名大女子大生・大内万里亜19の手斧殺人事件と聖ウルスラ学院英智高校タリウム毒盛り失明事件

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名大女子大生・大内万里亜19の手斧殺人事件と聖ウルスラ学院英智高校タリウム毒盛り失明事件
しかし、手斧の刃でなく、斧の裏で攻撃⇒死に至らずマフラーで首絞め老婆殺害

タリウム飲ませた女子生徒見舞いに…症状確認か
2015年5月17日読売新聞

名古屋大学の女子学生(19)が高校時代、
別の高校の女子生徒ら２人に劇物の硫酸タリウムを飲ませたとして殺人未遂容疑で再逮捕された事件で、
女子学生(19)が、
体調不良で入院した女子生徒を見舞いに訪れていた事が、関係者への取材でわかった。

女子学生(19)は、
「タリウムを飲ませて症状を観察したかった」と供述しており、
愛知、宮城両県警は、生徒の中毒症状を確認する目的だった可能性があるとみている。

女子生徒の家族によると、
生徒は体調を崩し、２０１２年７月下旬から８月頃に５日間入院。
女子学生(19)はその際、病室に花を持って見舞いに来たという。
２人は小中学生の時から一緒にカラオケに行ったり、互いの家で遊んだりするなど仲が良く、
別々の高校に進学してからも連絡を取り合っていたという。

両県警によると、
女子学生(19)は高校２年だった2012年５月２７日頃、宮城県内のカラオケ店で女子生徒の飲み物にタリウムを混ぜて飲ませた疑いがある。
女子生徒は手足にしびれなどの症状が出たが、現在は生活に支障がない程度まで回復しているという。
当時は原因不明だったが、その後の捜査で女子生徒からタリウムが検出された。

[注意]
別の高校の女子生徒ら２人=別の高校の女子生徒(19)+同級生の男子生徒(19)
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＜殺人未遂容疑＞名大生を再逮捕…高校同級生らにタリウム
2015年5月15日毎日新聞【谷口拓未、金寿英】

愛知、宮城両県警合同捜査本部は2015/5/１５日、名古屋市のアパートで女性を殺害した容疑で今年2015/１月に逮捕された名古屋大の女子学生(19)が、
宮城県の私立高校在学時、同級生ら２人に猛毒の「硫酸タリウム」を飲ませ、殺害しようとした疑いが強まったとして、女子学生(19)を殺人未遂容疑で再逮捕した

愛知県警の調べに「タリウムを飲ませて、観察したかった」などと容疑を認めているという。

再逮捕容疑は、
(1)２０１２年５月２７日頃、宮城県内の飲食店で女子生徒(19)に対し、
(2)また同2012/5/２８日頃から６月上旬頃にかけ、通っていた高校内で同級生の男子生徒(19)に対し、
それぞれ殺意を持って硫酸タリウムを飲み物に混ぜて飲ませ、２人を中毒にさせたとしている。

女子学生(19)は昨年2014/１２月、名古屋市の自宅アパートで、同市千種区の森外茂子(ともこ)(当時77歳)の頭をおので殴り、マフラーで首を絞めて殺害したとして、
今年2015/１月に殺人容疑で逮捕された。
名古屋地検は鑑定留置の結果、刑事責任能力があるとみている。【谷口拓未、金寿英】

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＜老女殺害＞名大生実家捜索５時間　母親か…捜査員と共に
2015/1/31毎日新聞

名古屋市で森外茂子(77)が殺害された事件で、愛知県警は1/３１日、殺人容疑で逮捕した女子学生の宮城県の実家へ家宅捜索に入った。
捜査関係者によると、家宅捜索は午前９時前から始まり、約５時間続いた。
捜査員が段ボール箱を運び出すと、母親とみられる女性が捜査員に伴われて家から出てきた。
母親らしき女性はうつむき加減に車に乗り込み、記者の問いかけには答えなかった。

名古屋市昭和区の女子学生のアパートへの家宅捜索では、
殺人事件に関する書籍や毒性の強いタリウムとみられる薬品が多数押収されている。
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名大女子学生(大内万里亜)⇒応援団部員に「タリウム入りジュース」飲ます？
2015年1月31日東スポWeb

名古屋大学理学部１年の女子学生(19)が無職森外茂子(77)殺害容疑で逮捕された事件で1/２９日、名古屋市内の女子学生の部屋から複数の薬品や過去の殺人事件に関連する書籍が押収されていた事がわかった。
女子学生は「高校時代に同級生に毒を盛った」と供述しているが、大学でも部員相手に“手作りジュース”に混ぜて薬物を飲ませた疑いも出てきた。

女子学生は「人を殺して達成感があった」と供述しているという。
事件当日の昨年2014/１２月７日、ツイッターに「ついにやった」と書き込んでおり、それと重なる内容だ。

女子学生は、
「高校時代に同級生に毒を飲ませて後遺症を残したことがある」とも供述している。
これを裏付けるように、在籍していた宮城・仙台の高校[宮城県私立聖ウルスラ学院英智高等学校]では、
２０１２年６月ごろ、同級生の女子生徒が体調不良を訴え、視力低下で一時休学した。
さらに、同級生の男子生徒は視力と筋力の低下を訴え入院。
地元関係者によると「このとき医師は薬物など特殊な成分が体内に入った疑いがあると診断したが、原因は結局不明だった。
男子生徒は入退院を繰り返し、失明し、特別支援学校に転入した」。宮城県警は1/２９日、供述を受けて「傷害容疑で捜査中」としている。

ツイッターなどでは薬物への異常な興味をつづり、
「未開封の硫酸タリウム瓶には２５グラム、つまり約１３人分の生命が入っているわけだ！　それだけで神秘じゃないか」などとつぶやいた。
同級生への毒は、症状からこのタリウムだった可能性が高い。

女子学生をめぐっては名古屋大進学後、所属していた名大応援団が新入部員を紹介する動画が、
昨年2014/６月ごろからネット上に出回っており、その紹介内容が“余罪”の可能性を示唆しているとも言われる。男子部員が女子学生を紹介した文句はこうだ。

「家には様々な薬品を取り揃え（中略）三度のメシより化学実験が大好き。入団した時から持ってきてくれるジュースが非常においしく、このジュースがどこで売っているのか尋ねてみたところ（中略）化学実験で作ったジュースだったのであります。おいしいからと飲み続けていた結果、私の体にある異変が起き始めていたのでございます。（額を見せて）私の前線はこの女の実験によって後退してしまった。私はこの女の実験動物にされたのでございます」

女子学生はツイッターで昨年2014/４月に「薬局での品物取り寄せは日常茶飯事よ☆」、2014/９月には「タリウム素手で触っちまった」、2014/１１月には「硫酸タリウム買ったんだけどね」などともつぶやいた。過去に起きた、実母にタリウムを飲ませた殺人未遂事件で逮捕された女子高生への並々ならぬ関心も示していた。

タリウムは摂取すると頭痛、吐き気、幻覚などの症状のほか失明、さらには呼吸まひによる死亡の危険性もある。
2012年には、硫酸タリウム入りウーロン茶を同僚の男女５人に飲ませて重症を負わせ、大量に脱毛させた傷害罪に問われた男に懲役３年、執行猶予４年の判決が下っており、ハゲることでも知られる。

本紙は前出の応援団男子部員を電話で直撃。
すると「あれは冗談です。一度も彼女の作ったジュースなんて飲んだことはありません。そのような事実はありませんので…」
と困惑した口調で電話を切った。

別の名大生は男子部員の心中をおもんぱかり、こう話す。
「応援団は部員１人の時代もあり、今でも３～４人。後期に入って女子学生が学校に来なくなった時も、皆で迎えに行ったほど結束が固い。“自分たちに刃を向けられた”という、万が一の可能性も考えたくないのでは」・・・・

女子学生が“身内”の部員にまで毒を盛って実験していたとしたら、おぞましすぎる。

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「硫酸タリウム買った」名大生、事件前ツイート⇒硫酸タリウムTl2SO4
2015年1月31日読売新聞

名古屋大学の女子学生(19)が名古屋市昭和区の自宅アパートで同市千種区、無職森外茂子(ともこ77)を殺害した事件で、
女子学生のものとみられる簡易投稿サイト「ツイッター」の書き込みに、劇物に指定されている硫酸タリウムを所有していることを示す内容があることが分かった。
愛知県警は女子学生のアパートから複数の薬品を押収しており、こうした劇物が含まれているか鑑定する方針。

ツイッターには、昨年2014/１１月１０日付で、
「硫酸タリウム買った」「硫酸タリウムの半数致死量は１ｇグラム(成人男性)だろ？未開封の硫酸タリウム瓶には２５ｇ、つまり約１３人分の生命が入っているわけだ」
との記述があるほか、同2014/９月１５日には「タリウム素手で触っちまった」とも書かれていた。

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■Twitterプロフィール紹介には
「上中→聖ウルスラ→名古屋大学理学部1年(今ここ)→名古屋大学大学院→自宅警備員→刑務所→拘置所・宮城→愛知」と記載されている。
https://twitter.com/thallium123⇔大内万里亜のツイッター⇔現在はまだ閉鎖されてない。

■プロフィール(名大サークル※現在削除済み)
http://www2.jimu.nagoya-u.ac.jp/ohendan/contents/danin/ouchi/ouchi.html

名前=大内万里亜(おおうち　まりあ)
生年月日=1995年10月5日[2015/10/5で20歳][オウムサリン地下鉄事件の時に生れる]
在籍大学=名古屋大学理学部(1年生)
所属=リーダー部
出身中学=仙台市立上杉山中学校？
出身高校=宮城県私立聖ウルスラ学院英智高等学校(偏差値45～65)
※特別志学コース(65)・特別志学コース(58)・尚志コース(45)
血液型=A型
趣味=薬品コレクション
特技=しりとり
今後の目標=警察にお世話にならないよう頑張ります。
ひとこと=私は清楚です。

■殺害時刻に大内万里亜Twitterで報告しています。
▼ニュースでの犯行時刻＝2014年12月7日昼ごろ
▼Twitterの報告「ついにやった。」(2014年12月7日17:15)

⇊■１９歳少女を殺人容疑で逮捕　「人を殺してみたかった」■⇊
2015年1月27日朝日新聞

名古屋市昭和区のアパートの一室で、顔見知りの女性・森外茂子(77)をおので殴るなどして殺害したとして、
愛知県警は2015/1月27日、この部屋に住む名古屋大学１年の少女(19)を殺人の疑いで緊急逮捕し発表した。
容疑を認め、「人を殺してみたかった」と話しているという。

