After the May 2011 bin Laden raid, renowned ABC News correspondent Christiane Amanpour revealed that precise intelligence on bin Laden's location had been available much earlier.
She recalled that during a live interview with Bill Maher in early 2008, she had told her host that a senior US intelligence officer informed her of bin Laden's location in a villa in Pakistan:
"I just talked to somebody very knowledgeable" This woman who is in American intelligence thinks that he's in a villa"--"a nice comfortable villa in Pakistan."
When Maher joked whether the villa was in Cabo, Amanpour replied that bin Laden was "in Pakistan. Not a cave."
The detail is worth noting"--"the source appeared to be aware of bin Laden's location down to the comfort of his building.
India's external intelligence service had also provided specific informationto its US counterparts on bin Laden's presence in "a cantonment area""--"a military or police quarters"--""in a highly urbanised area near Islamabad." The intelligence also included "definite information that his [bin Laden's] movement was restricted owing to his illness and that it would have been impossible for him to go to an ordinary hospital. We told the Americans that only in a cantonment area could he be looked after by his ISI or other Pakistani benefactors."
The US did not show much interest in these revelations, according to a senior Indian security source.
The main "cantonment area" nearest to Islamabad is precisely the Pakistani military garrison city of Abbottabad, which is just 75 miles north of the capital. Bin Laden's compound was 800 odd yards from the Pakistan Military Academy, the equivalent of America's West Point.
Even Pakistan's own government believed that Abbottabad served as an al-Qaeda haven. According to an official statement from the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, the ISI had been monitoring bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad for years, and was providing specific intelligence to the US about the compound since 2009.
Abbottabad generally had been "under sharp focus of intelligence agencies since 2003" due to its role as an al-Qaeda stronghold, according to the Foreign Ministry statement:
"The fact is that this particular location [of bin Laden's compound] was pointed out by our intelligence quite some time ago to the US intelligence. The intelligence flow indicating some foreigners in the surroundings of Abbottabad continued until mid-April 2011. It is important to highlight that taking advantage of much superior technological assets, CIA exploited the intelligence leads given by us to identify and reach Osama bin Laden."
Pakistan had purportedly urged the US to identify the occupants of the compound, as the US had "much more sophisticated equipment to evaluate and to assess" what was going on inside.
The CIA and the White House did not deny that this intelligence was shared by Pakistan with its American counterparts.
Other Pakistani ISI sources went further than this official statement in off-the-record interviews with Pakistani Army officer Brigadier General Shaukut Qadir. They told Qadir that they had identified the Abbottabad compound as a likely terrorist base in July 2008, and asked the CIA to conduct surveillance of the building.
In his book, Operation Geronimo (2012), Qadir"--"who has no ISI affiliation"--"writes that these ISI sources were unaware of bin Laden's presence at the compound at the time, but confirmed that the building was being investigated for connections to terrorism. National security journalist Gareth Porter reports:
"Five different junior and mid-level ISI officers told Qadir they understood Pakistan's Counter Terrorism Wing (CTW) had decided to forward a request to the CIA for surveillance of the Abbottabad compound in July 2008."
Satellite photographs show that bin Laden's Abbottabad compound was not present in 2001, but appears on images in 2005, confirming it was built that year.
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