05/12/15 – Seymour Hersh – The Scott Horton Show

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Okay, guys.
I got Cy Hirsch on the line, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, breaker of very important stories, and author of the new one in the London Review of Books, of course, The Killing of Osama bin Laden.
Welcome back to the show, Cy.
How are you doing?
Sure.
I'm tired.
Been yapping a lot, but I'm here.
All right.
Good deal.
Let's assume everybody has either read the article or they've read quite a bit about it.
Oh, come on.
Scott, listen.
I've been doing interviews for two days now steadily, and I don't think I've run across more than a few people who've talked to me.
Certainly nobody on television who's read the article.
Oh, okay.
Well, I certainly have.
I think many of my audience have, but, well, the only thing is it depends on how much time you can give us, because I'd be happy to hear you tell as much of the story as you want, but I got a ton of follow-up questions I want to get to, too.
Great.
Because the story, everybody, they at least know from the newspaper I'm taking issue with what the White House says.
So let's hear your question.
All right.
Well, so first of all, let's start with what you just sent me in the email here, and that is from the AFP, that Pakistan military officials admit a defector's key role in the bin Laden operation.
That is confirming your major contention here that a Pakistani walk-in intelligence officer walk-in was the real lead to bin Laden, rather than the courier, a point that was also confirmed by NBC News last night.
Is there anything you want to say specifically about that?
Well, I'll tell you what's important, because the White House has been busy basically watering down the NBC account, and on television today, the White House position has now morphed that, oh, my God, yes, there may have been a walk-in, but we have a lot of them, and, you know, the idea that this particular walk-in had anything to do with the raid, the White House actually is very interesting.
They vilified me, which is okay.
That's part of the game.
And they keep on saying things like, we can't comment on this story, it's so full of inaccurate information, I just can't stand reading it.
Some guy said that.
Another guy said, we can tell you right now this is a unilateral operation.
Whoever said it wasn't.
The seals went in.
They didn't do it with the Pakistani military.
They haven't actually denied anything, in a funny way.
They haven't flatly said it didn't happen.
And so that's always interesting to me, because at least somebody there, and I'll tell you why I think they haven't, and I don't know, this is what I think, which is worth nothing, but my guess is they're worried about what just is beginning to happen in Pakistan.
They're worried that the Pakistanis will start talking, and they don't want to be caught out having flatly lied about what happened, because the Pakistanis will start talking.
Alright, now, you make the point in your article that Obama himself, in his initial statement on the matter, said that the Pakistanis helped us, and he was specific, led us to this compound, he said.
Absolutely, and they had to get rid of that.
So the instructions were after, well, you know, the crux of the story is simply this.
The walking comes in, we learn about it, they want to do something, Obama's nervous about it, he wants to be sure it's bin Laden.
We finally, we're mad at the Paks, we're mad at the head of the Pakistani military, General Kiani, the head of the army, and we're mad at General Pasha, the head of the intelligence service, it's called the ISI there, the CIA's counterpart, we're angry.
But Obama wants more information, he's not going to even consider a raid until he's sure it's bin Laden, we don't know how to do that.
And so we go back to the Pakistanis, we go to them and say, okay, you sons of whatever you are, we're going to squeeze you, no money.
I'm not talking about the money that's authorized by Congress, there's a lot of under the table stuff that goes on, duh, you know, and little toys and trinkets.
And also, we're going to slow down the delivery of a bunch of planes, F-16s, we promised.
So they had no choice, the leadership, okay, and they help us, they give us all the info.
And the plan was, the SEALs go in, you know, we had two choppers, Blackhawks, full of SEALs, they're weighted to the gills, the SEALs, the Blackhawks are better off with eight, twelve's max, and they have twelve in each.
They didn't have much time, they didn't have a hell of a lot of room, in terms of the weight.
And don't forget, these choppers are flying all the way over the mountains into, between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush.
And so, the idea is that they're going to go in, do the kill, that's always what's going to be a kill, come out, nobody's going to know nothing, and a week, ten days will go by, and the President's going to announce one night, a special announcement, that we did a drone raid in Pakistan, or in Waziristan, that no-man's land between the two countries, in the mountains, and we hit a target, we went and did an after-action look at it, we saw this tall guy that was dead, and we took his photos and did his DNA, we got Bin Laden.
