CIA director: Pakistan ‘might alert the targets … jeopardize the mission’ to kill Osama bin Laden

CIA Director Leon Panetta today issued perhaps the most damning indictment of Pakistan since the May 1 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. Pakistan simply could not be trusted to not warn bin Laden of the pending raid, and thus was excluded from the operation. TIME’s Swampland reports:

In his first interview since commanding the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, CIA chief Leon Panetta tells TIME that U.S. officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets. Long before Panetta ordered Vice Admiral William McRaven, head of the Joint Special Forces Command, to undertake the mission at 1:22 p.m. on Friday, the CIA had been gaming out how to structure the raid. Months prior, the U.S. had considered expanding the assault to include coordination with other countries, notably Pakistan. But the CIA ruled out participating with its nominal South Asian ally early on because “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets,” Panetta says.

Keep in mind two things: 1) US contact with Pakistan on any raid to kill/capture bin Laden would occur at the highest level of their military and intelligence services; 2) In order for Pakistani officials to warn bin Laden, they’d have to know where he was.

Note that this tracks what an intelligence official told LWJ on the night of the raid that killed bin Laden:

A US intelligence official with knowledge of the raid told The Long War Journal that Pakistan, specifically its Inter-Services Intelligence agency, “could not be trusted” with operational details of the raid.

Earlier today, the Pakistani government released a statement that touted its steadfastness in cooperating with the US in counterterrorism operations. But the reality is that powerful elements of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services likely were complicit in hiding bin Laden.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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Tags: Pakistan