The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

by Seymour M. Hersh

Overview

An electrifying investigation of the White House’ lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden—from a Pulitzer Prize winner hailed as “the greatest investigative journalist of his era” (New Yorker).

“An explosive account.” —Los Angeles Times

In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden.

At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria.

This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784784393
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Seymour Hersh has written for the New Yorker and the London Review of Books, as well as serving as a Washington correspondent for the New York Times. He established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism more than four decades ago with an exposé of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Since then he has uncovered stories such as Kissinger’s role in extending the Vietnam War as well as the military torture regime at Abu Ghraib prison. He has won the George Polk prize five times, the National Magazine Award for Public Interest twice, the LA Times Book Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

The Killing of Osama bin Laden 13

The Red Line and the Rat Line 53

Whose Sarin? 77

Military to Military 99

Index 125

Editorial Reviews

"I’ve long admired the skill and independence with which Hersh has brought important and concealed information to light.”
—Ahmed Rashid, New York Review of Books

“It is the demands of state secrecy, their distressing effects on US foreign policy—and ultimately their subversion of the democratic process—that unify the four essays in Seymour Hersh’s The Killing of Osama Bin Laden … An explosive account.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Vintage Hersh. It takes issue with every part and participle of the story about Osama bin Laden’s death.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“Hersh’s account is more plausible than the official version and more thought-provoking than the movie Zero Dark Thirty, which dramatised the hunt for Bin Laden … my bet is that he’s got closer to the truth about Bin Laden’s death than anyone else has yet.”
—Independent

“Seymour Hersh’s theories surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden and recent events in Syria are forceful.”
—Guardian

“The Killing of Osama bin Laden is the clearest articulation of how US policy on the Middle East has shifted, with often damaging consequences … Required reading for those seeking firm answers from US presidential candidates before they take office.”
—Joseph Dana, LA Review of Books

“Seymour Hersh is without a doubt the most important journalist in the United States … [The Killing of Osama bin Laden] is a masterpiece of investigation.”
—Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorpill

“Riveting, provocative … a critical book for anyone concerned with the importance of truth in democratic governance.”
—Hans Rollman, PopMatters

“A devastating critique.”
—Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“One of America’s greatest investigative reporters.”
—New York Times Magazine

“The last great American reporter.”
—Financial Times

“Quite simply, the greatest investigative journalist of his era.”
—David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief, New Yorker

“The Pulitzer Prize winner builds on his reputation as an iconic investigative journalist, skewering the conventional wisdom about the death of Osama bin Laden.”
—Kirkus

“Few aspects of the official version of Seal Team Six’s killing of bin Laden in May 2011 survive Hersh’s scrutiny.”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

"It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?" Smiley slowly lifts his turtle-lidded eyes. "That would be Seymour Hersh."

From the ghosts of My Lai to the ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Hersh has surely made some violence-prone enemies, poking his nose where it hasn't been invited, following it with a sharp stick to unearth the villainy when humans embrace the dark side. It's a wonder he's still alive. But few independent investigative reporters have as many ears listening as Hersh, and it would be noticed if he'd gone missing. With The Killing of Osama bin Laden, he's at it again, debriding the official narrative, making more enemies. "The story stunk from Day 1," he told a reporter. Go on, Mr. Hersh.

The Killing of Osama bin Laden is a collection of four pieces Hersh contributed to the London Review of Books. Some have sniffed that they didn't appear in the New Yorker, as if the LRB had never heard of fact checking. The grief-of-denial the stories have spawned has come from various sources including vested interests: parties to the crime, writers who got the story wrong. But these four works are tight investigative reports, with the gaps to be expected, and with the gathering momentum of Hersh's experience and reasoning. In the end, one set of stories is seasoned and matured; there is no rush to press. The other stories — official press briefing, book, article, television, film — have seasoned too, like the contents of a dumpster in the sun. Your choice.

