“CIA Director Leon Panetta said this week [early May 2011] that ‘either [the Pakistanis] were involved [in hiding bin Laden] or incompetent. Neither is a good place to be.’ ” – Tim McGirk, “The Real Housewife of Abbottabad: What bin Laden’s Spouse Knows,” Time, May 6, 2011 […]
5/6/2011
“Pakistan’s security establishment has long been accused of playing a double game: taking billions in U.S. aid while secretly backing select jihadi militants in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s tribal region. Even al-Qaeda types were expected to play ball. Says the Arab woman formerly connected to al-Qaeda: ‘There was an understanding with the Pakistani army. We […]
5/5/2011
Following the May 2, 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, on “May 5, after meeting with his nine top generals, called the Corps Commanders, [General Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani issued a blistering statement. Calling the raid ‘a misadventure,’ he said that ‘any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review […]
5/5/2011
“Documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound [in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011] have yielded a bonanza of new intelligence, from names and locations of terrorist suspects to chilling details of al-Qaeda plots to attack targets in the United States and beyond, U.S. officials said Thursday [May 5, 2011]. Among the […]
5/5/2011
“[A]sked about whether waterboarding played a role in finding Bin Laden, John Brennan–counter-terrorism adviser to [President] Obama and, it’s worth remembering, a key figure in the CIA under Bush–replied: ‘Not to my knowledge. The information that was collected over the course of nine years or so came from many different sources: human sources, technical sources, […]
5/4/2011
In an article about enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), which may have provided the information needed to track down Osama bin Laden through one of his couriers, “One former senior intelligence official says that ‘once KSM [9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] decided resistance was unwise, he started spilling his guts to the agency and started providing […]
5/4/2011
In an article about enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), which may have provided the information needed to track down Osama bin Laden through one of his couriers, “Former George W. Bush officials say the use of EITs is misunderstood. ‘The main thing that people misunderstand about the program is, it was intended to encourage compliance,’ says […]
5/4/2011
“Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center who oversaw the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ gave his first public interview to Time magazine this week [early May 2011] to defend the role the use of techniques like waterboarding played in the operation against Osama bin Laden. The question of the role such techniques […]
5/3/2011
On May 3, 2011, al Qaeda’s General Command released a statement on bin Laden’s death. It read: ” ‘…we in al-Qaeda vow to God the Exalted and seek His support to help us go forward on the path of jihad that was trekked by our leaders, headed by Sheikh Osama. We will not relent or […]
5/3/2011
While enhanced interrogation techniques may have provided the information needed to track down Osama bin Laden through one of his couriers, “Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002, said in a phone interview Tuesday [May 3, 2011], that coercive techniques ‘didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy […]