The bin Laden death mythology -- INSURGE intelligence -- Medium

The Pentagon had even attempted to keep that act secret, by removing mention of it from the final version of an inspector general report published in June 2013. The move allowed the Pentagon to deny repeated FOIA requests from the Associated Press for files about the raid, including copies of the death certificate and autopsy report for bin Laden, as well as the results of DNA tests to identify the body.

So far, there is only one reason to believe the White House's version of events regarding the bin Laden raid: it is the White House's version of events.

But this investigation proves decisively that given the fog of lies surrounding bin Laden, and his relationships with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, this is no reason at all.

Analysis of open sources on the secretive bin Laden raid reveals that the al-Qaeda terror chief was for nearly a decade after 9/11 being protected by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two key US allies in the 'war on terror.' Despite mounting evidence of the complicity of those governments in 9/11 and other anti-Western terrorist activity, successive US governments have systematically protected the Saudi and Pakistani regimes from exposure.

For Prof. Peter Dale Scott, this US protection of, and unwavering alliance with, al-Qaeda's chief state-sponsors, is "related to the black hole at the heart of the complex US-Saudi connection"

-- a complex that involves the oil majors like Exxon, the Pentagon's concern with oil and gas movements from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, offsetting arms sales, Saudi investments in major US corporations like Citibank and the Carlyle Group (the owners of Booz Allen Hamilton), and above all the ultimate United States dependency on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and OPEC, for the defense of the petrodollar."

As precise evidence of Pakistan's harbouring of Osama bin Laden streamed into the US intelligence community from 2004 onwards, the US response was not to take measures to pressure Pakistan on turning bin Laden over, but instead, as of around 2005, to accelerate Saudi support for bin Laden's global terror network in a bid to isolate Iran and Syria. When by 2008, the US intelligence community received specific intelligence indicating bin Laden's presence at the Abbottabad compound, the CIA still failed to act.

By August 2010, when a former ISI officer decided to walk into the US embassy and come clean to US officials who had no idea about bin Laden's concealment, what was once a highly compartmentalised secret became known to the wider US intelligence community. The White House was forced to do something about bin Laden. But its primary interest, from the get-go, was avoiding a scandal.

Whatever was to be done, the White House needed to ensure that bin Laden would not sing like a canary on his relationships with the West's own allies. Administration officials also needed to avoid public scrutiny of the US government's policy of turning a blind eye to mounting intelligence on how bin Laden was harboured, financed and protected by US allies, under a wider US-backed covert operations programme to undermine Iran and Syria.

All those factors no doubt played a key role in the decision to assassinate bin Laden, and manufacture a cover-story that would conceal the damning context of his death from public understanding.

It appears the final decision was not made until late April 2011"--"when a British proposal to renew a 'covenant of security' with al-Qaeda was rejected by bin Laden. The haste with which the operation was executed perhaps explains the absurd discrepancies in the cover-story.

In Scott's words: "US security appears to have been hijacked by these deeper forces, in order to protect terrorists who should have been reined in. And the governing media have been complicit in concealing this situation."

And thus, bin Laden's execution successfully obscured the wider context of his state-sponsorship, including longstanding US complicity in protecting the governments that protected the al-Qaeda terror chief, before and after 9/11.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the 'System Shift' column for VICE's Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye.

He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the 'Alternative Pulitzer Prize', for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening Standard's 'Power 1,000' most globally influential Londoners.

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