県警によると、少女は、
❶昨年2014/１２月７日昼ごろ、自室で、同市千種区の無職、森外茂子(ともこ)の頭をおので数回殴ったり、マフラーで首を絞めたりして殺害した。
❷2015/１月２７日午前９時４０分ごろ、少女19と共に部屋を訪れた警察官が、風呂場の洗い場で、服を着たまま倒れた状態で死亡していた森を発見した。

少女は昨年2014/１２月上旬、森から宗教の勧誘を受けて知り合い、
2014/１２月７日午前には２人で同市昭和区の宗教施設を訪れていた。
その後、少女は自室で森を襲い、遺体をそのまま放置し、宮城県の実家に戻っていたという。

森外茂子の夫が12/７日夕、外茂子が予定の時間に帰宅せず、携帯電話にも出ない事から警察に行方不明を届け出た。
県警が捜査したところ、２人が会っていたという目撃情報があり、少女が浮上した。

少女は昨年2014/４月に大学に入学し、アパートで一人暮らしをしていた。
調べに対し、少女は
「手おので殴ったが、完全に死んでいないのでマフラーで首を絞めた」
「部屋で殺し、遺体を風呂場に運んだ」などと話しているといい、県警は動機を調べている。

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女子学生、被害女性の遺体撮影か 愛知県警が携帯電話データ確認
2015年1月30日共同通信

名古屋市のアパートで無職森外茂子(77)が殺害された事件で、殺人容疑で逮捕された名古屋大の女子学生(19)の携帯電話に森の遺体とみられる画像データが残っていた事が1/３０日、捜査関係者への取材で分かった。愛知県警がアパートから押収した携帯電話を解析しデータを確認。女子学生がカメラ機能を使い撮影したとみられる。県警は画像を撮った目的や撮影時の状況を調べる。

県警によると、遺体は発見時、
首にマフラーが巻かれ、浴室床に横たわった状態だった。

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名古屋大女学生 毒マニアを殺人犯にした大人たちの“隠蔽”
2015/1/31日刊ゲンダイ

名古屋市の77歳女性殺害事件で、容疑者の名大女子学生Ａ子(19)は、中学生のころから“毒マニア”だったという。
周囲の大人も、危険信号に気づいていたはずだ。

殺害現場のＡ子の自宅からは、毒性の強い劇薬タリウムが押収された。大学の同級生には「趣味は薬品コレクション」と話していたという。

「Ａ子は中学生時代から毒キノコや化学薬品について熱心に調べるほどの“毒マニア”だったそうです。飼っていたハムスターに自作の薬品をかける“実験”も行っていた。はさみやカッターを常に持ち歩き、『猫の中身を見てみたい』と友人に漏らしていたといいます」(捜査事情通)

どう考えても異常だ。周囲が気づかないわけがない。そして悲劇が起きた。
宮城県内の市立中から私立高に進学したＡ子は「同級生だった男子生徒に毒を盛った」と、逮捕後に供述している。

「男子生徒は両目の視力が急激に落ち、その後、特別支援学校に転校しています。当時、男子生徒を診た医師は『薬物が原因の可能性がある』と警察に届け出ましたが、学校側は校内の薬品を調べただけで、ウヤムヤにしようとした。事件を公表しなかった。校長は『在校生に動揺を与えたくなかった』などと話していますが、隠蔽しようとしたと勘繰られても仕方がないでしょう」(地元マスコミ関係者)

いまになって宮城県警は傷害事件として捜査を始めたというが、もっと早く動いていれば、今回の殺害事件を防げたかもしれない。
Ａ子は大学進学後も、ツイッターでサリンなどの毒物についてつぶやいていた。
異常な執着があるから理学部に進んだのだろうが、不思議なのはそれほどの毒マニアなのに、77歳女性はおので殴って、マフラーで首を絞めて殺害したことだ。

「Ａ子は取り調べに淡々と応じ、『悪かったとは思う』と反省の弁を述べているそうです。なぜ毒殺じゃないのか？　それはまだ謎です」(前出の捜査事情通)

昨年2014の長崎・佐世保市の同級生殺害事件も、結局、周囲が加害少女の異常性を隠蔽し続けようとしたせいで、悲劇を招いた。今回の事件もまったく同じじゃないか。

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▽手斧過去類似事件▽
■斧少女(16歳)殺人事件=2007/9/18(事件日)■⇔この殺人事件は斧の刃で直接に攻撃して殺害⇔次女の父に対する怨念!!、は手斧で晴らす

京田辺警察官殺害事件(きょうたなべ)とは、
2007年9月18日に京都府京田辺市で、当時16歳の少女が警察官(京都府警南警察署勤務)である父親を殺害した事件。

■経緯□

❶2007年9月18日午前4時頃、少女16[次女]は自宅2階の寝室で寝ていた父親の首を手斧(刃渡り11cm、柄約30cm)で切りつけて失血死させた。
❷2007/9/18午前4時40分頃、少女16の母親が「父親が首を切って自殺した」と119番通報。

しかし、
消防からの連絡で田辺署員が駆け付けたところ、2階の寝室のベッドで血塗れで死亡している事が確認された。
1階キッチンに手斧が落ちており、そばにいた少女16の服に返り血が付いていた為、署員が事情を聞いたところ犯行を認めたため、殺人容疑で緊急逮捕した。

少女は犯行の5日前に自宅近くのホームセンターで手斧を購入していた。
少女は動機について「父親の女性関係に数年前から疑問を抱いていた。ギロチンにしようと思った」と府警の調べに供述したとされる。

❸2007/10月5日、京都地検は少女を殺人の非行事実で家裁に送致したが、計画性と残虐性を考慮して刑事処分相当との意見を付けた。
❹2007/10月18日、第1回審判で京都家裁は少女の心理状態鑑定を決定した。

■家裁送致⇒結論⇒決定⇒確定(保護処分＝この時次女は17歳になっていた)□

保護処分とする特段の事情があると結論。
謝罪する気持ちがある事や家族の処罰感情が強くない事も考慮し、
長期間の矯正教育を施して更生を図るべきだとして、中等少年院送致の保護処分を決定した。異議はなく、そのまま確定した。

■事件の影響□

少女16が中学2年以降からゴシック・アンド・ロリータ(ゴスロリ)に興味を示すようになり、犯行時もそれらの服を着ていたと報じた。
また、2007年9月24日には、長野間で15歳の少年が斧で父親を殴打し負傷させる事件が発生し、逮捕された少年は、テレビで京田辺の事件を見て斧を凶器に選んだと供述していた。

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▽タリウム過去類似事件▽
■硫酸タリウムTl2SO4⇔タリウムは1価＝Tl+■化学式量＝204.4×2+96=504.8

❶無味無臭⇔水への溶解度 4.87ｇ (20 °C)
❷水に易溶である
❸可溶性で致死量は大人で平均致死量は約1グラム。500mgを超えると致命的で、
タリウムの硫酸塩は身体に入った後、腎臓、肝臓、脳などに影響が出る。 経口摂取や吸入、
❹皮膚に触れると危険。

❺有毒性のために家庭用の製品にタリウムの硫酸塩(化合物含む)の使用を禁止した。

今では、殺鼠剤、分析用試薬として利用されている。
殺鼠剤の誤飲などの事故でタリウムを摂取した場合の治療薬としてプルシアンブルー[紺青、ヘキサシアノ鉄(Ⅱ)酸鉄(Ⅲ)]が用いられる。

■酢酸タリウム⇔CH3COOTl■化学式量＝204.4+59=263.4 ⇔ 263.4の２倍＝526.8⇔硫酸タリウムの化学式量504.8とほぼ同じ⇒致死量はほぼ同じとなる

❶無味無臭の白い粉末⇔水への溶解度は酢酸塩らしくかなり溶ける
❷成人の致死量は約1グラムで、急性症状としては吐き気・下痢・昏睡などがあり、呼吸器や循環器の障害により死亡する。
❸少量を継続して摂取しても重金属のため体に蓄積して慢性症状を示し、徐々に衰弱して死亡するため病死と見せかけて毒殺するのに使われ、
事件例としては、
・イギリスのグレアム・ヤングの母親殺し、
・1991年の東大技官タリウム殺人事件(東京大学医学部)
・2005年の静岡女子高生母親毒殺未遂事件などがある。

かつてはよく殺鼠剤に使用され、現在でもその殺鼠剤は薬局で入手可能、黒色に着色されている。
しかしもっと安全な材質(クマリン系)の殺鼠剤が出回っているため、あえて酢酸タリウムをネズミ退治の目的で入手する意義はない。
殺鼠剤の誤飲などの事故でタリウムを摂取した場合の治療薬としてプルシアンブルー[紺青、ヘキサシアノ鉄(Ⅱ)酸鉄(Ⅲ)]が用いられる。
□タリウム毒殺事件は酢酸タリウムが多い□

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■東大技官タリウム毒殺事件の要約■

死亡＝被害者＝内田賢二(38)＝死亡日＝1991/2/14PM6:00
犯人＝加害者＝中村良一(44)＝逮捕日＝1993/7/22⇒最高裁2000/6/8=１審の懲役11年を支持して中村の刑が確定した。
毒物＝酢酸タリウムCH3COOTl

▼1991(平成3)年2月14日18:00、東京大学医学部付属動物実験施設の技官･内田賢二(38)が。
｢同僚に毒を盛られたかもしれない｣と呟きながら死亡した。

内田賢二は、
前年の1990(平成2)年12月13日、全身が痛み、手足が痺れて、脱毛症状も見られたため入院した。
年が明けても容体は悪化する一方で、1991/2月14日に死亡した。

担当医は、内田が、
｢毒を盛られたかもしれない｣という最後の言葉を重く見て、警察に通報すると共に、遺体を司法解剖した。
その結果、臓器から｢酢酸タリウムCH3COOTl｣が検出された。

タリウムTlは金属元素の一つ。特質は鉛や水銀に近いが毒性はさらに強く、致死量は成人で約１グラム[硫酸タリウムとして約1g]。
以前は殺鼠剤として広範囲で使用されていたが、現在では人口宝石の製造や医療関係でしか使用されていない。

