Zero Dark Hershy
Osama Bin Laden's (alleged) compound in Abottabad, Pakistan. (Getty Images)
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A blockbuster report from Seymour Hersh alleges that Pakistan captured Osama bin Laden in 2006, and let the US kill him in a stage-managed raid in exchange for military aid and concessions on Afghanistan.[London Review of Books / Seymour Hersh]
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The article, pubished in the London Review of Books, alleges that bin Laden was kept in Abbottabad by the Pakistani government, with Saudi financial help, and that Pakistan consented to an assassination dressed up as a raid after one of their own intelligence officials leaked bin Laden's whereabouts to the US.[BBC / Anthony Zurcher]
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Hersh claims that the Obama administration agreed to say bin Laden was killed in a drone strike, but changed its story after a helicopter crashed during the mission, and it concluded the story couldn't be contained.
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Hersh has a long career as an acclaimed investigative reporter, helping to uncover both the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.[New Yorker / Seymour Hersh]
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The bin Laden story has been a point of friction between him and New Yorker editor David Remnick, who published a piece by Nicholas Schmidle backing the government version of the raid. It's notable that the New Yorker didn't publish Hersh's latest story.[New Republic / Isaac Chotiner]
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Hersh's story is very similar to one advanced in 2011 by security analyst Raelynn Hillhouse, who called Hersh's article "either plagiarism or unoriginal."[Slate / Joshua Keating]
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The claim that some in Pakistan knew where bin Laden was isn't new, or particularly implausible; people like the New York Times' Carlotta Gall have been reporting that for years.[NYT / Carlotta Gall]
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But that's a very different idea than the notion, advanced by Hersh, that bin Laden was under de facto house arrest.[Christian Science Monitor / Dan Murphy]
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Max Fisher: the Hersh theory makes no sense. For one thing, US-Pakistani relations were strained following the raid, the opposite of what you'd expect after a deal.[Vox / Max Fisher]
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