Everybody's happy.
Instead, that night, when the raid went in, a chopper goes down, but that isn't a real problem, that's plenty of, nobody knows nothing in Pakistan.
The power was cut off before the raid, the fire department didn't come, the police department didn't come, I don't know why people don't realize.
Why did that happen?
Who stopped that?
Not us, really, the Pakistanis did.
And anyway, instead of, the President decides, the political people put pressure on him, and they go public.
And so a couple hours go by, and we're all waiting for this announcement that's to come, everybody, there were leaks all over that Bin Laden was dead, but he hasn't said it.
The President reads his speech, he's been given by his political people, was not vetted with the national security people.
What does he say?
He says, we had a lead last August, which is precisely right, a lead to the CIA people means something like a walk-in, oh boy, they're already in trouble.
He says that there was a firefight, Bin Laden was killed in a firefight, God forbid we should say that, we just went to kill the guy who did it, there was a firefight.
He says it was a treasure trove of documents, oh yeah?
Where are they?
He also says the body was taken care of, and I raise questions about whether it was really buried at sea or not, I'm not definitive, I'm just expressing the view of people, relating the view of people who know a lot about it, and on and on he goes, so they're stuck in the position of having to cover up everything, they have a whole new plan now, they've got to figure out a whole new operational sequence, how to deal with the change in the President's policy.
It seems like in the article you say that this is largely because of the helicopter crash, that they're not going to be able to keep that a secret, or at least that became part of the argument for going ahead and going public with it.
I don't remember writing that.
No?
No.
No.
I think you said it made it easier for the political staff to argue that he should go ahead and go public now because the story's going to break anyway.
No, Scott, the real argument was, you can't trust the Pentagon to keep quiet about it.
It's such a juicy story, they'll leak it, and Mr. President, this is what the political people are saying, Mr. President, you've got to take the lead, you've got to bite it.
Even they hurt your two buddies there in Pakistan, you know, screw them to the wall a little bit, so what?
What's the problem for the guys in Pakistan?
By this time I think the American public, we were rated, our popularity was something like 8% in Pakistan, it's better now, but it was really low.
And guess who was extremely popular in Pakistan?
Bin Laden.
The idea that the Pakistani military had acknowledged that, you know, they were stuck, if they acknowledged they helped the two generals I mentioned, Pasha and Kiani, would probably need security for the rest of their lives, or have to move to Dubai or something like that, or Saudi Arabia.
So instead they took the other option, oh, you're right, we didn't know.
America snuck in, the radar didn't work, and none of our defenses worked, and nobody knew he was there, la la la la la la la, and then they had to eat it, which meant a big blow for the army's prestige and ego, too.
And that's what happened.
It wasn't because, you know, if I had to guess, I would even guess that there may have been people inside the White House who wanted to go public all the way.
Well, it was never plausible that the Pakistani ISI and military both completely were cut out of knowledge of the operation before it happened.
Well, why do you say that?
It seemed plausible to most of the mainstream from Washington press corps.
Yeah, well, that might be a different question.
But I mean, look, you know, why do you think, you know, this story's got raised, you know, the level of acrimony towards me is acute.
Well, sure, but yeah, I know you got thick skin when it comes to that.
But now, so tell me...
No, but that is the point.
But why is it?
It's the point.
Yeah, you're right.
Of course it is.
But why is it?
Why are they angrier to me than ever?
Because the press corps went hook, line, and sinker for this story.
Yep.
Because you show them to be the mind of birds that they are.
No, I didn't.
All I did was write my story, not saying anything about it.
All right.
Well, now, so tell me about the Saudi-Pakistani deal here, because it seems to me, and it's a 10,000-word article, there's a lot of huge leads in here that by themselves are huge stories.
You're saying the Saudis were paying the Pakistanis who captured bin Laden as early as 2006 and had him on house arrest there.
That was why he was in Abbottabad in the first place.
Tell me everything about that.
Well, that isn't what I said in the story, just so you know, Scott.
What I said, first of all, I'm not saying anything.
What I'm doing is I'm quoting.