The bin Laden story starts with a snitch and ends in betrayal. Of course Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs; that's not in question and never has been. But before we read that parts of his body — "The squad came through the door and obliterated him," said Hersh's primary source — were sprinkled over the Hindu Kush from the homeward-bound helicopter (here is one of Hersh's sources when Hersh brought up the famous burial at sea. "The consultant laughed and said, 'You mean, he didn't make it to the water?' "), let's look at the other three articles, which have a grip all their own in their very venal everydayness.

One article has to do with the conduct of the war on terror. It has as its lodestar the rule of law and the rights of man, and as its target serious lapses in judgment and integrity by the executive branch, its failure to grasp recent history, and its displays of hubris and exceptionalism. Hersh convincingly argues that in its hunger to topple Bashir al-Assad, the Obama administration has been arming the wrong opposition (in his telling, the military has had to make an end run around the administration to get vital equipment into, if not the right, then the best available hands). On the conduct- unbecoming issue, the promised-to-be-closed Guantánamo continues to operate, with 100 prisoners, no due process, no accountability. Read this closely: "[David Obey, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee] had dared to take on George Bush and Dick Cheney over aspects of their war on terror - - as Obey and others in Congress believed — were not being shared with, and perhaps were not even financed by, Congress, as stipulated by the Constitution." Hersh has a way of letting you feel the chill.

In another piece, "Whose Sarin?," this time dealing with chemical warfare as a line in the sand, Hersh produces evidence that questions exactly who is deploying sarin gas in Syria. American intelligence agencies have reason to believe Syrian jihadists have mastered the mechanics of sarin gas. And, again, in their hurry to root out Assad, the administration cherry-picks and alters available information. One of Hersh's sources in the intelligence community asked, "How can we help this guy" — Obama — "when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along." Most reporting on the matter is feeble, relying on government assessments rather than intelligence assessments, let alone direct observation. (Flight-path analyses released by the administration were termed "totally nuts" by Theodore Postol, professor of technology and national security at MIT.) In blaming Assad, the administration boasted that it knew exactly what the Syrian regime was up to: "chemical weapons personnel were on the ground, in the area, making preparations." In truth, according to Hersh, this was a back-story, and it backfired: the Daily Mail wrote, "Intelligence report says US officials knew about nerve-gas attack in Syria three days before it killed over 1,400 people — including more than 400 children."

A third piece on military-to-military assistance details Obama's trapped, Cold War thinking regarding Syria. His understandable distrust of Vladimir Putin, and Putin's alliance with the unsavory Assad, clouds his ability to see a shared regional anxiety. Hersh raises a number of thorny questions here: Why is the CIA funneling arms to the Syrian opposition via Turkey when the jihadists control the opposition? Why is Turkey looking the other way at the growth of ISIS? (Could it be money? Could it be its long-simmering discord with Kurds?) Why have we not cultivated the strategic cooperation with Syria post-9/11? As he points out, cooperation with Syria has led to the foiling of al-Qaida attacks on the Fifth Fleet and the identification of al-Qaida informants. The Joint Chiefs had arranged for indirect intelligence sharing with Syria under various conditions, and while that agreement got bogged down, it pointed the way to a more flexible approach than the current hard line.

Lastly, the article on the discovery and targeted assassination/extrajudicial killing/premeditated murder of bin Laden presents a very different scenario as we have been led to believe. The story relies on three principal sources: a retired senior intelligence source who was privy to much of the story, from initial intelligence concerning Abbottabad to after-action reports, and two longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command. Thin? Not by investigative reporting standards, not with Hersh's Rolodex (which, it is rumored, has the dimensions of the London Eye) also at hand.

