There’s Just One Problem with Those Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories

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http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden-capture-conspiracy

They have no factual basis, despite what you may have read in ​​The New York Times Magazine,​ argues the reporter who pieced together the story from dozens of on-the-record interviews.
by

    Mark Bowden

Without a shred of evidence, without contradicting a word that I wrote, Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times Magazine this week suggests that the “irresistible story” that I told about the killing of Osama bin Laden in my 2012 book, The Finish (excerpted in Vanity Fair), might well have been a fabrication—“another example of American mythmaking.” He presents an alternative version of the story written by Seymour Hersh as, effectively, a rival account, one that raises serious doubts about mine, which is all but dubbed “the official version.” It’s not meant kindly.

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[Oceander]

Mahler’s think piece about the iffiness of reporting and the hazards of trying to shape history into a narrative is a great gift to conspiratorial thinkers everywhere. It’s not often that the most distinguished journalistic institution in America wades so fully into the crackpot world of Internet theorizing, where all information, no matter its source, is weightless and equal. Mahler is careful not to side with either Hersh or me, but allows that “Hersh’s version doesn’t require us to believe in the possibility of a government-wide conspiracy.”

In fact, that’s exactly what it does.

Hersh’s story, based on two unnamed sources: bin Laden was being sheltered in Abbottabad by the Pakistani government. His whereabouts were reported to the U.S. government by a Pakistani source. The Pakistani government confirmed bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound and allowed the SEAL team to raid it and kill him, later tossing his dismembered body from a helicopter. The Obama administration then concocted an elaborate lie, which they successfully peddled to a gullible American press (primarily, me).

My story, based on on-the-record interviews with primary sources: Osama bin Laden was traced to a compound in Abbottabad by a decade-long international intelligence effort by the C.I.A. and the military. While keeping the suspicion a secret from the Pakistani government, the C.I.A. tried for months without success to confirm with certainty that bin Laden was hiding in the compound. After weighing various alternatives, President Obama launched a very risky secret raid into Pakistan. A SEAL team successfully evaded Pakistani defenses to raid the compound, kill bin Laden, and fly his body out for burial at sea.

[Oceander]

While Hersh’s story (and Mahler’s) suggests that mine was, in effect, handed to me by administration spokesmen, it was (as the book notes) based on dozens of interviews with those directly involved, including President Obama. One wonders where else the story might come from, since the hunt for bin Laden and the mission to kill him were conducted by government officials, right down to the enlisted men who conducted the raid. Basing a story on those government sources directly involved makes it “official” in some sense, I suppose, but I have never been in the employ of the government, and have carved a fairly extensive career working with complete journalistic independence.

My sources for The Finish included six C.I.A. analysts who traced for me in detail how, over years, their painstaking and often frustrating work led them to the compound in Abbottabad. I interviewed J.S.O.C. commander Admiral William McRaven, who helped plan and who oversaw the mission, and members of his staff. Some of the others (without listing their job titles) were Tony Blinken, John Brennan, Benjamin Rhodes, James Clark, Thomas Donilon, Michèle Flournoy, Larry James, Michael Morell, William Ostlund, David Petraeus, Samantha Power, James Poss, Denis McDonough, Nick Rasmussen, Michael Scheuer, Gary Schroen, Kalev Sepp, Michael Sheehan, and Michael Vickers. These sources—and others—worked on the case in various capacities for years and were present and often involved in the key decisions that led to the mission.

Over the last three years, many other key participants have written and spoken publicly about their roles in the story, confirming and adding to the one I wrote, from Vice President Joe Biden to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to former C.I.A. director Leon Panetta to two of the SEALs who actually participated in the raid. Although there are minor discrepancies in accounts, typical of any story that involves a great number of people, none substantially contradict the story I wrote. The same story was independently and exhaustively reported by Peter Bergen in his book Manhunt, and a piece of it was initially reported by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker. All of these accounts, in every major way, concur.