The White House has rubbished investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims in his new report alleging that the US President Barack Obama’s administration lied about the circumstances surrounding the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden.
According to the veteran journalists’s report, former Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s hideout was revealed by Pakistani Intelligence – ISI and not by tracking the ace terrorist’s courier as claimed by the US.
There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact check each one. As we said at the time, knowledge of this operation was confined to a very small circle of senior US officials. The President decided early on not to inform any other government, including the Pakistani Government, which was not notified until after the raid had occurred.
– White House National Security spokesman Ned Price
As reported by CNN, this was the White House’s first response to Hersh’s stunning report, published this weekend in the London Review of Books, outlining what he claims as the true circumstances surrounding bin Laden’s death.
On Sunday, Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in his lengthy piece London Review of Books alleged that Pakistan cooperated with the US in carrying out the deadly raid. Pakistan’s spy agency was holding al Qaeda’s leader as a prisoner in Abbottabad, he wrote.
Though his report has been widely read, but it has been slammed by most. The chief criticism has been that it is based on information provided by a retired US intelligence officer — just one source.
The CNN report also revealed that Hersh had first approached the The New Yorker, where he has been a contributor, but the publication refused to publish the article.