Former Afghan intel chief to Pakistan: Told you so

Amrullah Saleh, until last year the director of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security tells the Guardian he had a pretty good idea of where bin Laden had been hiding for years and tried to tell the Pakistani government:  He said they believed Bin Laden must be there based on "thousands of interrogation reports" and the ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Amrullah Saleh, until last year the director of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security tells the Guardian he had a pretty good idea of where bin Laden had been hiding for years and tried to tell the Pakistani government: 

Amrullah Saleh, until last year the director of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security tells the Guardian he had a pretty good idea of where bin Laden had been hiding for years and tried to tell the Pakistani government: 

He said they believed Bin Laden must be there based on "thousands of interrogation reports" and the assumption that Osama – "a millionaire with multiple wives and no background of toughness" – would not be living in a tent.

"I was pretty sure he was in the settled areas of Pakistan because in 2005 it was still very easy to infiltrate the tribal areas, and we had massive numbers of informants there," he said. "They could find any Arab but notBin Laden."

Their intelligence became more precise in 2007 when they believed he was hiding in Manshera, a town a short distance from Abbottabad where the NDS had identified two al-Qaida safe houses.

But the former spy chief said that Pervez Musharraf, then president of Pakistan, was outraged at the suggestion that Bin Laden was hiding in such a prominent part of the country. In a meeting with Musharraf and Hamid Karzai the Pakistani president became furious and smashed his fist down on the table. "He said, ‘Am I the president of the Republic of Banana?’" Saleh recalled. "Then he turned to President Karzai and said, ‘Why have you have brought this Panjshiri guy to teach me intelligence?’"

Saleh was evidently not on the same page as his poss, President Hamid Karzai, who repeatedly said he believed bin Laden "probably is dead."

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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