The Bin Laden Murder Mystery
Seymour Hersh, a great journalist with superb sources and the courage to
challenge conventional wisdom, has presented
a counter-narrative of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, but
Hersh’s story – compelling in many respects,
even to the New York Times – has some elements that stretch
credulity, says John Gardner.
By John Gardner
May 14, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Consortium
News" - In my endlessly unfolding book on the
history of the North American Great Lakes Region, one of the most puzzling
conundrums is The Kensington Stone. The Stone is either a piece of historical
evidence that undoes the standard narrative of the European-American encounter,
or a hoax. It’s a stone unearthed by a semi-literate Swedish-American farmer in
the 1880s that, ultimately translated by medieval rune scholars, depicted an
Indian massacre of a bunch of Norse adventurers in 1341, near the Red
Norse adventurers were intrepid, and went great distances;
possibly around Cape Horn, even to China. But they didn’t, for obvious and good
reasons, stray far from their long boats, their connection back home. Unlike
Magellan, they didn’t know how to build their own ships. Letting somebody
destroy their abandoned ship would have marooned them.
My take on the implausibility of The Stone is simpler. Why
would 24 Norse soldier-explorers, returning to the day’s base camp and finding
their comrades all dead and bleeding, inscribe and leave a monument in hard
stone that they could be extremely confident no rune-reader would ever come
across? It’s a big job for men whose primary ambitions at the time must have
been burying the dead and scramming before the natives returned.
The contrary evidence, however, is just as compelling. Why
would a semi-literate Swedish-American farmer participate in such a hoax? And,
if he did, how did he do such a masterful job of it? How would he (1) create The
Stone, complete with futmarks that were, after about a century, found to be
accurately of the era after all; (2) put it in the roots of a tree upturned by
his sons in a land-clearing project; and — most impressively — (3) hand it over
to the Scandinavian rune experts at The University of Minnesota for no money.
When The Stone, pronounced a fake, was returned to him, he
showed no disappointment, but turned it face down and used it for an entrance
block to the back of his house. Later, a young academic came along and evinced
considerable enthusiasm for it. The farmer sold it to him for ten dollars.
Neither he nor his sons ever revealed anything about some plot of deception.
Nor, for that matter, did they ever take any interest in it.
So there’s a story of potential historic significance that is
at once incredible and irrefutable. That’s my reaction to Seymour Hersh’s exposé
of the killing of Bin Laden.
On one hand, the official story has always been
incredible. Who can actually believe that Bin Laden would be living in the
Pakistani West Point, 20 minutes from a major USA-Pakistani dark site used to
train the guardians of the local nuclear repository; and that nobody in the
armed forces and/or ISI would know? And, further, who can believe that two
Blackhawks could penetrate Pakistani air space, conduct a raid in such a
location, and escape with no Pakistani interference;
…unless there were, as Hersh alleges, massive and effective
collaboration with Pakistani military and/or ISI personnel?
So the official story is implausible; and, when you stop to
think about it, so is the lack of a video — anywhere — of the purported burial
at sea. (Why wasn’t that, at least, shown to calm Islamic anxieties
about the propriety of his burial? Pretty simple thing to pull off; and it’s
hard not to believe that the U.S. Navy doesn’t routinely record events of that
nature.) Other inconsistencies and discrepancies are also plausible, lending an
air of credence to Hersh’s story.
On the other hand: Let’s suppose his exposé is true:
Why would senior Pakistani ISI officials possibly permit their
obvious collaboration be exposed by having U.S. Navy Seals pull off such an
improbable stunt that would render their purported lack of involvement
implausible?
And, more: Why would they possibly concoct, as Hersh says
they and the U.S. government did, a cover story that Bin Ladin was killed by an
American drone strike somewhere in Waziristan? Why not simply take him to
Waziristan, leave his dead body, let Americans know the coordinates, and have
the real smash-and-grab take place there? It’s like The Kensington Stone:
Neither the hoax nor the purported story adds up.
John Gardner is at work on
a history of the North American Great Lakes. He can be reached at personalgardnerjohn@gmail.com .