警視庁は、毒殺事件として捜査を開始した。
同施設は教授ら研究職、事務職、アルバイトなど数十人が勤務していた。
酢酸タリウムを混入させるには内部の人間以外にはありえない。このため、職員らの身辺調査を実施した。
▼その結果、内田賢二と日頃から仲が悪かった技官･中村良一(44)が捜査上に浮上してきた。

内田は、都内の私立高校を卒業し、動物飼育の会社に入社。この関係で、同施設に技官として採用された。主な任務は実験動物の飼育だった。
一方、中村良一は日本獣医畜産大学を卒業後、国立予防研究所などを経て同施設に配属された。

内田＆中村２人の性格は正反対で、勤務態度もおのずと異なり、しばしば対立していた。
●内田は、動物好きだったが、性格は無愛想。職場の付き合いは悪く、朝の挨拶もしない状態だった。
しかも、職場を連絡所にして中古自動車のブローカー(内職・副業)もやっていた。

●中村は、職場の同僚に対して気配りが行き届き、誰に対しても愛想が良かった。
正義感が強い中村は、内田に勤務態度の改善や中古車ブローカーのアルバイトを止めるよう再三注意してきた。
だが、内田は、中村の注意を一切無視した。

捜査班は、中村に対して内偵を開始した。そんな中、捜査員がある情報を収集した。
それによると1990(平成2)年4月中旬、内田が同施設長(教授)に、
｢自分のコーヒ豆の缶に白い粉が入っている。調査して欲しい｣と申し出たというものだった。

▼同施設長が調べた結果、白い粉は酢酸タリウムだった。
この時は悪質な悪戯という事で警察に通報する事もなく片付けられていた。
その後、内田は脅え始め、食事は外食・飲料はミネラルウォータ以外に口にしなかった。

■1993(平成5)年7月22日、警視庁は中村を殺人容疑で逮捕した(事件発生から２年半が経過)。
警察の取調べで、中村良一は素直に犯行を認めた。
殺害の動機は、自分(中村)の注意を無視し自分(中村)を馬鹿にしたからという単純なものだった。
2000(平成12)年6月8日、最高裁は１審の懲役11年を支持して中村の刑が確定した。

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

■東大技官タリウム毒殺事件■憎しみを込めて毒殺を実行～殺したい程に延々と酢酸タリウムを飲まし続けるその怨念!!

■【事件概要】■

1991年2/14PM6:00死亡、
東大付属の動物実験施設に勤める男性技官内田賢二(38歳)が病院で死亡した。
内田賢二は前年から不調を訴えており、遺体からはタリウムが検出された。
2年半後、同僚技官中村良一(当時44歳)が殺人容疑で逮捕された。

■技官中村良一＝犯人＝加害者▼

【技官内田賢二の死＝被害者】

1991年2月14日午後5時59分、東京大学医学部付属動物実験施設(文京区)の技官内田賢二(38歳)が、病院で腎不全のため死亡した。
内田は前年1990/12月13日に、仕事を休んで府中市の整形外科の診察を受けていた。
内田が訴えるには、両手足の痺れがひどく、身体が激しく痛むというらしく、医師は多発性神経炎と診断した。
内田はその後都立神経病院に転院したが、年が明けて容体が悪化していた。重金属中毒の症状を起こしていたのである。

内田が、
「毒を飲まされたようだ」と言い残していた事もあって、医師は念の為警察に通報。
司法解剖された内田の臓器からタリウム化合物が検出された。

内田は農業科の高校から、動物飼育会社を経て、この施設に勤務していた。
技官と言っても、仕事の内容は犬100匹の世話と、実験の後片付けである。
最初はアルバイトだったが、動物好きの内田にとっては良い仕事で、後に正式に採用された。

勤めていた実験動物施設では、⇔【1990/4タリウム粉末混入騒動事件】
以前にもコーヒーの缶にタリウムが混入されるという事があった。
この施設では滅菌用に常備されていたのだ。
さらに酢酸タリウム1瓶(25g入り）が紛失している事もわかった。

職場は内田の他にもう1人動物の世話をする技官がおり、事務職、研究職、施設長（教授）、アルバイトを含め十数人が出入りしていた。
内部の人間なら誰でもタリウムを混入するチャンスはあったのだが、

▼当初は、内田の自殺自演という噂もあった。
内田が「入退院を繰り返せば入院保険金が入る」と話していた事から、保険金目当てで飲む内に、量を間違えたのではないのか？というのだ。

■【憎しみは毒に込めて実行】▼

事件から2年半が過ぎて。
1993年7月22日、同僚の中村良一技官(当時44歳)が殺人容疑で逮捕された。
鑑定に出していた施設保管のタリウムと、遺体から検出されたタリウムの成分比が一致したことを受けての逮捕だった。

中村は、
日本獣医畜産大学卒業、東大医科研、国立予防衛生研などで家畜の微生物の研究を経てこの施設に採用された。
以前の施設長に誘われたからで、ここで動物実験施設でマイコプラズマの分離に関する研究プロジェクトに入った。
この時に、中村はタリウムについて熟達している。
だがその教授が退職し、別の教授が赴任すると、中村は次第に研究よりかは実験動物の管理を任されるようになった。
ちなみに、中村良一は1975年4月にこの施設に採用されており、内田賢二がアルバイトとして入ってきたのはその半年後の事である。

■中村良一の供述➊■

「後輩のクセに、仕事の事でいくら注意しても無視するので、長年、鬱積したものがあった」

中村は内田の先輩であり、年上でもある。
同じ技官という立場だが、獣医であるというプライドも中村にはあった。
2人とも勤務態度は真面目であったが、内田の方は職場の行事には一切参加せず、挨拶もろくにしない事があるなど、人付き合いの方に問題があった。
中村良一はそうした態度を度々注意していたのだが、そのたび無視されたという。

また、
内田賢二が施設を事務所がわりに中古車の仲介アルバイトをしているのを知り、
「公務員の副業は禁じられている」と忠告したが、これもことごとく無視され、
結局、中村良一は上司に知らせたのだが、この事で2人の関係はさらに悪化した。

■中村良一の 供述❷▼

「長年仲が悪く、10年ほど前からタリウムを飲ませるチャンスを狙っていた」

中村は1985年頃から内田のタオルにタリウムを振り掛けるなどしていた。
そして1990年春頃から、
内田の飲みかけの茶碗などにタリウムの粉末を入れたが、異臭を気づかれ、ことごとく失敗した。

同年1990/4月、内田賢二は、⇔【1990/4タリウム粉末混入騒動事件】
「コーヒー豆の缶に、何か白い粉が入っています」と施設長に見せた。
この粉がタリウムとわかって大騒ぎとなったが、誰も通報などはせず、「悪質ないたずら」として片付けられた。

この1件位後も、
中村はタリウム混入を企て続けたが、
内田の方が疑心暗鬼になり、食事や飲み物にも気を使うようになり、部屋の鍵も取りつけた。

だが1990年12月中旬、今度は巧妙に、タリウムを水に溶かして無味無臭の水溶液を入れた。
そして内田賢二は欠勤、そのまま入院生活となった。

中村良一にとっては、
10年来の憎しみがようやくはらされた瞬間だった。⇒10年間の怨念の達成感!!!
さらにタリウム入りのお茶の缶を内田専用の冷蔵庫にいれておくなど、自殺に見せる偽装工作も行った。

逮捕までに、2年半あったものの、中村は当初から疑われていた。
仲が悪かった事も職場の人の知るところであったし、タリウムを扱うのは大抵中村良一だったからだ。
東大施設という事件の舞台のわりに、安易な計画、軽々しい動機の犯行だった。

■中村良一の【裁判】■

❶1995年12月19日、東京地裁、中村良一に懲役11年の判決。
❷1996年11月21日、東京高裁、控訴棄却。
❸2000年6月8日、最高裁、上告棄却⇒懲役11年の確定。

❹2002年4月15日、内田の遺族が約1億円の損害賠償を求めた訴訟で、
東京地裁・山名学裁判長は、
「東大側の安全管理に過失があった」として、6684万円余を支払うよう命じた。
ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

▼2005年、静岡県内の女子高生が、母親にタリウムを飲ませるという事件が起こった。
日本犯罪史上、❶福岡大学病院事件、❷東大技官タリウム毒殺事件に次いで3例目のタリウム事件だった。

■≪タリウム事件参考文献≫■
①角川書店「ニッポン列島毒殺事件簿」植松黎
②データハウス「毒物犯罪カタログ」　国民自衛研究会
③東京法経学院出版「明治・大正・昭和・平成　事件犯罪大事典」事件・犯罪研究会・編
④二見書房「日本中を震えあがらせた恐怖の毒薬犯罪99の事件簿」楠木誠一郎
⑤毎日新聞社「事件記者の110番講座」三木賢治

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

タリウムは、1861年にイギリスのウィリアム・クルークスとラミーによって、硫酸工場の鉛室の泥中で発見された。
重金属の毒で、鉛や水銀に近いが毒性はさらに強い。
金属タリウム色は銀白色であるが空気にふれるとすぐ酸化されて灰色となる。

致死量は0.2～1g。無味無臭で水に溶けやすい。
飲んでもすぐには症状は出ず、だいたい数日から10日後に、手足に痺れや痛みを生じさせる。
また神経炎、神経痛、肺炎、発疹チフス、アルコール中毒などと間違われやすいという恐るべき毒物である。
かつて日本では硫酸タリウムを砂糖、でん粉、グリセリン、水でこねて殺鼠剤に使われた。
また女性の除毛剤としても売られていた事もある。
1970年代に欧米で使用禁止となったタリウムは、日本でも日常的に使われる事はなくなり、
現在では医局の試薬、特殊ガラス・人工宝石の製造などに使われる。

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

ビンラディン暗殺2011/5/2作戦の真相暴露・London review of books/Seymour Hersh(全英文記載67000文字数)

67000文字数

突然暴露された新説に全米震撼、ビンラディン暗殺はウソばかり？
2015年6月1日週プレNEWS

2015/５月１０日、アルカイダの指導者オサマ・ビンラディンの暗殺作戦が「すべて茶番だった」という記事が、
英誌『ロンドン・レビュー・オブ・ブックス』(London review of books))に発表された。
執筆したのは、超一流の調査報道ジャーナリストであるシーモア・ハーシュだ(Seymour M. Hersh)。

■London review of books■
"The Killing of Osama bin Laden"
Seymour M. Hersh

ハーシュ(Hersh)は、
ベトナム戦争における米兵の虐殺を暴いた「ソンミ村虐殺事件」のスクープ記事でデビューし、
いきなりピュリツァー賞を受賞。
その後も、
大韓航空機撃墜事件、イスラエルの核兵器保有、イラクでの捕虜虐待事件などスクープを連発。
それゆえ、ホワイトハウスやペンタゴンは火消しに躍起となり、全米が揺れた。