There were conversations between Leon Panetta, the CIA chief, and General Pasha, his counterpart.
There were many conversations.
I'm quoting from one particular meeting about which I know something.
It happened pretty close to the actual mission itself.
And I'm quoting from what was said then.
And of course, one of the questions we asked the Pakistanis is, what the hell is going on?
Why did you do this?
And their story was, the story that we got from them and also the walk-in, the guy who betrayed the, I shouldn't say betrayed, who took the money.
Maybe that's called a betrayal, probably.
Anyway, what happened is simply that the story they told is, the Paks got him.
Now, the Saudis didn't do anything wrong.
They got him.
The Pakistanis, he was living probably in a place called Waziristan, you know, sort of the Wild West territories, close to the border in the mountains.
But on the Pakistan side, he'd come thereafter.
He was on, there was a manhunt for this guy, and he was hiding out there in Pakistan.
And so they learned about him, and they went and they grabbed him in 06, maybe 05, but I think 06.
The Saudis were told, because the Pakistanis are very close to the Saudis, and the Saudi position was, we're going to pay.
We're going to build this house for you, the prison he was living in in Abbottabad.
We're going to pay whatever else, who knows what other kind of money was passed.
Both Pasha and Kiani, I'm told, I've written this, because it's been reported in Pakistan, under investigation right now for corruption in Pakistan by the military.
There's a new wave of generals running the country now, who apparently are a lot, are different, just younger and different.
And in any case, why did the Pakistanis pay?
Well, it isn't clear why.
I can give you the most irrational thought in talking to a lot of people one could have, a heuristic thought, if you will, and that is simply that the Pakistanis, the Saudis were very, very eager for the Pakistan not to tell us about it, because they did not want the Americans, us, to begin to talk to bin Laden about who was funding them.
And so how much money did they pay the Pakistanis in order to keep him there and keep that quiet?
I don't know.
Not to foggy.
Numbers have been tossed around.
Somebody in an interview tossed around, you know, major money, but I just, I have no categorical, I just don't know.
And you're also saying that the ISI was kind of holding him hostage against the Pakistani Taliban in Al-Qaeda and saying that you guys better cool it, too.
That was the other argument that was made, exactly right.
The other argument that was made is that as long as we had him, we told the Pakistanis, we told the Taliban in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and along with the crazies, the wacos, the Sunni fundamentalists.
We told both in both countries, we told them, hey, we got your guy.
If you want to live a quiet life, keep quiet, talk to us and keep us informed of what's going on.
Otherwise, you know, we'll hang them up by whatever organ we can find.
Now, why didn't the Pakistanis just say, OK, you got us arrest him and turn him over in a quiet way in a handover from truck to truck across the Afghan border or some kind of thing instead of going ahead and staging this gigantic raid, which then, as you say, was actually, you know, run unopposed.
And they weren't even going to acknowledge in the first place their plan was to say it was a drone strike until they changed their mind.
I have.
We certainly know the raid took place.
Sure, but I mean, I don't have I can give you me and your guy didn't say, you know, why or did you ask him why go through the trouble of flying the Blackhawks in there like that and all that?
You know, even though I rely very much on one guy there, I don't write stories based on one guy.
Oh, yeah, well, I'm sorry.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm just I just don't want to get specific about anything.
I mean, I certainly quote one guy at length, but I certainly talk to other people both here and in Pakistan about it.
And by the way, as long as we're on the sourcing here, I've heard you say on a couple of interviews here about, yes, of course, I have more than one source the way they all portray it when they're going after you there.
But I wanted to be clear about I think in the article you list four or five people named and unnamed that you talk to.
But then on TV, it seems like you're saying that you checked out the story with a lot more people than that.
And they all kind of gave you the nods that you need.
Well, I did that, right?
I took the story of the people I'm not mentioning yet.
OK, that's what I thought you were saying on TV.
I just want to know I went that far.
But, you know, the the the other critical point about, you know, the whole the whole thing is, let me get rid of this myth about sources.
When I was at The New York Times, one of the great one of the good stories I wrote was about domestic spying in America led to a cause of a huge uproar like this one and not as emotional.
And the church committee was organized to investigate intelligence and did a lot of good work the next year.
