Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell. PHOTO: REUTERS
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said that Pakistanis were "incredibly embarrassed" by America's intelligence work on bin Laden, and by the military's ability to fly deep into Pakistani territory undetected.
Read: Accusations made by Seymour Hersh about Pakistan are baseless
“I think the Pakistanis are putting out propaganda that they knew about this in order to save face,” Morell told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
“It must be that this American source [cited by Hersh] is somehow getting information from Pakistan and passing it on to Seymour Hersh.”
Read: Kayani, Shuja Pasha knew of OBL raid in advance, says author
Hersh in his article that Pakistan had helped the United States get to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
US forces killed Osama bin Laden with the full cooperation of Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, who had kept the 9/11 mastermind prisoner inside his infamous Abbottabad compound for years before the fatal raid, veteran investigative journalist Hersh alleged.
Read: Pakistani defector was key in Osama bin Laden operation: officials
Hersh’s account was somewhat supported by Carlotta Gall’s The New York Times article in which she said that she “learned from a high-level member of the Pakistani intelligence service that the ISI had been hiding bin Laden and ran a desk specifically to handle him as an intelligence asset”.
Morell said he had"no doubt" a Pakistani official had told Gall that, but added that it was "not true". He said he could “guarantee” that the Pakistanis did not know about the raid.
“They didn't know he was there, they didn't know he was coming [sic], and they did not give us any information that led us to find Osama bin Laden.”
This article originally appeared on CNN
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