オバマ政権がこれまで主張してきた暗殺作戦の公式な要点は以下の４つだ。

●２０１０年８月、ビンラディンと外部との連絡役(クーリエ)を米諜報機関が特定。
追跡の結果、その人物はパキスタンのアボタバードという街の、コンクリート塀で囲まれた邸宅に通っていると判明。

●地上と空から24時間体制で監視を続け、庭を散歩するビンラディンらしき長身の男の姿を確認。

●オバマ大統領は、
男がビンラディンであるという100％の確証がないまま暗殺作戦にゴーサインを出す。
◆2011年５月２日◆⇒米海軍特殊部隊ＳＥＡＬｓ(シールズ)の精鋭隊員たちは、
２機のステルスヘリでアフガンの前線基地からパキスタン領空に侵入し、隠れ家を急襲。
１機が着陸に失敗するアクシデントはあったが、銃撃戦の末、ビンラディンらしき男を殺害。

●ＳＥＡＬｓは男の遺体と、大量の情報が入った電子機器を持ち帰った。
ＤＮＡ鑑定によりビンラディンである事が確定し、オバマ大統領が記者会見で発表。

しかし、
👇ハーシュ(Hersh)はそのほとんどがウソだと主張している。
特に重要な点を時系列に沿って検証していこう。

➊ビンラディンの潜伏場所は、アメリカが割り出したのではない。
パキスタン軍情報機関であるＩＳＩの元高官がＣＩＡと接触。
ビンラディンにかけられた懸賞金２５００万ドルと引き換えに居場所を教えると申し出た。

ハーシュ(Hersh)の記事では、
「ＩＳＩの元高官」とだけ書かれているが、その正体はすでに判明しているという。

[ISIの元高官=a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer]

a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer
who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US

国際ジャーナリストの河合洋一郎が解説する。
「ＩＳＩの退役准将、ウスマン・ハリッドです。彼は作戦が決行される前に、秘密裏に家族と共にアメリカへ渡っています。そこで市民権と新しい身分証明書をもらい、現在はＣＩＡのコンサルタントをしているようです。もちろん懸賞金ももらっています」

❷ビンラディンは潜伏していたのではなく、2006年にＩＳＩに身柄を拘束され、
パキスタン軍の重要施設が集中するアボタバードに軟禁されていた。
彼(ビンラディン)は難病を患っており、主治医がいたが、そこからＤＮＡがアメリカ側に渡った。
つまり、アメリカは男がビンラディンであると知っていた。

これが本当だとすれば、
ビンラディンをアメリカに「売った」のは前出のハリッド個人ではなくＩＳＩという組織の判断だったことになる。

米当局のあるテロ対策担当者はこう解説する。
「当時、ビンラディンを殺したがっているのはアメリカだけではなかった。
アルカイダが戦略を転換し、後の『アラブの春』のような民族蜂起を画策していたため、パキスタンもその芽を早めに摘みたがっていた」

しかし、
パキスタンには、ビンラディンに直接手を下せない事情があったという。

「パキスタン軍がビンラディンを殺したりすれば、国内外のイスラム過激派が激怒し何が起こるかわかりません。
しかし、アメリカに殺させればその心配はない。復讐心に燃えるアメリカは居場所を教えれば必ずアクションを起こす――
彼らはそう考え、ハリッドに『裏切りを命じた』のでしょう」(前出・河合)

もちろん、再選を狙うオバマ大統領にとってもこれは渡りに船。
こうして両国の利害が一致した、という見方だ。

❸オバマ政権は、情報漏洩を恐れて暗殺作戦を事前にパキスタン側に知らせなかったと発表しているが、
実際は2011年１月に合意が結ばれていた。
作戦当日(2011/5/2)、ビンラディン邸の警備員たちは、ヘリの音が聞こえたら立ち去るように命令されていた。
ＳＥＡＬｓ隊員は、一緒に来ていたＩＳＩの将校に案内されて３階の部屋へ入り、無抵抗のビンラディンを撃った。

事前に作戦の情報共有がなされていたという点については、
軍事評論家の古是三春(ふるぜみつはる)も同意する。
「領空に侵入した米軍ヘリがパキスタン軍に迎撃されなかった事、
ビンラディンの潜伏集落が作戦決行前に停電した事。
これらの事は、パキスタン側の協力を仰がなければ不可能です」

❹当初の予定では、
「ビンラディンはアメリカの無人暗殺機が殺害した」というストーリーを１週間後に発表する
という事でアメリカとパキスタンは話をつけていた。ところが、
着陸に失敗したヘリの尾部が現場に残ってしまった事を理由にオバマ大統領はすぐに会見を開き、
急ごしらえの別のストーリーを発表。
ここでＣＩＡの追跡、ＳＥＡＬｓの銃撃戦といった“ウソ”が流布された。

作戦に参加したＳＥＡＬｓ隊員が後に出版した本では、
すさまじい銃撃戦が繰り広げられた事になっているが、
ハーシュ(Hersh)の記事ではこれも全面的に否定されている。

元米陸軍大尉の飯柴智亮(いいしばともあき)は、
ハーシュ説の真偽には首をかしげながらも元軍人の“英雄本”の信憑性の危うさについてこう語る。

「米軍がムスリムのパキスタン人をこういう状況で信用するとは考えづらく、
一緒に作戦を決行したというのはほぼ間違いなくデマでしょう。
ただ、ＳＥＡＬｓ隊員の本も、すべて赤裸々に書けば機密に抵触して連邦法違反になるので、
３０％から４０％は事実を曲げて書いているはず。
それに、あれだけの秘密作戦となれば、現場の隊員は“末端要員”にすぎず、すべてを知っているわけではありません」

いずれにしても、ハーシュの記事の内容は、
「偉大なアメリカがビンラディンをやっつけた」というアメリカ国民の“常識”を根底から覆すものだ。
アメリカはパキスタンの誘いに乗り、無抵抗のビンラディンを特殊部隊に殺させておきながら、
パキスタンとの約束をホゴにして“ウソのストーリー”をばらまいた事になるのだから――。

週プレNEWS (取材／小峯隆生･世良光弘)
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■ウサーマ・ビン・ラーディンの殺害■殺害日＝2011/5/2

▼ウサーマ・ビン・ラーディン▼
アルカーイダの指導者ウサーマ・ビン・ラーディンは、アメリカ合衆国政府によって、
2001年9月11日に発生したアメリカ同時多発テロ事件の首謀者と断定され、
それ以来アメリカにとってビン・ラーディンを抹殺することが一つの大きな目標となった。

同国による大規模な捜索にもかかわらず拘束することができないまま10年近くが経過したが、
◆2011年5月2日(米国東部夏時間5月1日)、パキスタンにおいてアメリカ軍によりウサーマ・ビン・ラーディンの殺害が確認され、
◆2001年以来続いてきた対テロ戦争は一つの節目を迎えることとなった。

複数のメディアが深夜の時間帯にもかかわらず、ビン・ラーディンが死亡したニュースを一斉に報道した。約一時間後、オバマ大統領がホワイトハウスから会見を行い、ウサーマ・ビン・ラーディンが同日、パキスタンの首都イスラマバードから約60km北東にある地方都市アボッターバードの潜伏先と見られていた豪邸で、アメリカ軍の作戦により殺害されたことを全国テレビ中継で公式発表した。

■経緯■

▼イスラマバードとアボッターバードの位置関係▼
2001年9月11日にアメリカ同時多発テロ事件が発生し、
アメリカ政府はアフガニスタンのターリバーン政権に対して首謀者であるウサーマ・ビン・ラーディンの身柄引き渡しを要求。
しかしターリバーン政権は要求を拒否し、同2001年10月7日にアフガン戦争が開始された。
ターリバーン政権は打倒されたが、ビン・ラーディンの行方は戦争開始以降わからなくなり、
このためアメリカ軍はアフガニスタンと隣国パキスタンとの国境地帯にある山岳などを捜索してきた。
しかし、ビン・ラーディンの行方は判明しなかった。

対テロ戦争を始めたアメリカのジョージ・W・ブッシュ政権が2009年1月にオバマ政権に交代した後も、ビン・ラーディンの捜索は続き、
アメリカ中央情報局(CIA)がビン・ラーディンの連絡係を担う男性の動きを追う中で、
ビン・ラーディン配下の連絡係であり、グァンタナモ収容所に収容されている
ハリド・シェイク・モハメドの元部下の身元特定に成功したことが、捕捉の端緒となった。

2010年8月頃、アボッターバードに居住するこの連絡係とその兄弟の行動分析から、
CIAは2010年9月には同市郊外の厳重に警護された邸宅に、
ある「重要な人物」が潜伏していると推定し、
さらに2011年2月にはビン・ラーディンがここに潜伏しているとの証拠を得るに至った。
これと相前後して、情報を得たレオン・パネッタCIA長官は、
統合特殊作戦コマンド司令官であったウィリアム・マクレイヴン海軍中将に連絡を取った。
アボッターバードはパキスタン陸軍の拠点であり、ビン・ラーディンの住居はパキスタンの陸軍士官学校とは至近距離にあったことから、
BBCはパキスタン軍統合情報局(ISI)が
ビン・ラーディンの身柄隠匿に何らかの関係があったのではないか、と報じている。
この情報はオバマ大統領にも報告された。

これはアメリカ政府内でもごく限られた人間のみが知りうる極秘情報として取り扱われた。

その後も調査は続き、
◆2011年3月中旬から4月28日にかけて、担当者とオバマ大統領のみが出席した国家安全保障会議が5-6回開催される。
◆オバマは5回目の会議翌日の2011/4月29日に作戦決行の許可を出した。
◆作戦名は「Operation Neptune Spear(海神の槍作戦)」とされ、
◆作戦の中ではビン・ラーディンの名は暗号名「ジェロニモ」に置き換えられた。

■潜伏先■

ビン・ラーディンが潜んでいた邸宅は3階建ての豪邸で、2005年頃に完成した。
敷地の周辺は3メートルから5.5メートルもの高さの有刺鉄線に覆われた塀に囲まれており、
豪邸に行くための通路には二重ゲートとなっているほか、入り口には見張りがつけられ、
外部から内部の様子を容易に見えないようにする工夫がなされていた。
周辺の家の約8倍もの広さを持ち、その価値は100万ドルを越えるとも言われる。

なお、邸宅はイスラム過激派に聖地化されることのないよう、
2012年2月25日より取り壊しが開始された。

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■London review of books■

■The Killing of Osama bin Laden■2015/5/21
▼Seymour M. Hersh▼

Vol.37 No.10 · 21 May 2015
pages 3-12・10356 words

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

NYU Press - Plucked - Rebecca M. Herzig

‘When your version comes out – if you do it – people in Pakistan will be tremendously grateful,’ Durrani told me. ‘For a long time people have stopped trusting what comes out about bin Laden from the official mouths. There will be some negative political comment and some anger, but people like to be told the truth, and what you’ve told me is essentially what I have heard from former colleagues who have been on a fact-finding mission since this episode.’ As a former ISI head, he said, he had been told shortly after the raid by ‘people in the “strategic community” who would know’ that there had been an informant who had alerted the US to bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, and that after his killing the US’s betrayed promises left Kayani and Pasha exposed.

