kush and pretend that we did a strike with a drone.” The reason for that was to avoid exposing Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani Kayani and ISI Director General Ahmad Pasha’s knowledge of the mission and to spare them the embarrassment of the actual raid on their watch. Also, continues Hersh,
“We put so much effort into the two leaders to make them trust us, because of the bomb issue, and also because of what they do for us, constantly do for us, still in Pakistan.”
By “bomb issue,” Hersh means that the United States wants command it can trust in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program. Elaborating, Hersh says,
“Gates … had a very critical thing to say about the White House, about going public so early. And he said it’s because they named the SEALs.”
But, “That wasn’t what his concern was.”
“His concern is we violated an agreement we made with Paha and Kayani to protect them. And the agreement we made with Pasha and Kayani to protect them. And the agreement was we wouldn’t let it be know what he was there, that the ISI was protecting him. They didn’t want the public to know it.”
While many believe that the raid on Abbottabad and the killing of bin Laden was a boon to U.S. national security, in the long run, it may have actually been to its detriment. Alienating those in the Pakistani command structure that are sympathetic to the United States may come back to bite us one day.