Special report: Why the U.S. mistrusts Pakistan's spy agency

[steve2470]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/05/us-binladen-pakistan-isi-idUSTRE74408220110505?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

(Reuters) - In 2003 or 2004, Pakistani intelligence agents trailed a suspected militant courier to a house in the picturesque hill town of Abbottabad in northern Pakistan.

There, the agents determined that the courier would make contact with one of the world's most wanted men, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who had succeeded September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammad as al Qaeda operations chief a few months earlier.

Agents from Pakistan's powerful and mysterious Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, raided a house but failed to find al-Libbi, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters this week.

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf later wrote in his memoirs that an interrogation of the courier revealed that al-Libbi used three houses in Abbottabad, which sits some 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Islamabad. The intelligence official said that one of those houses may have been in the same compound where on May 1 U.S. special forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

*more at link above*

[Arctic Dave]

1. What if Pakistan actually captured Bin Ladin and was waiting for the right time to bargain?

Doesn't sound too out there to me.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Speaking of, I think you'll find this interesting:

Bin Laden's death: 'Why kill the goose?'

The whole article (referenced at the link above) is worth reading but here's a snippet:

This is slightly bizarre, given that Bin Laden had apparently been in a safe house near the Pakistan military academy for six years. Nobody believes this could have happened without the knowledge of senior intelligence officials. A meeting with one such person in 2006, which I recounted in my last book on Pakistan, confirmed that Bin Laden was in the country and being kept safe. The person concerned told me the Americans only wanted Bin Laden dead, but that it was in Pakistan's interest to keep him alive. In his words: "Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?" – a reference to the billions in aid and weaponry being supplied to the army. At the time I wasn't sure whether my informant was fantasising to amuse or misinform me; he was obviously telling the truth.

Reminds me of Christianne Amanpour's comment from 2008 (and quite insistent about it) that she had spoken with a woman who was placed very highlight in American intelligence and that that woman had told her that bin Laden was not in a cave in Afghanistan, but that he was in a comfortable villa in Pakistan.

Here's a link to that VIDEO at DU, if you haven't seen it.

PB

[Arctic Dave]

4. Good article.

This entire thing seems way too fishy and tidy. The BS will fly for years over this.

[Vehl]

2. Check this out! a Wanted terrorist was arrested ealier this year in the town...trying to meet OBL!

Patek planned to meet bin-Laden

Authorities in Indonesia have confirmed that the country's most wanted terrorist, Umar Patek, arrested earlier this year in the same city where Osama bin Laden was killed, was there to meet the al-Qaeda chief.


http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8244891/patek-planned-to-meet-bin-laden



I's damn unbelievable!!...An indonesian guy was arrested in the same city..for trying to contact Osama earlier this year..and STILL the ISI was clueless that Osama lived in that town...I mean really? They still expect us to believe that they did not know! :o