The major US source for the account that follows is a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. He also was privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid, and to the various after-action reports. Two other US sources, who had access to corroborating information, have been longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command. I also received information from inside Pakistan about widespread dismay among the senior ISI and military leadership – echoed later by Durrani – over Obama’s decision to go public immediately with news of bin Laden’s death. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

*

It began with a walk-in. In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA’s station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001. Walk-ins are assumed by the CIA to be unreliable, and the response from the agency’s headquarters was to fly in a polygraph team. The walk-in passed the test. ‘So now we’ve got a lead on bin Laden living in a compound in Abbottabad, but how do we really know who it is?’ was the CIA’s worry at the time, the retired senior US intelligence official told me.

The US initially kept what it knew from the Pakistanis. ‘The fear was that if the existence of the source was made known, the Pakistanis themselves would move bin Laden to another location. So only a very small number of people were read into the source and his story,’ the retired official said. ‘The CIA’s first goal was to check out the quality of the informant’s information.’ The compound was put under satellite surveillance. The CIA rented a house in Abbottabad to use as a forward observation base and staffed it with Pakistani employees and foreign nationals. Later on, the base would serve as a contact point with the ISI; it attracted little attention because Abbottabad is a holiday spot full of houses rented on short leases. A psychological profile of the informant was prepared. (The informant and his family were smuggled out of Pakistan and relocated in the Washington area. He is now a consultant for the CIA.)

‘By October the military and intelligence community were discussing the possible military options. Do we drop a bunker buster on the compound or take him out with a drone strike? Perhaps send someone to kill him, single assassin style? But then we’d have no proof of who he was,’ the retired official said. ‘We could see some guy is walking around at night, but we have no intercepts because there’s no commo coming from the compound.’

In October, Obama was briefed on the intelligence. His response was cautious, the retired official said. ‘It just made no sense that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. It was just too crazy. The president’s position was emphatic: “Don’t talk to me about this any more unless you have proof that it really is bin Laden.”’ The immediate goal of the CIA leadership and the Joint Special Operations Command was to get Obama’s support. They believed they would get this if they got DNA evidence, and if they could assure him that a night assault of the compound would carry no risk. The only way to accomplish both things, the retired official said, ‘was to get the Pakistanis on board’.

During the late autumn of 2010, the US continued to keep quiet about the walk-in, and Kayani and Pasha continued to insist to their American counterparts that they had no information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. ‘The next step was to figure out how to ease Kayani and Pasha into it – to tell them that we’ve got intelligence showing that there is a high-value target in the compound, and to ask them what they know about the target,’ the retired official said. ‘The compound was not an armed enclave – no machine guns around, because it was under ISI control.’ The walk-in had told the US that bin Laden had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains, and that ‘the ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him.’ (Reports after the raid placed him elsewhere in Pakistan during this period.) Bank was also told by the walk-in that bin Laden was very ill, and that early on in his confinement at Abbottabad, the ISI had ordered Amir Aziz, a doctor and a major in the Pakistani army, to move nearby to provide treatment. ‘The truth is that bin Laden was an invalid, but we cannot say that,’ the retired official said. ‘“You mean you guys shot a cripple? Who was about to grab his AK-47?”’

‘It didn’t take long to get the co-operation we needed, because the Pakistanis wanted to ensure the continued release of American military aid, a good percentage of which was anti-terrorism funding that finances personal security, such as bullet-proof limousines and security guards and housing for the ISI leadership,’ the retired official said. He added that there were also under-the-table personal ‘incentives’ that were financed by off-the-books Pentagon contingency funds. ‘The intelligence community knew what the Pakistanis needed to agree – there was the carrot. And they chose the carrot. It was a win-win. We also did a little blackmail. We told them we would leak the fact that you’ve got bin Laden in your backyard. We knew their friends and enemies’ – the Taliban and jihadist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan – ‘would not like it.’

A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. ‘The Saudis didn’t want bin Laden’s presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden’s imprisonment from a walk-in was not the worst thing.’

Despite their constant public feuding, American and Pakistani military and intelligence services have worked together closely for decades on counterterrorism in South Asia. Both services often find it useful to engage in public feuds ‘to cover their asses’, as the retired official put it, but they continually share intelligence used for drone attacks, and co-operate on covert operations. At the same time, it’s understood in Washington that elements of the ISI believe that maintaining a relationship with the Taliban leadership inside Afghanistan is essential to national security. The ISI’s strategic aim is to balance Indian influence in Kabul; the Taliban is also seen in Pakistan as a source of jihadist shock troops who would back Pakistan against India in a confrontation over Kashmir.

Adding to the tension was the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, often depicted in the Western press as an ‘Islamic bomb’ that might be transferred by Pakistan to an embattled nation in the Middle East in the event of a crisis with Israel. The US looked the other way when Pakistan began building its weapons system in the 1970s and it’s widely believed it now has more than a hundred nuclear warheads. It’s understood in Washington that US security depends on the maintenance of strong military and intelligence ties to Pakistan. The belief is mirrored in Pakistan.

NYU Press - Plucked - Rebecca M. Herzig

‘The Pakistani army sees itself as family,’ the retired official said. ‘Officers call soldiers their sons and all officers are “brothers”. The attitude is different in the American military. The senior Pakistani officers believe they are the elite and have got to look out for all of the people, as keepers of the flame against Muslim fundamentalism. The Pakistanis also know that their trump card against aggression from India is a strong relationship with the United States. They will never cut their person-to-person ties with us.’

Like all CIA station chiefs, Bank was working undercover, but that ended in early December 2010 when he was publicly accused of murder in a criminal complaint filed in Islamabad by Karim Khan, a Pakistani journalist whose son and brother, according to local news reports, had been killed by a US drone strike. Allowing Bank to be named was a violation of diplomatic protocol on the part of the Pakistani authorities, and it brought a wave of unwanted publicity. Bank was ordered to leave Pakistan by the CIA, whose officials subsequently told the Associated Press he was transferred because of concerns for his safety. The New York Times reported that there was ‘strong suspicion’ the ISI had played a role in leaking Bank’s name to Khan. There was speculation that he was outed as payback for the publication in a New York lawsuit a month earlier of the names of ISI chiefs in connection with the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. But there was a collateral reason, the retired official said, for the CIA’s willingness to send Bank back to America. The Pakistanis needed cover in case their co-operation with the Americans in getting rid of bin Laden became known. The Pakistanis could say: “You’re talking about me? We just kicked out your station chief.”’

*

The bin Laden compound was less than two miles from the Pakistan Military Academy, and a Pakistani army combat battalion headquarters was another mile or so away. Abbottabad is less than 15 minutes by helicopter from Tarbela Ghazi, an important base for ISI covert operations and the facility where those who guard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal are trained. ‘Ghazi is why the ISI put bin Laden in Abbottabad in the first place,’ the retired official said, ‘to keep him under constant supervision.’

The risks for Obama were high at this early stage, especially because there was a troubling precedent: the failed 1980 attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. That failure was a factor in Jimmy Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan. Obama’s worries were realistic, the retired official said. ‘Was bin Laden ever there? Was the whole story a product of Pakistani deception? What about political blowback in case of failure?’ After all, as the retired official said, ‘If the mission fails, Obama’s just a black Jimmy Carter and it’s all over for re-election.’

Obama was anxious for reassurance that the US was going to get the right man. The proof was to come in the form of bin Laden’s DNA. The planners turned for help to Kayani and Pasha, who asked Aziz to obtain the specimens. Soon after the raid the press found out that Aziz had been living in a house near the bin Laden compound: local reporters discovered his name in Urdu on a plate on the door. Pakistani officials denied that Aziz had any connection to bin Laden, but the retired official told me that Aziz had been rewarded with a share of the $25 million reward the US had put up because the DNA sample had showed conclusively that it was bin Laden in Abbottabad. (In his subsequent testimony to a Pakistani commission investigating the bin Laden raid, Aziz said that he had witnessed the attack on Abbottabad, but had no knowledge of who was living in the compound and had been ordered by a superior officer to stay away from the scene.)

Bargaining continued over the way the mission would be executed. ‘Kayani eventually tells us yes, but he says you can’t have a big strike force. You have to come in lean and mean. And you have to kill him, or there is no deal,’ the retired official said. The agreement was struck by the end of January 2011, and Joint Special Operations Command prepared a list of questions to be answered by the Pakistanis: ‘How can we be assured of no outside intervention? What are the defences inside the compound and its exact dimensions? Where are bin Laden’s rooms and exactly how big are they? How many steps in the stairway? Where are the doors to his rooms, and are they reinforced with steel? How thick?’ The Pakistanis agreed to permit a four-man American cell – a Navy Seal, a CIA case officer and two communications specialists – to set up a liaison office at Tarbela Ghazi for the coming assault. By then, the military had constructed a mock-up of the compound in Abbottabad at a secret former nuclear test site in Nevada, and an elite Seal team had begun rehearsing for the attack.

