In a startling new revelation, former CIA officer John Kiriakou has said that Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who was the most wanted terrorist for the US after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, had escaped from Tora Bora hills disguised as a woman.
In an exclusive interview with ANI, Kiriakou, who was in the CIA for 15 years and was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, also said they did not know that the translator for the commander of Central Command was actually an "Al Qaeda operative who had infiltrated the US military".
"First, the United States was reactive at the time rather than proactive. You remember, we waited for more than a month before we started bombing Afghanistan. We were trying to be deliberate. We were trying to not let emotion cloud our judgment. And we waited a month until we had proper buildup in the region. And then we began attacking known Al-Qaeda sites. Again, mostly in the Pashto areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. We believed in October of 2001 that we had Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora," he said, ANI reported.
"We did not know that the translator for the commander of Central Command was actually an al-Qaeda operative who had infiltrated the US military. And so we knew we had bin Laden cornered. We told him to come down the mountain. And he said through the translator, can you just give us until dawn? We want to evacuate the women and children and then we'll come down and give up. The translator convinced General Franks to approve this idea. What ended up happening was bin Laden dressed as a woman and he escaped under the cover of darkness in the back of a pickup truck into Pakistan," he added, ANI further reported.
He said when sun came up at dawn, there was no one in Tora Bora to give up. "They had all escaped. And so we had to move the fight to Pakistan proper."
Kiriakou was answering a query about the United States having cornered Al-Qaeda terrorists in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attack that killed 3,000 people, and their escape to Pakistan, and the close ties between the US and Pak intelligence.
The US later tracked down Osama bin Laden to Abbottabad, a city in northern Pakistan in May 2011. He was killed on May 2 by United States Special Forces during a raid on his safe house.
Referring to the then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, he said they "essentially just purchased Musharraf" and "essentially he would let us do whatever we wanted to do".
"Our relations with the Pakistani government were very, very good. It was General Pervez Musharraf at the time. Let's be honest here. The United States loves working with dictators. Because then you don't have to worry about public opinion and you don't have to worry about the media anymore. And so we essentially just purchased Musharraf. We gave millions and millions and millions of dollars in aid, whether it was military aid or economic development aid. And we would meet with Musharraf regularly, several times a week. And essentially he would let us do whatever we wanted to do. Yes. But Musharraf also had his own people that he needed to deal with," he said.
"He had to keep the military happy. And the military didn't care about Al Qaeda. They cared about India. And so in order to keep the military happy and keep some of the extremists happy, he had to allow them to continue this dual life of pretending to cooperate with the Americans on counterterrorism while committing terror against India," he added.
Answering a query, Kiriakou said the United States was focused on Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan and there was not much attention to Indian concerns.
"And I'll tell you another thing. Just a couple of months later in March of 2002, we raided a Lashkar-e-Taiba safe house in Lahore. And in that house, we captured three Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters who had with them a copy of the Al Qaeda training manual. And it was the first time, analytically, that we were able to connect Lashkar-e-Taiba with Al-Qaeda. The very first time. I remember receiving a cable from the deputy director of the CIA for intelligence congratulating us on finding this training manual, saying it was the very first time that we could attach the Pakistani government to Al-Qaeda," he said.
Asked about the issue not being highlighted, he said that the decision was made at the White House. "And the decision was that that the relationship is bigger than India, Pakistan. At least temporarily. The relationship, we needed the Pakistanis actually more than they needed us at that point. We were happy to throw money at them. That's what they responded to. But we really needed them to let us base our drones in Balochistan, for example," he said.
Answering another query, he said Islamabad needs to come to a policy conclusion that there's nothing positive for it in fighting with India and that Pakistan will lose any conventional war with India.
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