Shock: Christiane Amanpour predicted bin Laden whereabouts in 2008

[Playinghardball]

Source: Raw Replay
By Stephen C. Webster

This may not be the most accurate prediction, but it’s still a lot closer than anyone else got.

Back in Oct. 2008, during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, news anchor Christiane Amanpour predicted that al Qaeda ringleader Osama bin Laden was hiding out “in a nice, comfortable villa in Pakistan.”

“Not a cave,” she said, citing a woman she’d recently spoken to.

Comedian Gary Shandling, appearing with Amanpour on the show, jumped in. “It’s a villa,” he said. “You know it’s a villa. This is what we need. We need to send a woman over there — this is how we find him. You know this, Bill.”

This video is from the Oct. 3, 2008 broadcast of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/05/shock-christiane-amanpour-predicted-bin-laden-whereabouts-in-2008/

[Poll_Blind]

1. Not just any woman, a woman placed highly in American intelligence according to...

...Amanpour. She's an awesome journalist.

PB

[leveymg]

2. Wouldn't that date be before August, 2010, when the CIA says it learned where he was?

I suspect they knew long before the date given, and it wasn't from watching a courier. Just a suspicion, at this point.

[Poll_Blind]

4. I don't know. I had just watched the video a few times because she was insistent...

...that bin Laden was living in a villa, interrupting Gary Shandling, IIRC, to correct him. On watching it the second time I realized that I'd missed something she said because she was being talked over. And that bit (and it's not hard to hear or anything, there's just a jumble of people speaking at once) is that her source was highly placed in American intelligence.

PB

[leveymg]

7. Amanpour says, "this woman who was in American intelligence" at seconds 18-19 on the video.

Check.

[hamsterjill]

11. She really is a cut above the rest.

In my opinion, she's one of the very best. I enjoy her work.

[PVnRT]

3. Michael Moore did on Larry King a while ago as well

Basically saying, "Look, rich people don't live in caves."

[TornadoTN]

8. That kind of money being spent on a compound like that should have raised some eyebrows

It did in our intelligence services, so why didn't it make the Pakistani's notice? A good friend of mine from college is a Pakistani, and he's always said that the Pakistani Intelligence and Military know what's going on with every foreigner that enters the country and they keep close tabs on it. I was contemplating a visit back in 1999 or 2000 and he warned me then that it might be "unpleasant" for me to go there because of A.) I'm American and B.) Security services watch you like a hawk.

So why did a Saudi and his group of foreigners get into the country without notice and THEN proceed to spend millions making a high-security compound within sight of a Pakistani military academy - and no one noticed. Yeah right!

[PVnRT]

9. You're assuming they didn't know

The ISI operates largely independent of the central government there anymore. I'm sure there were some higher-ups keeping a tight lid on things.

[TornadoTN]

10. No doubt

The ISI allegiances are all over the place, and as you say, they are pretty much independent. Wouldn't be surprising at all to find out that there was an organized effort to get Bin Laden there and to keep him hidden.

What I haven't heard is anything relating to his dialysis needs. Was he able to do that in the compound or was he being shuttled nearby to have it done? If it's the latter, then it's clear that there were plenty of people that knew.

[browntyphoon]

5. Which is why Pakistan needs to shut up with their whining...

Everyone knew he was hiding there and they let it happen.

Can't ride the fence forever, stand up and pick a side.

[KharmaTrain]

6. It Was Known He Wasn't In A Cave...

...and in Afghanistan. His whereabouts in Pakistan were assumed but not specified. Most of the higher-ups that were nabbed in large Pakistan cities, is it a surprise that bin Laden was in/near one, too?

The bin Laden game was a profitable one for Pakistan. It took in 1-2 billion a year as long as bin Laden was "on the loose". Also there's been a lot of strife between fundamentalists and "secularists" within the Pakistan military and government (witness the murder of Benazir Bhuto) and keeping bin Laden under wraps was to the benefit of the miltary that maintains power by playing all sides against each other. The problem is that in a nation of 135 million and without cooperation it takes a lot of hard-nose investigating to find the exact location. This administration listened to their intelligence rather than tried to manufacture it like the previous regime did. That's why bin Laden is now a past tense...not an ongoing boogie man for on-going war.

[Atman]

12. Anyone who ever thought the millionaire was hiding in a CAVE all this time...

...well...I have a million dollar cave to sell you in South Beach, Miami.

.