The US had begun to cut back on aid to Pakistan – to ‘turn off the spigot’, in the retired official’s words. The provision of 18 new F-16 fighter aircraft was delayed, and under-the-table cash payments to the senior leaders were suspended. In April 2011 Pasha met the CIA director, Leon Panetta, at agency headquarters. ‘Pasha got a commitment that the United States would turn the money back on, and we got a guarantee that there would be no Pakistani opposition during the mission,’ the retired official said. ‘Pasha also insisted that Washington stop complaining about Pakistan’s lack of co-operation with the American war on terrorism.’ At one point that spring, Pasha offered the Americans a blunt explanation of the reason Pakistan kept bin Laden’s capture a secret, and why it was imperative for the ISI role to remain secret: ‘We needed a hostage to keep tabs on al-Qaida and the Taliban,’ Pasha said, according to the retired official. ‘The ISI was using bin Laden as leverage against Taliban and al-Qaida activities inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. They let the Taliban and al-Qaida leadership know that if they ran operations that clashed with the interests of the ISI, they would turn bin Laden over to us. So if it became known that the Pakistanis had worked with us to get bin Laden at Abbottabad, there would be hell to pay.’

At one of his meetings with Panetta, according to the retired official and a source within the CIA, Pasha was asked by a senior CIA official whether he saw himself as acting in essence as an agent for al-Qaida and the Taliban. ‘He answered no, but said the ISI needed to have some control.’ The message, as the CIA saw it, according to the retired official, was that Kayani and Pasha viewed bin Laden ‘as a resource, and they were more interested in their [own] survival than they were in the United States’.

A Pakistani with close ties to the senior leadership of the ISI told me that ‘there was a deal with your top guys. We were very reluctant, but it had to be done – not because of personal enrichment, but because all of the American aid programmes would be cut off. Your guys said we will starve you out if you don’t do it, and the okay was given while Pasha was in Washington. The deal was not only to keep the taps open, but Pasha was told there would be more goodies for us.’ The Pakistani said that Pasha’s visit also resulted in a commitment from the US to give Pakistan ‘a freer hand’ in Afghanistan as it began its military draw-down there. ‘And so our top dogs justified the deal by saying this is for our country.’

*

Pasha and Kayani were responsible for ensuring that Pakistan’s army and air defence command would not track or engage with the US helicopters used on the mission. The American cell at Tarbela Ghazi was charged with co-ordinating communications between the ISI, the senior US officers at their command post in Afghanistan, and the two Black Hawk helicopters; the goal was to ensure that no stray Pakistani fighter plane on border patrol spotted the intruders and took action to stop them. The initial plan said that news of the raid shouldn’t be announced straightaway. All units in the Joint Special Operations Command operate under stringent secrecy and the JSOC leadership believed, as did Kayani and Pasha, that the killing of bin Laden would not be made public for as long as seven days, maybe longer. Then a carefully constructed cover story would be issued: Obama would announce that DNA analysis confirmed that bin Laden had been killed in a drone raid in the Hindu Kush, on Afghanistan’s side of the border. The Americans who planned the mission assured Kayani and Pasha that their co-operation would never be made public. It was understood by all that if the Pakistani role became known, there would be violent protests – bin Laden was considered a hero by many Pakistanis – and Pasha and Kayani and their families would be in danger, and the Pakistani army publicly disgraced.

It was clear to all by this point, the retired official said, that bin Laden would not survive: ‘Pasha told us at a meeting in April that he could not risk leaving bin Laden in the compound now that we know he’s there. Too many people in the Pakistani chain of command know about the mission. He and Kayani had to tell the whole story to the directors of the air defence command and to a few local commanders.

‘Of course the guys knew the target was bin Laden and he was there under Pakistani control,’ the retired official said. ‘Otherwise, they would not have done the mission without air cover. It was clearly and absolutely a premeditated murder.’ A former Seal commander, who has led and participated in dozens of similar missions over the past decade, assured me that ‘we were not going to keep bin Laden alive – to allow the terrorist to live. By law, we know what we’re doing inside Pakistan is a homicide. We’ve come to grips with that. Each one of us, when we do these missions, say to ourselves, “Let’s face it. We’re going to commit a murder.”’ The White House’s initial account claimed that bin Laden had been brandishing a weapon; the story was aimed at deflecting those who questioned the legality of the US administration’s targeted assassination programme. The US has consistently maintained, despite widely reported remarks by people involved with the mission, that bin Laden would have been taken alive if he had immediately surrendered.

*

At the Abbottabad compound ISI guards were posted around the clock to keep watch over bin Laden and his wives and children. They were under orders to leave as soon as they heard the rotors of the US helicopters. The town was dark: the electricity supply had been cut off on the orders of the ISI hours before the raid began. One of the Black Hawks crashed inside the walls of the compound, injuring many on board. ‘The guys knew the TOT [time on target] had to be tight because they would wake up the whole town going in,’ the retired official said. The cockpit of the crashed Black Hawk, with its communication and navigational gear, had to be destroyed by concussion grenades, and this would create a series of explosions and a fire visible for miles. Two Chinook helicopters had flown from Afghanistan to a nearby Pakistani intelligence base to provide logistical support, and one of them was immediately dispatched to Abbottabad. But because the helicopter had been equipped with a bladder loaded with extra fuel for the two Black Hawks, it first had to be reconfigured as a troop carrier. The crash of the Black Hawk and the need to fly in a replacement were nerve-wracking and time-consuming setbacks, but the Seals continued with their mission. There was no firefight as they moved into the compound; the ISI guards had gone. ‘Everyone in Pakistan has a gun and high-profile, wealthy folks like those who live in Abbottabad have armed bodyguards, and yet there were no weapons in the compound,’ the retired official pointed out. Had there been any opposition, the team would have been highly vulnerable. Instead, the retired official said, an ISI liaison officer flying with the Seals guided them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden’s quarters. The Seals had been warned by the Pakistanis that heavy steel doors blocked the stairwell on the first and second-floor landings; bin Laden’s rooms were on the third floor. The Seal squad used explosives to blow the doors open, without injuring anyone. One of bin Laden’s wives was screaming hysterically and a bullet – perhaps a stray round – struck her knee. Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired. (The Obama administration’s account would hold otherwise.)



‘They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,’ the retired official said. ‘Go straight there. Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.’ Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. ‘Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence? The house was shabby and bin Laden was living in a cell with bars on the window and barbed wire on the roof. The rules of engagement were that if bin Laden put up any opposition they were authorised to take lethal action. But if they suspected he might have some means of opposition, like an explosive vest under his robe, they could also kill him. So here’s this guy in a mystery robe and they shot him. It’s not because he was reaching for a weapon. The rules gave them absolute authority to kill the guy.’ The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”’

After they killed bin Laden, ‘the Seals were just there, some with physical injuries from the crash, waiting for the relief chopper,’ the retired official said. ‘Twenty tense minutes. The Black Hawk is still burning. There are no city lights. No electricity. No police. No fire trucks. They have no prisoners.’ Bin Laden’s wives and children were left for the ISI to interrogate and relocate. ‘Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks. The Seals weren’t there because they thought bin Laden was running a command centre for al-Qaida operations, as the White House would later tell the media. And they were not intelligence experts gathering information inside that house.’

On a normal assault mission, the retired official said, there would be no waiting around if a chopper went down. ‘The Seals would have finished the mission, thrown off their guns and gear, and jammed into the remaining Black Hawk and di-di-maued’ – Vietnamese slang for leaving in a rush – ‘out of there, with guys hanging out of the doors. They would not have blown the chopper – no commo gear is worth a dozen lives – unless they knew they were safe. Instead they stood around outside the compound, waiting for the bus to arrive.’ Pasha and Kayani had delivered on all their promises.

*

The backroom argument inside the White House began as soon as it was clear that the mission had succeeded. Bin Laden’s body was presumed to be on its way to Afghanistan. Should Obama stand by the agreement with Kayani and Pasha and pretend a week or so later that bin Laden had been killed in a drone attack in the mountains, or should he go public immediately? The downed helicopter made it easy for Obama’s political advisers to urge the latter plan. The explosion and fireball would be impossible to hide, and word of what had happened was bound to leak. Obama had to ‘get out in front of the story’ before someone in the Pentagon did: waiting would diminish the political impact.

Not everyone agreed. Robert Gates, the secretary of defence, was the most outspoken of those who insisted that the agreements with Pakistan had to be honoured. In his memoir, Duty, Gates did not mask his anger:

Before we broke up and the president headed upstairs to tell the American people what had just happened, I reminded everyone that the techniques, tactics and procedures the Seals had used in the bin Laden operation were used every night in Afghanistan … it was therefore essential that we agree not to release any operational details of the raid. That we killed him, I said, is all we needed to say. Everybody in that room agreed to keep mum on details. That commitment lasted about five hours. The initial leaks came from the White House and CIA. They just couldn’t wait to brag and to claim credit. The facts were often wrong … Nonetheless the information just kept pouring out. I was outraged and at one point, told [the national security adviser, Tom] Donilon, ‘Why doesn’t everybody just shut the fuck up?’ To no avail.

Obama’s speech was put together in a rush, the retired official said, and was viewed by his advisers as a political document, not a message that needed to be submitted for clearance to the national security bureaucracy. This series of self-serving and inaccurate statements would create chaos in the weeks following. Obama said that his administration had discovered that bin Laden was in Pakistan through ‘a possible lead’ the previous August; to many in the CIA the statement suggested a specific event, such as a walk-in. The remark led to a new cover story claiming that the CIA’s brilliant analysts had unmasked a courier network handling bin Laden’s continuing flow of operational orders to al-Qaida. Obama also praised ‘a small team of Americans’ for their care in avoiding civilian deaths and said: ‘After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.’ Two more details now had to be supplied for the cover story: a description of the firefight that never happened, and a story about what happened to the corpse. Obama went on to praise the Pakistanis: ‘It’s important to note that our counterterrorism co-operation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.’ That statement risked exposing Kayani and Pasha. The White House’s solution was to ignore what Obama had said and order anyone talking to the press to insist that the Pakistanis had played no role in killing bin Laden. Obama left the clear impression that he and his advisers hadn’t known for sure that bin Laden was in Abbottabad, but only had information ‘about the possibility’. This led first to the story that the Seals had determined they’d killed the right man by having a six-foot-tall Seal lie next to the corpse for comparison (bin Laden was known to be six foot four); and then to the claim that a DNA test had been performed on the corpse and demonstrated conclusively that the Seals had killed bin Laden. But, according to the retired official, it wasn’t clear from the Seals’ early reports whether all of bin Laden’s body, or any of it, made it back to Afghanistan.

Gates wasn’t the only official who was distressed by Obama’s decision to speak without clearing his remarks in advance, the retired official said, ‘but he was the only one protesting. Obama didn’t just double-cross Gates, he double-crossed everyone. This was not the fog of war. The fact that there was an agreement with the Pakistanis and no contingency analysis of what was to be disclosed if something went wrong – that wasn’t even discussed. And once it went wrong, they had to make up a new cover story on the fly.’ There was a legitimate reason for some deception: the role of the Pakistani walk-in had to be protected.

