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Pakistan either accomplice or incompetent: CIA
[Dawn] CIA Director Leon Panetta has told the US Congress that either Pakistain was an accomplice in the late Osama bin Laden's... who is no longer with us, and won't be again... presence in Abbottabad or was incompetent. Is there a place for both boxes to be checked? In an in-camera testimony before a House panel, Mr Panetta said that he and other administration officials were trying to get to the bottom of the matter. "Either they were involved or incompetent. Neither place is a good place to be," CNN quoted Mr Panetta as telling a member of Congress who asked the first question of the hour-long classified briefing. In a separate interview to CBS, he acknowledged the CIA did not have any intelligence indicating "that Pakistain was aware that Bin Laden was there or that this compound was a place where he was hiding". But he noted that this was a location very close to a military academy and other sensitive military sites. "It had been there since almost five years ago. It was very unusual as a compound. I just think they need to respond to the questions about why they did not know that that kind of compound existed," Mr Panetta added. "The common sense would dictate that they had to have some idea," he was asked. "Well those are, that's why there are questions here that I think the best people to respond to those questions are going to be the Paks," Mr Panetta said. Asked if the Paks played any role in this operation, the CIA chief said: "This has been a long process, obviously, developing a lot of streams of intelligence. And some of those streams of intelligence were kind of in the normal process of working with the Paks. But they were never aware of our focus on this compound or in Bin Laden." The US, he added, made the decision that it would not inform Pakistain and conduct this operation unilaterally. Mr Panetta said that former president Bush and President B.O. had both made very clear to the Paks that "if we found a location where Osama bin Laden was located, we were going to go in and get him. And I think they understood that very clearly". The CIA director, however, disagreed with author Salman Rushdie that Pakistain should be declared a terrorist state. "Obviously, it remains a very complicated and difficult relationship. But I don't think we ought to break the relationship with the Paks," he said. "Look, we are virtually conducting a war in their country going after Al Qaeda. And at the same time, we're trying to get their help in trying to be able to confront terrorism in that part of the world." Mr Panetta recalled that Pakistain had given the US "some help, and they have given us some cooperation." Posted by: Fred 2011-05-06 |
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