WASHINGTON – A colonel in the Pakistan’s spy agency ISI provided vital help to the CIA in tracing Osama bin Laden, a new book has claimed.
The book also claims that Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani may have been briefed by the US on its operation to kill Osama bin Laden, some five months in advance.
‘Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him’, penned by eminent American journalist Richard Miniter, hit the stands this week.
The new book also says that land of the Abbottabad compound, where the Al-Qaida leader lived with his family, was “carved out” from the Pakistan military academy compound.
“A colonel in Pakistan’s feared intelligence service, the Inter-Services Institute or ISI, provided vital help in locating Laden when he walked into the CIA’s Islamabad station in August 2010,” says the book.
Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs inside his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011.
“And Pakistan’s Army chief of staff may have been briefed in December 2010, five months before the nighttime raid on bin Laden’s concrete castle.
“Far from taking a risk, there are indications that a cover story had been developed with the Pakistani military and that Obama had their tacit consent for the mission,” claims Miniter, a former reporter with ‘The Wall Street Journal’ and ‘The Washington Post’.
“In a never-before-reported account, Pakistan was more involved in the bin Laden operation than Obama’s team admitted. When the CIA revealed that an ISI colonel had contacted the CIA in Islamabad and offered information about bin Laden, a debate followed,” it says.