The White House press corps was told in a briefing shortly after Obama’s announcement that the death of bin Laden was ‘the culmination of years of careful and highly advanced intelligence work’ that focused on tracking a group of couriers, including one who was known to be close to bin Laden. Reporters were told that a team of specially assembled CIA and National Security Agency analysts had traced the courier to a highly secure million-dollar compound in Abbottabad. After months of observation, the American intelligence community had ‘high confidence’ that a high-value target was living in the compound, and it was ‘assessed that there was a strong probability that [it] was Osama bin Laden’. The US assault team ran into a firefight on entering the compound and three adult males – two of them believed to be the couriers – were slain, along with bin Laden. Asked if bin Laden had defended himself, one of the briefers said yes: ‘He did resist the assault force. And he was killed in a firefight.’

The next day John Brennan, then Obama’s senior adviser for counterterrorism, had the task of talking up Obama’s valour while trying to smooth over the misstatements in his speech. He provided a more detailed but equally misleading account of the raid and its planning. Speaking on the record, which he rarely does, Brennan said that the mission was carried out by a group of Navy Seals who had been instructed to take bin Laden alive, if possible. He said the US had no information suggesting that anyone in the Pakistani government or military knew bin Laden’s whereabouts: ‘We didn’t contact the Pakistanis until after all of our people, all of our aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace.’ He emphasised the courage of Obama’s decision to order the strike, and said that the White House had no information ‘that confirmed that bin Laden was at the compound’ before the raid began. Obama, he said, ‘made what I believe was one of the gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory’. Brennan increased the number killed by the Seals inside the compound to five: bin Laden, a courier, his brother, a bin Laden son, and one of the women said to be shielding bin Laden.

Asked whether bin Laden had fired on the Seals, as some reporters had been told, Brennan repeated what would become a White House mantra: ‘He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know … Here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks … living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield … [It] just speaks to I think the nature of the individual he was.’

Gates also objected to the idea, pushed by Brennan and Leon Panetta, that US intelligence had learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts from information acquired by waterboarding and other forms of torture. ‘All of this is going on as the Seals are flying home from their mission. The agency guys know the whole story,’ the retired official said. ‘It was a group of annuitants who did it.’ (Annuitants are retired CIA officers who remain active on contract.) ‘They had been called in by some of the mission planners in the agency to help with the cover story. So the old-timers come in and say why not admit that we got some of the information about bin Laden from enhanced interrogation?’ At the time, there was still talk in Washington about the possible prosecution of CIA agents who had conducted torture.



‘Gates told them this was not going to work,’ the retired official said. ‘He was never on the team. He knew at the eleventh hour of his career not to be a party to this nonsense. But State, the agency and the Pentagon had bought in on the cover story. None of the Seals thought that Obama was going to get on national TV and announce the raid. The Special Forces command was apoplectic. They prided themselves on keeping operational security.’ There was fear in Special Operations, the retired official said, that ‘if the true story of the missions leaked out, the White House bureaucracy was going to blame it on the Seals.’

The White House’s solution was to silence the Seals. On 5 May, every member of the Seal hit team – they had returned to their base in southern Virginia – and some members of the Joint Special Operations Command leadership were presented with a nondisclosure form drafted by the White House’s legal office; it promised civil penalties and a lawsuit for anyone who discussed the mission, in public or private. ‘The Seals were not happy,’ the retired official said. But most of them kept quiet, as did Admiral William McRaven, who was then in charge of JSOC. ‘McRaven was apoplectic. He knew he was fucked by the White House, but he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Seal, and not then a political operator, and he knew there’s no glory in blowing the whistle on the president. When Obama went public with bin Laden’s death, everyone had to scramble around for a new story that made sense, and the planners were stuck holding the bag.’

Within days, some of the early exaggerations and distortions had become obvious and the Pentagon issued a series of clarifying statements. No, bin Laden was not armed when he was shot and killed. And no, bin Laden did not use one of his wives as a shield. The press by and large accepted the explanation that the errors were the inevitable by-product of the White House’s desire to accommodate reporters frantic for details of the mission.

One lie that has endured is that the Seals had to fight their way to their target. Only two Seals have made any public statement: No Easy Day, a first-hand account of the raid by Matt Bissonnette, was published in September 2012; and two years later Rob O’Neill was interviewed by Fox News. Both men had resigned from the navy; both had fired at bin Laden. Their accounts contradicted each other on many details, but their stories generally supported the White House version, especially when it came to the need to kill or be killed as the Seals fought their way to bin Laden. O’Neill even told Fox News that he and his fellow Seals thought ‘We were going to die.’ ‘The more we trained on it, the more we realised … this is going to be a one-way mission.’

But the retired official told me that in their initial debriefings the Seals made no mention of a firefight, or indeed of any opposition. The drama and danger portrayed by Bissonnette and O’Neill met a deep-seated need, the retired official said: ‘Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen.’

There was another reason to claim there had been a firefight inside the compound, the retired official said: to avoid the inevitable question that would arise from an uncontested assault. Where were bin Laden’s guards? Surely, the most sought-after terrorist in the world would have around-the-clock protection. ‘And one of those killed had to be the courier, because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him. The Pakistanis had no choice but to play along with it.’ (Two days after the raid, Reuters published photographs of three dead men that it said it had purchased from an ISI official. Two of the men were later identified by an ISI spokesman as being the alleged courier and his brother.)

*

Five days after the raid the Pentagon press corps was provided with a series of videotapes that were said by US officials to have been taken from a large collection the Seals had removed from the compound, along with as many as 15 computers. Snippets from one of the videos showed a solitary bin Laden looking wan and wrapped in a blanket, watching what appeared to be a video of himself on television. An unnamed official told reporters that the raid produced a ‘treasure trove … the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever’, which would provide vital insights into al-Qaida’s plans. The official said the material showed that bin Laden ‘remained an active leader in al-Qaida, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group … He was far from a figurehead [and] continued to direct even tactical details of the group’s management and to encourage plotting’ from what was described as a command-and-control centre in Abbottabad. ‘He was an active player, making the recent operation even more essential for our nation’s security,’ the official said. The information was so vital, he added, that the administration was setting up an inter-agency task force to process it: ‘He was not simply someone who was penning al-Qaida strategy. He was throwing operational ideas out there and he was also specifically directing other al-Qaida members.’

These claims were fabrications: there wasn’t much activity for bin Laden to exercise command and control over. The retired intelligence official said that the CIA’s internal reporting shows that since bin Laden moved to Abbottabad in 2006 only a handful of terrorist attacks could be linked to the remnants of bin Laden’s al-Qaida. ‘We were told at first,’ the retired official said, ‘that the Seals produced garbage bags of stuff and that the community is generating daily intelligence reports out of this stuff. And then we were told that the community is gathering everything together and needs to translate it. But nothing has come of it. Every single thing they have created turns out not to be true. It’s a great hoax – like the Piltdown man.’ The retired official said that most of the materials from Abbottabad were turned over to the US by the Pakistanis, who later razed the building. The ISI took responsibility for the wives and children of bin Laden, none of whom was made available to the US for questioning.

‘Why create the treasure trove story?’ the retired official said. ‘The White House had to give the impression that bin Laden was still operationally important. Otherwise, why kill him? A cover story was created – that there was a network of couriers coming and going with memory sticks and instructions. All to show that bin Laden remained important.’

In July 2011, the Washington Post published what purported to be a summary of some of these materials. The story’s contradictions were glaring. It said the documents had resulted in more than four hundred intelligence reports within six weeks; it warned of unspecified al-Qaida plots; and it mentioned arrests of suspects ‘who are named or described in emails that bin Laden received’. The Post didn’t identify the suspects or reconcile that detail with the administration’s previous assertions that the Abbottabad compound had no internet connection. Despite their claims that the documents had produced hundreds of reports, the Post also quoted officials saying that their main value wasn’t the actionable intelligence they contained, but that they enabled ‘analysts to construct a more comprehensive portrait of al-Qaida’.

In May 2012, the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, a private research group, released translations it had made under a federal government contract of 175 pages of bin Laden documents. Reporters found none of the drama that had been touted in the days after the raid. Patrick Cockburn wrote about the contrast between the administration’s initial claims that bin Laden was the ‘spider at the centre of a conspiratorial web’ and what the translations actually showed: that bin Laden was ‘delusional’ and had ‘limited contact with the outside world outside his compound’.

The retired official disputed the authenticity of the West Point materials: ‘There is no linkage between these documents and the counterterrorism centre at the agency. No intelligence community analysis. When was the last time the CIA: 1) announced it had a significant intelligence find; 2) revealed the source; 3) described the method for processing the materials; 4) revealed the time-line for production; 5) described by whom and where the analysis was taking place, and 6) published the sensitive results before the information had been acted on? No agency professional would support this fairy tale.’

*

In June 2011, it was reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post and all over the Pakistani press that Amir Aziz had been held for questioning in Pakistan; he was, it was said, a CIA informant who had been spying on the comings and goings at the bin Laden compound. Aziz was released, but the retired official said that US intelligence was unable to learn who leaked the highly classified information about his involvement with the mission. Officials in Washington decided they ‘could not take a chance that Aziz’s role in obtaining bin Laden’s DNA also would become known’. A sacrificial lamb was needed, and the one chosen was Shakil Afridi, a 48-year-old Pakistani doctor and sometime CIA asset, who had been arrested by the Pakistanis in late May and accused of assisting the agency. ‘We went to the Pakistanis and said go after Afridi,’ the retired official said. ‘We had to cover the whole issue of how we got the DNA.’ It was soon reported that the CIA had organised a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad with Afridi’s help in a failed attempt to obtain bin Laden’s DNA. Afridi’s legitimate medical operation was run independently of local health authorities, was well financed and offered free vaccinations against hepatitis B. Posters advertising the programme were displayed throughout the area. Afridi was later accused of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison because of his ties to an extremist. News of the CIA-sponsored programme created widespread anger in Pakistan, and led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying.



