Thursday, May 26, 2011

A Pakistani Mole?

Over at HotAir, "Allahpundit" conjectures there may have been a mole within Pakistani intelligence who provided the details of the Abbottabad compound, which would also explain the recent arrest of Muhammed Ali Qasim Yaqub and the rumors regarding Mullah Omar.

This theory is plausible, but unlikely for several reasons:
  1. If true, and the mole was somebody within Pakistan's ISI who knew bin Laden's location for a long time, why would they decide to rat him out now, especially at a time of heightened U.S.-Pakistani tensions.
  2. Theoretically, it could have been somebody who was recently looped in on bin Laden's location, but that would represent an unprecedented breech within ISI to allow access to such important information.  (Of course, it should also be noted that it is still at most unproven speculation that somebody within ISI knew his location in the first place).
  3. Yaqub was reportedly arrested by Pakistani forces, so it is unclear why a mole feeding us the location and details of bin Laden's compound to the US would also be providing information to other elements of Pakistani security as well.  Wouldn't this just cast more suspicion on a potential "traitor"?
  4. Also, if we did have anything to do with Mullah Omar's rumored death, does anybody realistically think the Administration could keep quiet about it?*
The full story of how we found bin Laden may never be revealed in order to protect sources and methods.  But I think the current narrative about tracking Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti back to Abbottabad, where surveillance by both human and technical means provided the intelligence for SEAL Team Six's raid on the compound is plausible enough that Occam's Razor should prevail for now.  

On the other hand, maybe Allahpundit is on to something by suggesting a wife may have turned bin Laden in because of his porn stash . . .

* Although I think the Obama administration should have sat on the news of bin Laden's death for a week to exploit the intelligence found, it should be noted that the Bush administration announced the capture of Saddam Hussein and death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi within 24 hours of the event.  Alas, it may be unrealistic in this day and age to ask policymakers to keep such good news to themselves for a full news cycle.

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