At the heart of the story, Hersh asserts that bin Laden's whereabouts were revealed to the U.S. by a "walk-in," a retired Pakistani intelligence official, a year before the extreme-prejudice operation. (Hersh also notes that it may be possible the U.S. government knew of bin Laden's whereabouts for many years; contradictory information is part and parcel of investigative reporting — of all reporting, for that matter.) The walk-in was looking for that $25 million bounty. He explained that bin Laden had been captured in the northern borderlands in 2006, having been turned in by locals. Pakistan's intelligence arm, ISI, kept bin Laden as leverage to ensure that the Taliban and al-Qaida didn't run operations that clashed with ISI interests. When the U.S. learned of the compound in Abbottabad, according to Hersh's sources, they put the braces on the Pakistani brass, suggesting a drop in the massive military aid sent to Pakistan. Pakistan caved, but on the condition that the raid be kept secret and a cover story — that bin Laden had been killed by a drone in the north — would be spread a week later to prevent reprisals.

In the version Hersh offers, the dramatic SEAL operation was in reality a cakewalk: the site was left without protection and the Pakistani authorities would not intervene. Still, "Obama had to 'get out in front of the story' before someone in the Pentagon did." So much for international promises. As for the coordinated SEAL story, Hersh's source said, "SEALS cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger." As for the body in the bag: "It's a great hoax — like Piltdown man." So, too, that trove of intelligence supposedly found at the compound.

In these four essays, Hersh offers a reminder that journalism's job is to offer a counterstory to the official narrative, the product of a mind suspicious of power and a listening, discerning ear. "It's the classic unraveling of a poorly constructed cover story," he writes. Sometimes it's just that simple.

Peter Lewis is the director of the American Geographical Society in New York City. A selection of his work can be found at writesformoney.com.

Reviewer: Peter Lewis

The Barnes & Noble Review

02/29/2016
Respected investigative journalist Hersh’s controversial account of the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is the highlight of this collection of four essays originally published in the London Review of Books between May 2015 and January 2016. Few aspects of the official version of Seal Team Six’s killing of bin Laden in May 2011 survive Hersh’s scrutiny. For him, the White House’s “most blatant lie” was that the American mission was kept secret from Pakistan’s senior military leadership. Most of Hersh’s essay derives from an unnamed “retired senior intelligence official” whose anonymity has been cited as the reason why Hersh’s exposé did not appear in another of his usual publications, the New Yorker. Not all of the source’s arguments convince—for example, even if bin Laden was no longer overseeing al-Qaeda operations, the White House could still have justified killing him rather than capturing him, undercutting the source’s point that the White House lied about his role at the time of his death. The book’s introduction, in which Hersh downplays Russian president Vladimir Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, especially toward Ukraine, will also lead to questions about his objectivity. The three other essays offer new perspectives on President Obama’s handling of the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that buttress Hersh’s view that the president was guilty of serious “lapses in judgment and integrity.” (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-02-21
The Pulitzer Prize winner builds on his reputation as an iconic investigative journalist, skewering the conventional wisdom about the death of Osama bin Laden.In four linked essays originally published by the London Review of Books, Hersh (Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, 2004, etc.) excoriates President Barack Obama, some of his national security aides, and members of the military for allegedly lying repeatedly about covert international maneuvering. Although satisfied that bin Laden is indeed dead at the hands of the U.S. military, the author wonders how Pakistani leaders could have been unaware that the terrorist financier and spiritual leader was residing in their midst. Hersh questions the White House version of how bin Laden was discovered inside his housing compound, whether American Special Forces acted independently of the Pakistanis, and whether bin Laden's body ended up at the bottom of the ocean, as publicly stated. The title essay focuses on bin Laden, while the other three build on that topic to delve into American conduct in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria, and other countries invaded by the U.S. under George W. Bush and Obama. To push his compelling scenarios and larger themes about the government's "high-level lying," Hersh relies heavily on unnamed sources—even more than much of his previous reporting for the New York Times or the New Yorker. His reliance on anonymous sources has led to questioning of his newspaper, magazine, and book exposés dating back to the 1960s, but his reputation for accurate journalism remains intact with numerous editors and readers. The essays are densely composed, sometimes presupposing extensive reader knowledge about American military and diplomatic involvement in the affairs of geographically remote nations. Context beyond the content of the London Review of Books pieces would have added value to Hersh's reporting.

Kirkus Reviews