The retired official said that Afridi had been recruited long before the bin Laden mission as part of a separate intelligence effort to get information about suspected terrorists in Abbottabad and the surrounding area. ‘The plan was to use vaccinations as a way to get the blood of terrorism suspects in the villages.’ Afridi made no attempt to obtain DNA from the residents of the bin Laden compound. The report that he did so was a hurriedly put together ‘CIA cover story creating “facts”’ in a clumsy attempt to protect Aziz and his real mission. ‘Now we have the consequences,’ the retired official said. ‘A great humanitarian project to do something meaningful for the peasants has been compromised as a cynical hoax.’ Afridi’s conviction was overturned, but he remains in prison on a murder charge.

*

In his address announcing the raid, Obama said that after killing bin Laden the Seals ‘took custody of his body’. The statement created a problem. In the initial plan it was to be announced a week or so after the fact that bin Laden was killed in a drone strike somewhere in the mountains on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border and that his remains had been identified by DNA testing. But with Obama’s announcement of his killing by the Seals everyone now expected a body to be produced. Instead, reporters were told that bin Laden’s body had been flown by the Seals to an American military airfield in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and then straight to the USS Carl Vinson, a supercarrier on routine patrol in the North Arabian Sea. Bin Laden had then been buried at sea, just hours after his death. The press corps’s only sceptical moments at John Brennan’s briefing on 2 May were to do with the burial. The questions were short, to the point, and rarely answered. ‘When was the decision made that he would be buried at sea if killed?’ ‘Was this part of the plan all along?’ ‘Can you just tell us why that was a good idea?’ ‘John, did you consult a Muslim expert on that?’ ‘Is there a visual recording of this burial?’ When this last question was asked, Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, came to Brennan’s rescue: ‘We’ve got to give other people a chance here.’

‘We thought the best way to ensure that his body was given an appropriate Islamic burial,’ Brennan said, ‘was to take those actions that would allow us to do that burial at sea.’ He said ‘appropriate specialists and experts’ were consulted, and that the US military was fully capable of carrying out the burial ‘consistent with Islamic law’. Brennan didn’t mention that Muslim law calls for the burial service to be conducted in the presence of an imam, and there was no suggestion that one happened to be on board the Carl Vinson.

In a reconstruction of the bin Laden operation for Vanity Fair, Mark Bowden, who spoke to many senior administration officials, wrote that bin Laden’s body was cleaned and photographed at Jalalabad. Further procedures necessary for a Muslim burial were performed on the carrier, he wrote, ‘with bin Laden’s body being washed again and wrapped in a white shroud. A navy photographer recorded the burial in full sunlight, Monday morning, May 2.’ Bowden described the photos:

One frame shows the body wrapped in a weighted shroud. The next shows it lying diagonally on a chute, feet overboard. In the next frame the body is hitting the water. In the next it is visible just below the surface, ripples spreading outward. In the last frame there are only circular ripples on the surface. The mortal remains of Osama bin Laden were gone for good.

Bowden was careful not to claim that he had actually seen the photographs he described, and he recently told me he hadn’t seen them: ‘I’m always disappointed when I can’t look at something myself, but I spoke with someone I trusted who said he had seen them himself and described them in detail.’ Bowden’s statement adds to the questions about the alleged burial at sea, which has provoked a flood of Freedom of Information Act requests, most of which produced no information. One of them sought access to the photographs. The Pentagon responded that a search of all available records had found no evidence that any photographs had been taken of the burial. Requests on other issues related to the raid were equally unproductive. The reason for the lack of response became clear after the Pentagon held an inquiry into allegations that the Obama administration had provided access to classified materials to the makers of the film Zero Dark Thirty. The Pentagon report, which was put online in June 2013, noted that Admiral McRaven had ordered the files on the raid to be deleted from all military computers and moved to the CIA, where they would be shielded from FOIA requests by the agency’s ‘operational exemption’.

McRaven’s action meant that outsiders could not get access to the Carl Vinson’s unclassified logs. Logs are sacrosanct in the navy, and separate ones are kept for air operations, the deck, the engineering department, the medical office, and for command information and control. They show the sequence of events day by day aboard the ship; if there has been a burial at sea aboard the Carl Vinson, it would have been recorded.

There wasn’t any gossip about a burial among the Carl Vinson’s sailors. The carrier concluded its six-month deployment in June 2011. When the ship docked at its home base in Coronado, California, Rear Admiral Samuel Perez, commander of the Carl Vinson carrier strike group, told reporters that the crew had been ordered not to talk about the burial. Captain Bruce Lindsey, skipper of the Carl Vinson, told reporters he was unable to discuss it. Cameron Short, one of the crew of the Carl Vinson, told the Commercial-News of Danville, Illinois, that the crew had not been told anything about the burial. ‘All he knows is what he’s seen on the news,’ the newspaper reported.

The Pentagon did release a series of emails to the Associated Press. In one of them, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette reported that the service followed ‘traditional procedures for Islamic burial’, and said none of the sailors on board had been permitted to observe the proceedings. But there was no indication of who washed and wrapped the body, or of which Arabic speaker conducted the service.

Within weeks of the raid, I had been told by two longtime consultants to Special Operations Command, who have access to current intelligence, that the funeral aboard the Carl Vinson didn’t take place. One consultant told me that bin Laden’s remains were photographed and identified after being flown back to Afghanistan. The consultant added: ‘At that point, the CIA took control of the body. The cover story was that it had been flown to the Carl Vinson.’ The second consultant agreed that there had been ‘no burial at sea’. He added that ‘the killing of bin Laden was political theatre designed to burnish Obama’s military credentials … The Seals should have expected the political grandstanding. It’s irresistible to a politician. Bin Laden became a working asset.’ Early this year, speaking again to the second consultant, I returned to the burial at sea. The consultant laughed and said: ‘You mean, he didn’t make it to the water?’

The retired official said there had been another complication: some members of the Seal team had bragged to colleagues and others that they had torn bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire. The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains – or so the Seals claimed. At the time, the retired official said, the Seals did not think their mission would be made public by Obama within a few hours: ‘If the president had gone ahead with the cover story, there would have been no need to have a funeral within hours of the killing. Once the cover story was blown, and the death was made public, the White House had a serious “Where’s the body?” problem. The world knew US forces had killed bin Laden in Abbottabad. Panic city. What to do? We need a “functional body” because we have to be able to say we identified bin Laden via a DNA analysis. It would be navy officers who came up with the “burial at sea” idea. Perfect. No body. Honourable burial following sharia law. Burial is made public in great detail, but Freedom of Information documents confirming the burial are denied for reasons of “national security”. It’s the classic unravelling of a poorly constructed cover story – it solves an immediate problem but, given the slightest inspection, there is no back-up support. There never was a plan, initially, to take the body to sea, and no burial of bin Laden at sea took place.’ The retired official said that if the Seals’ first accounts are to be believed, there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case.

*

It was inevitable that the Obama administration’s lies, misstatements and betrayals would create a backlash. ‘We’ve had a four-year lapse in co-operation,’ the retired official said. ‘It’s taken that long for the Pakistanis to trust us again in the military-to-military counterterrorism relationship – while terrorism was rising all over the world … They felt Obama sold them down the river. They’re just now coming back because the threat from Isis, which is now showing up there, is a lot greater and the bin Laden event is far enough away to enable someone like General Durrani to come out and talk about it.’ Generals Pasha and Kayani have retired and both are reported to be under investigation for corruption during their time in office.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s long-delayed report on CIA torture, released last December, documented repeated instances of official lying, and suggested that the CIA’s knowledge of bin Laden’s courier was sketchy at best and predated its use of waterboarding and other forms of torture. The report led to international headlines about brutality and waterboarding, along with gruesome details about rectal feeding tubes, ice baths and threats to rape or murder family members of detainees who were believed to be withholding information. Despite the bad publicity, the report was a victory for the CIA. Its major finding – that the use of torture didn’t lead to discovering the truth – had already been the subject of public debate for more than a decade. Another key finding – that the torture conducted was more brutal than Congress had been told – was risible, given the extent of public reporting and published exposés by former interrogators and retired CIA officers. The report depicted tortures that were obviously contrary to international law as violations of rules or ‘inappropriate activities’ or, in some cases, ‘management failures’. Whether the actions described constitute war crimes was not discussed, and the report did not suggest that any of the CIA interrogators or their superiors should be investigated for criminal activity. The agency faced no meaningful consequences as a result of the report.

The retired official told me that the CIA leadership had become experts in derailing serious threats from Congress: ‘They create something that is horrible but not that bad. Give them something that sounds terrible. “Oh my God, we were shoving food up a prisoner’s ass!” Meanwhile, they’re not telling the committee about murders, other war crimes, and secret prisons like we still have in Diego Garcia. The goal also was to stall it as long as possible, which they did.’

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The main theme of the committee’s 499-page executive summary is that the CIA lied systematically about the effectiveness of its torture programme in gaining intelligence that would stop future terrorist attacks in the US. The lies included some vital details about the uncovering of an al-Qaida operative called Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was said to be the key al-Qaida courier, and the subsequent tracking of him to Abbottabad in early 2011. The agency’s alleged intelligence, patience and skill in finding al-Kuwaiti became legend after it was dramatised in Zero Dark Thirty.

The Senate report repeatedly raised questions about the quality and reliability of the CIA’s intelligence about al-Kuwaiti. In 2005 an internal CIA report on the hunt for bin Laden noted that ‘detainees provide few actionable leads, and we have to consider the possibility that they are creating fictitious characters to distract us or to absolve themselves of direct knowledge about bin Ladin [sic].’ A CIA cable a year later stated that ‘we have had no success in eliciting actionable intelligence on bin Laden’s location from any detainees.’ The report also highlighted several instances of CIA officers, including Panetta, making false statements to Congress and the public about the value of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ in the search for bin Laden’s couriers.

Obama today is not facing re-election as he was in the spring of 2011. His principled stand on behalf of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran says much, as does his decision to operate without the support of the conservative Republicans in Congress. High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no.

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Letters
Vol. 37 No. 11 · 4 June 2015

The allegations in Seymour M. Hersh’s article about the killing of bin Laden have received official denials and journalistic gasps similar to those that greeted his 1974 reporting on the CIA’s MH-CHAOS domestic spying programme and the revelations in his 1983 book The Price of Power about Henry Kissinger’s masterminding of the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and hiding it from the US Congress (LRB, 21 May). I suppose that’s no surprise. I’m curious to see whether the embarrassing admissions that followed and confirmed those stories arrive too. In the meantime the CIA has put out a variety of documents including a list of the books on bin Laden’s shelves. It turns out he preferred Bob Woodward to Seymour Hersh.

Colin Leonard
London NW2

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