I did that story in 74.
It's the same pattern as this story.
I had one guy that knew a great deal, one guy that knew an awful lot.
Took me 18 months to get him to really open up.
And then I took what he said to four or five other people.
But there's always one main source, you know, say, you know, I don't know what, you know, it's believe me, a good source is really hard to find.
And there's always one main source and there's always somebody that starts the ball rolling.
And then once you know something, you know, our country is very interesting.
There's an awful lot of people in the intelligence service in the military with integrity and they don't like lying.
They don't want to initiate anything, but if you come to them, they will talk to you.
And so anyway, we left off about your question was about why didn't they just just hand them over to us quietly?
Yeah, because if that ever leaked out, their life would be over.
Pasha and Kiani much better, no matter what happened.
No matter what happened, even if in the case of the raid, even if they were double crossed by the president, I'm not sure that they ever imagined that you still had an out.
You could say we didn't know.
Right.
All right.
Now, this is a little bit off topic, but it's huge.
And I got to ask you about the secret prison at Diego Garcia that's run by the CIA.
Well, I just dropped it in there to cause trouble.
We'll talk about it some other time.
All right.
Well, then let me ask you about the body.
Then you say it was last seen in the hands of the CIA there.
Could you elaborate about the desecration and throw on the body parts of the helicopter?
That's all I can tell you.
I have to go because somebody's coming in a few minutes, but all I can tell you, Scott, is what I know, which is that and the initial version that the seals told when they were debriefed, the initial version was that, you know, they put a lot of bullets in the guy, mostly in his body.
And I don't know if you know anything about the bullets they use, but they they cause a lot of damage.
They're tumblers.
And so there was a they they had to take the pieces and put it together.
And on the way back, the seals being seals, you know, which means they they're rowdy and disorganized.
You know, the seals had a reunion.
Some of the seals were served in Vietnam.
They had their their main bases in a place called Damnex, Virginia, near Virginia Beach.
It's just their headquarters, their training headquarters.
And they had a reunion down there and they passed out T-shirts and the T-shirts said they had a photograph of the T-shirts, had a big picture of Vietnam, South Vietnam, that as it was.
But we fought that war, South versus North.
And underneath it with the caption said, when I left, we were winning.
But they're pretty confident guys and they do what they want.
They initially told people that they just threw out parts of the body.
And so when you think about it.
They don't know the president's going to go public.
They just think that in another week, he's going to announce that we found a body.
So what do you need this body for?
So then all of a sudden, now they need a body.
Now they need to say they did a DNA DNA test right away and the DNA came back real quick.
Now they've got to find out why they know it's bin Laden.
So they have stories about lying down next to the body and measuring it.
If you remember some of those.
And they're just stuck with desperately trying to figure out what do you do with the body?
So some guy in the Navy says, let's have a seaboard burial.
Great.
Didn't happen.
Yeah.
But you're saying the CIA took off with it and that was the last anybody knew?
No, I never said that.
I didn't say the Navy took off with it.
The Navy had it?
Yeah, on the Vincent.
On the aircraft carrier.
You know, it's a long story.
It seemed like you were saying that the CIA last had it in Afghanistan and that the incident with Vincent never happened at all.
Oh, what you thought I see.
But that's not what the story said.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I'm lucky.
Now, look, hey, don't let me give you a hard time about not remembering every damn thing.
And don't forget, I wrote the thing.
And even though I wrote it, I by the end of editing, I hated the story.
It's just too long, too much detail.
It was the Navy's idea to park him at sea.
But it didn't happen.
Oh, yeah.
No, here it is.
The consultant at that point, the CIA took control of the body.
When you're off air, do it.
Do it.
You can you can correct me.
I'm going to go.
OK.
All right.
I'll see you.
Thanks.
I appreciate it.
OK.
Yeah.
All right, well, he was in a hurry, but that was what he said.
Yeah.
CIA took control of the body.
The cover story was it had been flown to the Carl Vinson.
There have been no barrels.
I guess maybe I interpreted that a little bit, that it never went there at all.
Anyway.
All right.
Well, whatever he had to go.
And that's it for the show.
So thanks, everybody, for listening.
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