Osama bin Laden escaped from Afghanistan in woman's disguise, reveals ex-CIA officer
John Kiriakou, who was in CIA for 15 years said they did not know that the translator for the commander of Central Command was actually an 'Al Qaeda operative.'
In a startling new revelation, a former CIA officer claimed that one of the world's most wanted terrorists, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terror attacks, fled Afghanistan disguised as a woman to escape US forces.
In an exclusive interview with news agency ANI, John 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”.
“We believed we had Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora,” Kiriakou said.
"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 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," he added.
By dawn, US troops discovered they had been duped; the caves of Tora Bora were empty. The chase then moved across the border into Pakistan, where bin Laden would hide for nearly a decade before being killed in a US Navy SEAL raid in Abbottabad in 2011.
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," Kiriakou added.
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 Pakistani 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.
'Purchased President Musharraf': Former CIA official
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," he said.
"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 added.
